Beyond static spatial management: Scientific and legal considerations for dynamic management in the high seas

Abstract

Natural and human stressors in the high seas act across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. These include direct interaction such as fisheries bycatch or indirect interaction like warming oceans and plastic ingestion. Area-based management tools (ABMTs), such as marine protected areas and time-area closures, are a widely accepted and a broadly successful form of management used to mitigate localized human impacts on marine species and ecosystems. Protection provides an opportunity for population recovery, which can then propagate outside of the closure. As the United Nations negotiates a new treaty on the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, efforts to design and implement high seas ABMTs at appropriate scales are critical to ensure that these spatial protection measures are most effective and climate-ready in the face of changing oceans. Here we identify the four most important temporal scales – contemporary, intra-annual, multi-annual and multidecadal – for aligning high seas ABMTs to relevant ecological, oceanographic and atmospheric processes. From this, we explore how managers and decision-makers can integrate this knowledge when implementing a new treaty.

Governing a Divided Ocean: The Transformative Power of Ecological Connectivity in the BBNJ negotiations

“…The current BBNJ revised draft text does mention ecological connectivity; however, to fully embrace the concept, it will need to be operationalised in various parts of the treaty text. In the different package elements, this translates into the need for an ecosystem-based approach to marine biodiversity governance with a re-consideration of the static nature of ABMTs, including MPAs (Balbar & Metaxas, 2019;Ortuño Crespo et al, 2020;Steinberg & Peters, 2015). For the establishment of ABMTs, including MPAs, as well as the conduct of EIAs, the acknowledgement of marine species movement, oceanographic currents, and pollution (including noise, plastic, and chemical) that occur across maritime zones of UNCLOS and impact different jurisdictions is paramount (Yadav & Gjerde, 2020).…”

Area‐based management of blue water fisheries: Current knowledge and research needs

“…A need does exist, however, to strengthen the spatial foundations of fisheries management, for example through more comprehensive mapping of fisheries resources, biodiversity features of concern impacted by fishing, and fishing activities and distribution of fishing pressure. ABMTs should be added to the management toolbox where they can improve or replace existing management tools (Caddy & Garcia, 1986;Crespo et al, 2020).…”

The forgotten ocean: Why COP26 must call for vastly greater ambition and urgency to address ocean change

“…Solutions for the future lie in a better linkage between policy and action across the land, fresh water, and ocean divide, and in ensuring we think in terms of an ecologically coherent, interconnected network of sites that are established and managed in ways that promote ecological and climate-change resilience, with corridors between sites established across latitudinal ranges that can accommodate species that will need to shift their ranges as a result of climate effects such as a warming ocean. Thus, stationary protected areas must be complemented by wider measures to protect migratory marine life within its current and projected future range (Maxwell et al, 2020;Ortuño Crespo et al, 2020). New thinking, governance, and management systems will be needed to protect ecological space in the ocean, both within and outside the current MPAs, as the distributions of species and environmental quality changes in response to climatic disruption.…”