The Structuring Role of Marine Life in Open Ocean Habitat: Importance to International Policy

Areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) lie outside the 200 nautical mile limits of national sovereignty and cover 58% of the ocean surface. Global conservation agreements recognize biodiversity loss in ABNJ and aim to protect ≥10% of oceans in marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2020. However, limited mechanisms to create MPAs in ABNJ currently exist, and existing management is widely regarded as inadequate to safeguard biodiversity. Negotiations are therefore underway for an “internationally legally binding instrument” (ILBI) to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to enable biodiversity conservation beyond national jurisdiction. While this agreement will, hopefully, establish a mechanism to create MPAs in ABNJ, discussions to date highlight a further problem: namely, defining what to protect. We have a good framework for terrestrial and coastal habitats, however habitats in ABNJ, particularly the open ocean, are less understood and poorly defined. Often, predictable broad oceanographic features are used to define open ocean habitats. But what exactly, constitutes the habitat—the water, or the species that live there? Complicating matters, species in the open sea are often highly mobile. Here, we argue that mobile marine organisms provide the structure-forming biomass and constitute “habitat” in the open ocean. For an ABNJ ILBI to offer effective protection to marine biodiversity it must consider habitats a function of their inhabitants and represent all marine life within its scope. Only by enabling strong protection for every element of biodiversity can we hope to be fully successful in conserving it

Landing the blame : the influence of EU Member States on quota setting

Fisheries in European Union (EU) waters have been managed under the Common Fisheries Policy since 1983. The main regulatory tool in EU fisheries management is the use of Total Allowable Catches (TACs). In principle, TACs are set according to biological scientific advice provided by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) which recommends catch limits with the objective of maximising catches in a sustainable manner. The objective of this paper is to compare TACs set by the EU and its Member States between 2001 and 2015 with those recommended by ICES in their annual scientific advice in order to (a) investigate the level of compliance with scientific advice by the European Council and, (b) consider whether particular Member States have received more TACs above advice than others. For the time-series analysed, the European Council set TACs above scientific advice by an average of 20% per year, with around 7 out of every 10 TACs exceeding advice. Of all Member States, Denmark and the United Kingdom received the highest TACs in volume above scientific advice. Relative to the size of their TAC however, Spain and Portugal exceeded advice by the greatest percentage. Greater transparency is required to determine what takes place during the closed door negotiations and to improve the fishery sustainability credentials of the EU and its Member States

Climate change mitigation and nature conservation both require higher protected area targets

Nations of the world have, to date, pursued nature protection and climate change mitigation and adaptation policies separately. Both efforts have failed to achieve the scale of action needed to halt biodiversity loss or mitigate climate change. We argue that success can be achieved by aligning targets for biodiversity protection with the habitat protection and restoration necessary to bring down greenhouse gas concentrations and promote natural and societal adaptation to climate change. Success, however, will need much higher targets for environmental protection than the present 10% of sea and 17% of land. A new target of 30% of the sea given high levels of protection from exploitation and harm by 2030 is under consideration and similar targets are being discussed for terrestrial habitats. We make the case here that these higher targets, if achieved, would make the transition to a warmer world slower and less damaging for nature and people

Ecological connectivity across ocean depths : implications for protected area design

Coastal nations have embarked on a rapid program of marine protected area (MPA) establishment, incentivised by the approaching 2020 deadline of United Nations global marine protection targets. Alongside, efforts are underway to extend protection into areas beyond national jurisdiction through a new international legally binding instrument. These developments are welcome but there are risks that in meeting them, nations will still fail to supply adequate protection to marine life. An increasing number of MPAs protect the seabed while the water column remains open to fishing. This is because vulnerable habitats in need of protection are disproportionately perceived to be those on the seabed, while the water column is viewed as much less at risk. The seabed and water column are, however, inextricably linked. Transitions between human-defined vertical ocean zones are blurred, with animals and oceanographic features moving across depths. Here, we explore a rapidly growing literature on ecological and environmental connections through the water column, and between the water column and the seabed, to consider whether vertically stratified management is justified from an ecological standpoint. We find that emerging research increasingly links upper-ocean communities and processes to seabed ecology and biogeochemistry suggesting that exploitation of the water column is likely to have a significant and widely distributed footprint in the deep-sea. We conclude that there is a strong a priori case for surface to seabed protection within MPAs, and that this should be the default, precautionary approach to safeguard intact ecosystems with as near to natural function as possible

