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In recent years, stakeholder engagement has been widely recognized as integral to effective marine conservation, marine ecosystem-based management, and marine spatial planning. There are many different definitions of the term ”stakeholder”, but at its most inclusive, it is any “person, organization, or group with an interest (professional or societal) or an influence on the marine environment or who is influenced directly or indirectly by activities and management decisions.” The list of stakeholders engaged in any marine conservation or management process depends on the context of the specific project, but, in practice, typical stakeholders engaged in marine conservation and management processes include local industries, coastal residents, management agencies, and conservation organizations.

The world is changing rapidly though. New information and technologies, new forms of social interaction (often fostered by social media), increases in tourism around the globe, shifting economies, globalization, global climate change, and other factors make it critical to continually reexamine traditional views of who ocean stakeholders are, their relative importance, and how we engage them.

In this issue of The Skimmer, we feature three recent studies that highlight new (or often underrepresented) voices in ocean management processes, as well as thoughts on how these voices can be brought into decision making for marine ecosystems.

• One of these studies found the value of marine stewardship activities is greater than the revenues from commercial finfish and whale watching activities in the US state of Massachusetts.
• Another study presents the concept of “extra-local ecosystem services” – ecosystem services provided by coastal and marine ecosystems that are distributed beyond the ecosystem itself, including regionally and globally.
• A third study – of place attachment to the Great Barrier Reef – found a community of people with strong attachment to the reef who do not necessarily have ongoing direct experience with it.

Editor’s note: The Slimmer Skimmer is a new feature to give a brief update on a topic critical to marine ecosystem management.

We are starting off our Slimmer Skimmer series with one of fisheries subsidies. The World Trade Organization is currently working to make an end-of-the year deadline (their own, as well as one for the Sustainable Development Goals) to end harmful types of fisheries subsidies. Not all fisheries subsidies are harmful – fisheries management is commonly considered a subsidy, for instance – but the harmful ones encourage overfishing and have substantial negative impacts on marine ecosystems.

Please let us know what you think of this type of feature and if there is anything that you feel we should cover in this format in the future.

So let’s start with a few basics – what are fisheries subsidies?

• Different groups have different definitions of what constitutes a fisheries subsidy. But generally speaking, subsidies are government actions that help the fishing industry increase its income or lower its costs. Examples of fisheries subsidies include fuel subsidies,  income supports, price supports, tax credits, tax exemptions, low-interest loans, loan guarantees, regulatory exemptions, and preferential treatment. Many also consider government funding for fisheries management – including monitoring and enforcement efforts – and free access to fishing areas to be subsidies.
   
• It is estimated that, globally, nations provide ~US$35 billion in subsidies to their fishing industries every year. Some specifics:
   
  • Fuel subsidies and fisheries management are the most common types of subsidies, comprising 22% and 20% of total subsidies respectively. For example, in 2013, China provided ~US$6.5 billion to its fishing industry, almost entirely (94%) as fuel subsidies.
     
  • Regionally, Asian countries provide the most subsidies (beneficial, harmful, and ambiguous) to their fishing industries (43% of the global total) followed by Europe (25% of the global total) and North America (16% of the global total). Japan and China are the highest subsidizing countries (20% each of the global total) with the US coming in a close third.
     
• Fisheries subsidies are considered beneficial, harmful, or ambiguous based on whether they have positive or negative impacts on fisheries resources.
  • Beneficial subsidies promote the growth of fish stocks through conservation and the sustainable management of the resource. They include investments in fisheries science, management, and enforcement.
     
  • Harmful subsidies lead to overcapacity and the overexploitation of stocks. In general, harmful subsidies artificially increase revenues or lower costs for fishers. This puts pressure on poorly managed fish stocks and enables fishing entities to continue fishing in situations that would otherwise be unprofitable. This encourages fishers to stay in the industry and keep fishing when they would otherwise leave/stop. Harmful subsidies include fuel subsidies, boat construction programs, price supports, marketing supports, tax exemptions, and payment of fees for foreign access agreements.
     
