Title

1. Marine protected areas in Pacific Canada: issues about biological valuation in the marine environment BWZee, December 2-4, 2004. Glen Jamieson Fisheries and Oceans Canada Title Markle

2. Approach • Current MPA situation in British Columbia • Approaches to date • what has not really worked • what we are now trying to do • Movement towards a network approach

3. MPA Definition • The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) defines marine protected areas (mpas) as: “any area of intertidal or subtidal terrain, together with its overlying water and associated flora, fauna, historical and cultural features, which have been reserved by law or other effective means to protect part or all of the enclosed environment” (Kelleher and Kenchington 1992)

4. Provincial (P) and Federal (F) MPAS established in Canada by Fisheries and Oceans Canada Regions

5. Legislated Areas with a Marine Component by General Type (designations may not all be exactly similar) by Fisheries and Oceans Canada Region, excluding the Great Lakes. + Ontario = 2, Yukon = 1; () = presence of a marine portion unknown

6. Legislated Areas with a Marine Component by General Type by Fisheries and Oceans Canada Region, excluding the Great Lakes* pilot MPAs. () = presence of a marine portion unknown; 1 Jamieson and Lessard 2000; 2 DFO 1999 and Tina Kurvits, DFO, Ottawa, ON, pers. comm.

7. Mpas established to preserve habitats and ecosystems provincial parks national parks ecological reserves designated wildlife reserves MPAs national wildlife areas wildlife management areas Mpas focused on the protection of individual species or species groups marine bird sanctuaries fisheries closures MPAs What is Actually Protected?

8. General Observations • In Pacific Canada, most existing marine protected areas) are provincial (116, 94 %), nearshore and relatively small. 66 (52%) are less than 1 km2 in area • In eastern and arctic Canada, most marine protected areas are federal (62, 78%), and most are Marine Bird Sanctuaries (MBSs) • MBSs in eastern Canada are relatively small in area (average marine area, when present = >5 km2) and focus on migratory staging areas, but those in the Arctic are large and focus on breeding grounds, with marine portions averaging 898 km2

9. Restrictions on Human Activities Three basic groupings of protection: 1)prevention of habitat destruction or modification [e.g. non-renewable resource extraction (water diversion, mining, etc), ocean dumping and dredging, etc.] 2)prevention of species harvest or exploitation (i.e. logging, fishing or hunting, and restrictions are often species specific); 3)prevention of species’ disturbance (e.g. feeding wildlife, or interfering with their natural behaviour, reproduction and rearing of young)

10. Zoning within mpas • All current mpas in Canada are uniform, or homogenous, in the protection that is provided. There is no internal zoning in any whereby greater or lesser protection is legislatively provided. • Some MPAs and most, if not all, NMCAs, when they are established, are likely to be internally zoned, with some areas likely being “no take” areas, i.e. closed to all fishing activity. • Because marine species are already extensively exploited, “no take” areas near urban areas are likely to be relatively small, meaning that particular attention will need to be directed to defining rationales and objectives, and in linking them into a network so that synergistic conservation benefits are obtainable.

11. Fishery Closures • In BC, for example, there were 579 spatially-persistent fishery closures in 1997 which restricted fishing activity • Some overlapped the region’s 125 legislated marine protected areas and seven pseudo marine protected areas, but many did not. • The problem with fishery closures as a tool is that protection established through regulation is relatively dynamic, with regulations relatively easily created, modified or deleted on an annual basis. Databases describing them also need to be updated frequently to be accurate and current, which can be tedious and require committed resources.

