Beyond the boundaries: How regulation-centered marine protected area information improves ocean protection assessments

Guidance on marine protected area protection level assignments when faced with unknown regulatory information

“…Further, to facilitate extensive and global assessments in a timely manner, Navigator [30], launched in 2015, contains information on activities 'allowed' and 'prohibited' by regulation, as well as regulatory references for all areas in its database (i.e., MPAs and MMAs). Navigator focuses on activity restrictions on marine life extraction, i.e., mainly fishing [12], but it distinguishes itself from other databases by summarizing direct regulations and documenting a standardized set of uses for every included area. Navigator's Level of Fishing Protection (LFP) score is assigned based on heuristic rules structured in a decision tree that do not require all individual uses to be known.…”

“…In order for MPAs to realize their potential, MPAs need to implement strong regulatory protections [8][9][10][11][12]. To assess MPA protection levels, the complexity of regulations in each MPA should filter through an evaluation system that uses and verifies the measures in place.…”

“…Globally, this would lead to an overall picture of marine protections worldwide [3,4,13,[14][15][16]21]. In practice, however, detailed regulatory information is not readily available for many MPAs, which can be a major roadblock in reaching that goal; often MPAs are only broadly referenced in bylaws or regional/national legislation [12,29]. Researching all the regulatory information needed for a worldwide assessment of marine protections could be extremely time-consuming.…”

“…It was assessed whether the regulation-based metrics can be robust and reliable using only information readily available from MPA regulations and management plans (referred to in this study as 'direct regulations'). It was also assessed whether Navigator's Level of Fishing Protection (LFP) score [12] can guide assumptions about unknown information to provide a reasonable first estimate of the RBCS protection levels when regulation information is incomplete in the management plans or equivalent legal texts. The use of such guidance in protection level estimations would enable MPA assessments to increase, allowing broad comparisons between MPAs, MPA networks, and other managed areas when the required information in bylaws or regional/national legislation is difficult to obtain or non-existent.…”

A Scientific Synthesis of Marine Protected Areas in the United States: Status and Recommendations

“…When strategically designed together, management measures provided by MPA and fisheries management authorities can offer lasting and durable protection to marine resources if sufficient area is given for each and if conservation measures are long-term. For example, in portions of the area surrounding the Farallon Islands, California, multiple fishery management regulations (including Rockfish Conservation Area and other gear closures) complement the protections within the Farallon Islands National Marine Sanctuary and the Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge (Sletten et al, 2021). In other cases, gaps in protection allow extractive uses that are not compatible with biodiversity conservation goals, for example if fishery management measures are temporary and impactful fishing is allowed to resume within the MPA (violating the "long-term" stipulation in the IUCN definition of an MPA), or the MPA is not at a level of protection that sufficiently conserves biodiversity, through allowing impactful extractive and destructive uses to occur.…”