  • Ambiguous subsidies are programs that could be harmful or beneficial (or both) depending on the details of the program and the local context. They include fisher assistance programs, vessel buyback programs, and community development programs. For example, vessel buyback programs could lead to fewer boats fishing and reduced fishing capacity as they are generally intended to do. If fishers anticipate that there will be buybacks, however, they may have incentives to overinvest in vessels, leading to an increase in fishing capacity. Another example is unemployment insurance for fishers. An unemployment program could lead to increased safety and reduced effort because fishers do not need to go out in unsafe conditions. If there is a minimum number of fishing days needed to quality for the program, however, the insurance could lead to increased effort and pressure to lengthen the fishing season.
     
• Of the total subsidies provided to fisheries globally, US$20 billion are considered harmful, capacity-enhancing subsidies.
  • Of the major subsidizers (the EU, Japan, China, the US, and Russia), the US is the only entity where beneficial subsidies exceed harmful subsidies. (In fact, in the US, harmful and ambiguous subsidies are less than a quarter of the total subsidies to the industry).

• Draft of new UN Law of the Sea agreement on high seas biodiversity available for review
• Research shows fisheries in different nations highly interconnected by larval transport
• New study predicts every 1°C increase in ocean temperature leads to 5% loss of marine biomass
• Plastics could change physical processes in the ocean
• New report describes key spatial conflicts and solutions in EU waters (Summaries and case studies available here)
• Latvia approves new national marine spatial plan
• Estonia releases draft of new national marine spatial plan
• Wales launches consultation on future of Welsh fisheries and ecosystems after Brexit
• Canada updates federal fishing law
• US provides information on offshore wind leasing strategy
• US NOAA releases annual report on US ocean economy
• US faces $400+ billion in sea level rise adaptation costs (see cost estimates by city, county, state)
• 2019 ocean yearbook provides analysis of current ocean management issues
• Report describes possible scenarios for high seas fisheries under climate change
• Trident underwater drones and spotter buoys available for ocean research and conservation projects
• Apply to attend expense-paid workshop to identify research priorities for shifting marine species

Editor’s Note: From the Archives calls attention to past Skimmer/MEAM articles whose perspectives and insight remain relevant.

Imagine a world where:

• Municipalities proactively restore wetlands and offshore reefs wherever possible to protect their citizens and infrastructure and lower their insurance premiums.
• Small-scale fishers receive insurance payouts immediately after devastating hurricanes so fisheries-dependent communities can start to recover.
• The risks of running an illegal fishing operation rise dramatically because it is impossible to get insurance for the ships involved.

Learn about real-life examples where this is happening as well as other ways insurance can promote sustainable marine ecosystems and marine communities.

“[Ocean plastic] isn’t a problem where we don’t know what the solution is. We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to dispose of it. We know how to recycle.”

--- Ted Siegler, DSM Environmental Services, on building the institutions and systems needed to deal with plastic before it reaches the ocean

Editor’s note: Marine plastic has a profound impact on marine ecosystems – entangling and killing wildlife, spreading disease and non-native species, and even impairing the oceans’ creation of oxygen. Managing marine ecosystems will need to include managing the marine plastic problem. Last month the Skimmer reported on the impacts of marine plastic on the Blue Economy, including on tourism, fishing, and ecosystem services. This month, in the second half of our plastics coverage, we examine which policies to reduce marine plastic seem to work best.

There is an abundance of information out there on how to reduce one’s personal plastic consumption, with the ultimate goal of reducing the amount of plastic that is polluting marine (and terrestrial) ecosystems. There are also numerous great reports (examples here and here) on government and industry interventions for reducing marine plastic pollution. But what do we know about the efficacy and level of impact of these activities? Are we lumping actions which are likely to have relatively little impact on the problem with actions that potentially have huge impacts? Of course, the ideal is to eliminate all plastic pollution – marine and terrestrial – but in this article, we attempt to:

1. Provide perspective (by way of lots of numbers) for what actions are most likely to make the biggest difference in marine plastic pollution
2. Provide information on what has been shown to work to reduce marine plastic pollution.