12. A Functional MPA Network Does Not Yet Exist in BC • At present, while there are many BC mpas, their spatial locations, sizes and extent of protection applied have not been developed in a coordinated manner • There is no functional mpa network - each mpa’s establishment was primarily considered on its own merits, and not in terms of its contribution to an overarching conservation agenda • Each agency established its own protected areas independently of those being established by other agencies • To address this, I later present a sample mpa network design based on optimisation theory, using the analytical program MARXAN

13. Approaches to Date • In the late 1990’s, DFO actively promoted development of an MPA Establishment Strategy (see 2000 Federal-provincial MPA Strategy). It stalled in 2000, in part because: 1) MPAs are part of an IM process, and the “tail was moving faster than the dog” – implementation of the IM process needed to catch up, and 2) lack of treaties with coastal First Nations created13 political problems re MPA establishment. • In support of a science process, the following paper was developed: • Levings, C. and Jamieson, G. An evaluation of criteria for creating MPAs in the Pacific Region: A proposed semi-quantitative scheme. Canadian Stock Assessment Secretariat Res. Doc. 1999/210. 30 p.http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/csas/Csas/English/Research_Years/1999/a99_210e.htm

14. Federal-Provincial MPA Strategy, June 29, 2000

20. Current State There is a diversity of legislation to establish MPAs, but they need to be harmonised because each legislation has limitations, and many do not protect marine species, only the physical substrate. To date this harmonisation has not happened, although in the past few months, a new MOU has been signed which should facilitate this. There is a new push because BC wants to develop offshore oil and gas, and it can not do so politically without offering something to environmentalists!

21. MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDINGRESPECTING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CANADA'S OCEANS STRATEGY ON THE PACIFIC COAST OF CANADA Canada and BC agree to develop subsidiary memoranda of understanding or agreements on the following: a marine protected areas framework for the Pacific coast that will aim for the coordinated establishment of marine protected areas. Development of this subsidiary memorandum of understanding will be led by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Ministry of Sustainable Resources Management in cooperation with Environment Canada, Parks Canada, and Natural Resources Canada.It will outline appropriate mechanisms, processes and structures to coordinate the review and establishment of new marine protected areas, and will include an assessment of existing federal and provincial marine protected areas;

22. Biological Valuation Criteria • Canada has just completed a process to identify ecologically and biologically significant areas (EBSAs), which is a first step to identify Canadian areas for enhanced management protection. Many of these areas, but not all, are expected to be later identified as Areas of Interest (AOIs), a first step in the establishment of MPAs. • The reality seems to be that the theoretical approach and complex criteria discussed in the many papers discussed are proving to be somewhat academic and operationally impractical to effect. • Much theoretical information desired is unavailable, e.g., detailed abundance and distribution data on non-commercial species (i.e. biodiversity), and data related to the connectivity of areas and their importance in overall ecological processes. • We are thus hopeful that the EBSA approach, which I will present later, is a way forward, in that it utilises the advice of experts available now in an adaptive management process that can address the threats that may cause significant impact, now and in the future.

23. MPA Network In support of this process, a paper outlining different objective optimization methodologies was developed: Evans, S.M.J., G.S. Jamieson, J. Ardron, M. Patterson and S. Jessen. 2004. Evaluation of site selection methodologies for use in marine protected area network design. Canadian Stock Assessment Secretariat Res. Doc. 2004/082. 55 p. (http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/csas/Csas/English/Research_Years/2004/a04_082e.htm)

24. MARXAN • Marxan is a type of Complementarity model, which take into account the extent to which a site, or set of sites, contributes to meeting the desired objectives of the overall network. These programs stand out from the more traditional scoring methods in that they seek to find the most efficient solution to the problem of designing a network of mpas that meets a specified conservation goal, while minimising the ‘cost’ (defined here as social, economic, implementation, management, foregone opportunity, or any other type of quantifiable cost) of the network (Stewart et al. 2003; Pressey et al. 1996; Stewart and Possingham 2002). • Marxan utilises a simulated annealing selection process that begins by generating an initial reserve system that consists of a completely random set of sites. Next, it iteratively explores trial solutions by making sequential random changes to the system. Either a randomly selected site, not yet included in the reserve system, is selected, or a site already in the reserve system is deleted (determined by which choice has the least cost). At each step, the new solution is compared wit the previous solution (i.e. it searches for the least costly site in each iteration).

