Advancing marine conservation
Background: Marine populations have been declining at a worrying rate, due in large part to fishing pressures. The challenge is to secure a future for marine life while minimizing impacts on fishers and fishing communities. Methods and Principal Findings: Rather than selecting areas where fishing is banned – as is usually the case with spatial …
Marine protected areas (MPAs) can be an effective tool for marine biodiversity conservation, yet decision-makers usually have limited and biased datasets with which to make decisions about where to locate MPAs. Using commonly available abiotic and biotic datasets, I asked how many datasets are necessary to achieve robust patterns of conservation importance. I applied a …
Anticamara, J.A (2009). Ecology of recovering degraded reef communities within no-take marine reserves. Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia, Canada.… Read more
Guieb, E.R. (2009). Community, marine rights, and sea tenure : a political cology of marine conservation in two Bohol villages in central Philippines. Doctoral dissertation, McGill University, Canada.… Read more
Ban, N.C. (2008). Multiple perspectives for envisioning marine protected areas. Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia, Canada.… Read more
Community and resource user support has often been declared as essential to achieving globally agreed targets for marine protection. Given that Indigenous Peoples in Canada have resource use rights, we engaged two Indigenous communities in British Columbia for their views on marine planning and protected areas. We developed a three-phased approach for executing our research: …
The intensity of marine activities in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of British Columbia, Canada, was quantified. Humans use the ocean for a multitude of purposes, many of which have a direct impact on marine life and habitat. Yet such uses are seldom assessed in an integrated fashion. Using a GIS approach, spatial information for …
Community-managed, no-take marine reserves are increasingly promoted as a simple, precautionary measure to conserve biodiversity and sustain coral reef fisheries. However, we need to demonstrate the effects of such reserves to those affected by the loss of potential fishing grounds and the wider scientific community. We surveyed changes in fish communities in five small marine …
Overexploitation and habitat degradation threaten small-scale, artisanal fisheries around the world. Management of these fisheries is often inadequate or absent, partly because they are data poor. We here present the development of management options for such a fishery, using collaborative input from a variety of interested groups. Qualitative and semi-quantitative assessments of seahorse populations in …
Freshwater species and habitats are among the most threatened in the world. One way in which this growing conservation concern can be addressed is the creation of freshwater protected areas. Here, we present three strategies for freshwater protected-area design and management: whole-catchment management, natural-flow maintenance, and exclusion of non-native species. These strategies are based on …