Editor’s Note: For this article, we interviewed Ekaterina Popova, a global ocean modeller with the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, United Kingdom, about her new article "Ecological connectivity between the areas beyond national jurisdiction and coastal waters: Safeguarding interests of coastal communities in developing countries" published in Marine Policy in June 2019. This research found that coastal regions of some least-developed countries (LDCs) are connected to areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) through larval dispersal and the potential dispersal of pollutants. These findings suggest that protecting ‘source’ areas in the ABNJ could help promote sustainable livelihoods for coastal regions that depend on larval supply from these regions (and could prevent pollutants from these source areas reaching coastal regions.) 

The Skimmer: Can you briefly describe some of the connections between source areas in the ABNJ and coastal regions?

Popova: Our study showed that connectivity between the ABNJ and coastal waters of different countries varies considerably. How tight the connectivity is, depends on the prevailing direction, timescale and variability of ocean currents. Sometimes, the shape of the adjacent Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) also has an effect. The complex ways these various factors interact means that close geographical proximity, or ‘adjacency’, of coastal waters to ABNJ is not always a good indicator of strong connectivity and some countries are much more exposed to the influence of ABNJ than others. The world’s most ABNJ-impacted LDC is the Federal Republic of Somalia. Its strong connectivity is shaped by three powerful currents: the South Equatorial current, the East African coastal current, and the seasonally reversing East Somali current. The most tightly ABNJ-connected stretch of the Somali coastline can be impacted by the upstream ABNJ waters on a time scale of just over a month. In contrast, the Republic of Senegal is one of the world’s least connected LDCs. Its most tightly ABNJ-connected coastline stretch is impacted by upstream ABNJ on a time scale of more than seven months.

• New long-term data set shows clear changes in El Niño patterns
• Global assessment finds humans driving a million species to extinction
• Warming waters changing compositions of global plankton communities
• Productivity of North Atlantic phytoplankton declining as ocean warms
• New report documents climate change impacts on deep ocean habitat, fish, and fisheries
• New reporting on how weak governance undermines South America’s ocean ecosystems
• US government and fishing industry to collaborate on offshore wind research and processes
• EU releases 2019 Blue Economy report
• New paper describes approaches and tools for achieving multi-objective MSP
• Global Fishing Watch makes data available/easier to use in other applications
• Free service helps nonprofits create ArcGIS StoryMaps
• Input requested on content/main uses of new marine conservation planning database
• Major newspaper switching from “climate change” to “climate crisis”

Editor’s Note: From the Archives calls attention to past Skimmer/MEAM articles whose perspectives and insight remain relevant.

To some in conservation and resource management, marketing can seem like a bad word. But marketing is inherently about getting people to change their behavior, whether it is buying a product, recycling, or supporting a new approach to management. Marketing techniques bring together elements of psychology, sociology, economics, and graphic design. Learn from three experts how to use conservation marketing to make marine conservation and management processes more effective.

Editor’s note: The deluge of popular articles and reports on marine plastic continues, but here at The Skimmer, we became curious about one important area where we weren’t seeing as much information – how marine plastic pollution is affecting ocean users and the Blue Economy. We know that marine plastic is pretty much everywhere in the ocean and can have horrific effects on individual marine organisms – think whales and seabirds with bellies full of plastic – but that the research is just not there to fully assess the severity of marine ecosystem-level impacts.

But aside from the unpleasant views of trash-strewn beaches and coastal waters, how are people, cities, and countries affected? One important reason to dig into this area and have this information readily available is that money talks. If the harm to marine life doesn’t convince decision makers to make difficult changes to address marine plastic pollution, maybe understanding the economic and social impacts can.

• New hubs provide information on human uses of oceans and marine cultural ecosystem services
• Ocean heat hit record high in 2018
• Ocean warming already reducing sustainable fisheries catches