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We agree with three broad points raised by Cabral et al.(1): 1) Marine protected areas (MPAs) can play an important role in conservation and food security, 2) much of the high seas could be closed to fishing without substantially reducing global catch, and 3) much of the potential food security benefits of MPAs could be achieved by targeted protection in key places. We note an error in the business-as-usual (BAU) policy in their original manuscript which overestimated the food gains of MPAs and distorted the prioritization map, but which is being corrected by Cabral et al. However, beyond this issue, their model makes a series of assumptions that produce results inconsistent with best available knowledge of the state of global fisheries and marine ecology. Cabral et al.(1) do not explicitly account for spatial structure of fish populations in their model, instead assuming that all unassessed [ie, not in the RAM Legacy …