25. MARXAN Spatial Analysis(from a presentation made by Jamieson, G.S. and J. Ardron, PICES Annual Meeting, Honolulu, October 2004) Conservation Objectives Analysis Principles • Full Spectrum of Data:Physical and Biological • Realistically Represent the Environment • Accuracy & scale: has tomatch data • Flexibility: needsto accommodate additional information at a later date • Variety of solutions: provides management options • Areas: existing Parks, areas of interest, fishery closures considered • HumanUse:acknowledged • Rare& endangered species • Representativephysical, bio-physical, & biological features and processes • Distinctivefeatures • Replicationof features • Separationto mitigate catastrophes • Proximityto allow for connectivity Allan Hancock

26. Study area ~ 14 million hectares of sea in Study Area Total no-take MPAs in BC: 0.02%

27. Planning Units and Grids • Planning Units: Hexagons 500 hectares each ~ 32,000 • Analysis Units: 1 hectare grid ~12.8 million • Features: Physical and Biological ~ 93 • Selecting efficient reserve networks from thousands of planning units and dozens of features, each comprising millions of grid cells, is beyond human intuition… R. Bateman

28. Rarity E Q H H H Marbled Murrelet Habitat Low Medium High

29. Representivity

30. Regional Scale Complexity NW Van. Island Benthic topographical complexity as a habitat proxy for several key features.

31. Smith Inlet Entrances to Smith & Rivers Inlets Local Scale Rivers Inlet Complexity Smith Sound

32. Acknowledging Data Gaps We need to also address what we do not know… • Some marine datasets were hoped to completely cover the study area, but actually do not … • Examples • Depth (bathymetry): Some parts of some inlets • not covered -- usually the heads. • Substrate: No data for greater than 1000 m • depth. • Strategy • Explicitly note these No Data areas, and set conservation goals (targets) for these as well, • using the precautionary principle to justify some • protection M. Shapiro

33. Summary of Features Considered Feature Category Feature Sub-Category No. of Layers Regional Representation Data Regions 6 Ecosystem Representation Ecosections 8 Ecosystem Representation Ecosystem Regions 3 regions + 3 sub-regions Ecosystem Representation Enduring Features & Processes 7 exposure + 21 substrate/depth Focal Species Flora 13 Focal Species Seabirds 15 Focal Species Anadromous Spp. Richness x Stream Magnitudes 1 Focal Species Mammals 1 Focal Species Fish 1 Special Elements Rarity 6 Special Elements Distinctive Features 4 complexity + 4 current 48 Coarse Filter + 45 Fine Filter 93

34. Results Conservation Utility • Yellow:Places almost always chosen. • Pink:Areas chosen about ½ the time. • Blue:Areas can be considered useful in only some reserve networks. • 93 data layers 6 different size targets x 4 levels clumping x 100 runs each = 2,400 solutions

35. Discussion Pros • Most comprehensive spatial ecological analysis to date of the Central Coast, North Coast, & West Coast of Vancouver Island. • Efficient processing of a large mass of data of varying quality. • Spatially explicit; transparent evaluation criteria; several variations of solutions. • Offers clear direction for a “first iteration” of MPA selection. Cons • Many data gaps remain. • Considers proximity, but not connectivity. • Assumes ecosystem function, but does not test this (e.g. trophic links). • Does not yet consider existing human usages. • Only a little LEK, and no TEK incorporated to date.

36. Ecosystem Spatial Analysis (ESA) • ESA as a tool can… • offer possible solutions / starting points for marine planning in Integrated Management ~ e.g. Conservation Utility. • roughly define the bounds of what is “reasonable” ~ e.g. rockfish habitat modelling • combine stakeholder input (LEK / TEK) with scientific data ~ e.g. fishers use analysis. • offer new insights than can lead to management decisions ~ e.g. trawl bycatch of corals and sponges possible solutions Martina Shapiro