The Skimmer & MPA News

• UN publishes evaluation of global progress towards 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
• Over US$63 billion pledged at Our Ocean conference to improve ocean health and productivity (view pledges in map form)
• New elevation data triples estimate of global population vulnerable to sea-level rise and coastal flooding (explore data with Coastal Risk Screening Tool)
• Meta-analysis of MPA coverage highlights gaps in Caribbean, Madagascar, southern Africa, Mediterranean, and Coral Triangle
• Global subsidies to fishing industry more than US$35 billion in 2018 [Read Skimmer coverage of why this matters for marine ecosystems]
• Study finds MPA benefits and drawbacks roughly equal for local communities
• Analysis predicts continued ocean warming will trigger more extreme El Niños
• Sea levels will continue to rise even after global temperatures stabilize
• Offshore wind report offers comprehensive global look at latest technology, market developments, and geospatial analysis
• New report illuminates activities of distant water fishing fleets including IUU fishing and illicit activity
• New guide details how to insure a natural asset [Read Skimmer coverage about insurance coverage for Mesoamerican Reef]
• Tool helps design accurate, statistically meaningful ocean research experiments
• Communications tool to help scientists engage public and decisionmakers now available in Spanish
• Workbook for strategic communication for conservation available
• Nike joins coalition pledged to not ship through Arctic; Exxon partner plans to ship liquid natural gas through Arctic
• Final approval given for first commercial offshore wind installation in US federal waters
• China's ocean waste up 27% in 2018
• Marine planning and management trainings added to Skimmer database

By Tundi Agardy, Contributing Editor, The Skimmer. Email: tundiagardy [at] earthlink.net

A recent publication “Marine zoning revisiting: How decades of zoning the Great Barrier Reef has evolved an effective spatial planning approach for marine ecosystem-based management” published in Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems distills important lessons from Australia’s evolving commitment to manage the world’s most iconic multiple use marine protected area. It casts a critical eye on what has worked and what has not, and it pushes us beyond our marine comfort zone to face the challenge of true ecosystem-based management (EBM), which neither ocean zoning nor marine spatial planning (MSP) in their current applications can adequately provide. With this publication, Jon Day and his coauthors have given the world a valuable gift that will keep on giving – if we can acknowledge this gift and heed it.

Day and his colleagues (including Richard Kenchington, who like Day has been intimately involved in the design and management of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park [GBRMP] through its various iterations over the years) recount how zoning both set the stage for multiple use management and evolved to provide the legal framework for regulations to protect the world’s largest barrier reef. The use of zoning had to be adapted over decades because the GBRMP Authority was a pioneer in spatial management and the allocation of space to uses of the marine environment. Zoning on land may have provided a glimpse of the possible, but adapting zoning approaches to the fluid and obscured ocean realm required experimentation and a fair amount of risk taking.

Editor’s note: In 2016, roughly one-third of the total value of the world’s trade of fish and fish products was invertebrates. (They were approximately one-fifth of the global fish trade by live weight.) To learn more about the state and future of invertebrate fisheries management, The Skimmer interviewed Heike Lotze, a professor in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. In this interview, we discuss several of her papers published over the past decade on the recent expansion, ecosystem effects, and management of invertebrate fisheries, including a recent synthesis “Ecosystem effects of invertebrate fisheries” published in Fish and Fisheries in 2017.

The Skimmer: As global catch of invertebrates increases, what impacts are invertebrate fisheries having on marine ecosystems?

Lotze: Invertebrate catches have increased more than six-fold globally since the 1950s. Catches include all major species groups – from lobster, shrimp, and crabs (crustaceans) to octopus, cuttlefish and squid (cephalopods) to mussels and snails (mollusks) to sea urchins and sea cucumbers (echinoderms). In many countries, invertebrates are some of the most lucrative commercial fisheries and provide coastal communities with valuable livelihoods and associated benefits. The global increase in catches has been accompanied by the spatial expansion of invertebrate fisheries: many more countries are engaging in fishing invertebrates, and many more areas within countries are now fishing invertebrates. For example, sea urchin and sea cucumber are now fished around the globe, and fishing for invertebrates has expanded from shallow to deeper waters to maintain or enhance catch levels. Fisheries have further shifted from large- to smaller-sized individuals and from high- to lesser-valued species, usually in response to declining catches and following a ‘fishing down the value-chain’ pattern.

Many people may think it is ‘just’ invertebrates, but these species play important ecological roles in marine ecosystems. These roles are often more diverse than the roles that fish play, consequently the impacts of invertebrate fisheries on other species and marine ecosystems are more varied than those of finfish fisheries. For example:

• Many invertebrates are important prey for higher trophic level species, such as fish, whales, turtles, and seabirds, and reducing invertebrate abundance can have ripple effects through marine food webs, comparable to those of forage fish;
• Many mussels, oysters, and sponges enhance biodiversity by creating three-dimensional structures that are important habitat for other species – for settlement, finding food, finding shelter, breeding, and nursery grounds;
• Many invertebrates filter feed which improves water quality and clarity and provides benefits to other organisms, including humans;
• Herbivore grazers, such as many urchins and gastropods, act as lawn mowers keeping algal carpets in check; and
• Detritivore sea stars and sea cucumbers clean up ocean floors as the scavengers of the sea.

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

Coverage of social media usually focuses on how social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) can be used to communicate with and educate stakeholders and the general public. But social media also provides publicly available information on how people are using and feeling about the marine environment. Learn how social media and other digital data are being used for marine conservation and management.