Raising awareness of Asperger’s Syndrome amongst coaches and athletes: the power of virtual support networks

The Virtual Alliance for sport technology (V.A.S.T) is an online tool utilised by a community of experts and practitioners to facilitate the generation and sharing of knowledge in order to promote inclusion in sport. The principal aim of the present study was to utilise this platform to create and evaluate an online teaching resource to provide support for coaches working with athletes with Asperger’s Syndrome. At present little information is provided by National governing bodies about Asperger’s, and as a consequence many athletes can be marginalised in sports provision. A methods-driven evaluative framework was adopted in order to assess the impact of the web-tool. Gantt timelines and a programme theory were produced prior to the project, and programme processes were evaluated throughout. Website impact was assessed via triangulation of statistical analysis regarding website usage with interviews conducted with network users. Results were interpreted using a figurational framework to investigate how information about the web-tool was disseminated and transformed through virtual networks of interdependencies which linked participants diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, their coaches and the online community. Results gained from this project are expected to highlight how web-based platforms have the capability to bring together otherwise marginalised groups with virtual networks of sports experts, athletes and practitioners. The implications of these results will increase awareness of participants with Asperger’s syndrome within sport and provide coaches, athletes and policy makers with information that will enable them to effectively teach and support sports participants with Asperger’s syndrome in an athlete-centric manner

Brexit and fishing: How can the UK deliver a 'successful' fisheries policy after Brexit?

Halfway through the Brexit negotiations and delivering on the promises made to voters in the run up to the Brexit vote with regards to fishing remains an incredibly tough task. Richard Barnes, Chris Williams, Bryce Stewart, Bethan O'Leary, Thomas Appleby, and Griffin Carpenter write that 'success' for the UK will only be possible by working with its EU neighbours, and listening to both stakeholder groups and the diverse actors within them

It's still uncertain how the UK will deliver a 'successful' fisheries policy after Brexit

Halfway through the Brexit negotiations and delivering on the promises made to voters in the run-up to the Brexit vote with regards to fishing remains an incredibly tough task. Richard Barnes, Chris Williams, Bryce Stewart, Bethan O’Leary, Thomas Appleby, and Griffin Carpenter write that ‘success’ for the UK will only be possible by working with its EU neighbours and listening to both stakeholder groups and the diverse actors within them

Conus : First comprehensive conservation red list assessment of a marine gastropod mollusc genus

Marine molluscs represent an estimated 23% of all extant marine taxa, but research into their conservation status has so far failed to reflect this importance, with minimal inclusion on the authoritative Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). We assessed the status of all 632 valid species of the tropical marine gastropod mollusc, Conus (cone snails), using Red List standards and procedures to lay the groundwork for future decadal monitoring, one of the first fully comprehensive global assessments of a marine taxon. Three-quarters (75.6%) of species were not currently considered at risk of extinction owing to their wide distribution and perceived abundance. However, 6.5% were considered threatened with extinction with a further 4.1% near threatened. Data deficiency prevented 13.8% of species from being categorised although they also possess characteristics that signal concern. Where hotspots of endemism occur, most notably in the Eastern Atlantic, 42.9% of the 98 species from that biogeographical region were classified as threatened or near threatened with extinction. All 14 species included in the highest categories of Critically Endangered and Endangered are endemic to either Cape Verde or Senegal, with each of the three Critically Endangered species restricted to single islands in Cape Verde. Threats to all these species are driven by habitat loss and anthropogenic disturbance, in particular from urban pollution, tourism and coastal development. Our findings show that levels of extinction risk to which cone snails are exposed are of a similar magnitude to those seen in many fully assessed terrestrial taxa. The widely held view that marine species are less at risk is not upheld

Who gets to fish for sea bass? Using social, economic, and environmental criteria to determine access to the English sea bass fishery

Transparent, performance-based approaches to allocating fishing opportunities are required for signatories to the Aarhus Convention and the European Union's (EU) Member States via the Common Fisheries Policy. The lack of an operational framework to support this requirement means such a system is seldom explicitly used. Using the English commercial sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) fishery as a case study, operationalisation of this policy requirement is evaluated using a Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) framework. MCDA is a decision-making tool allowing users to explicitly evaluate complex, potentially conflicting, criteria, enabling wider costs and benefits to be considered. The sea bass fishery was selected as the dramatic stock decline since 2010 has meant difficult policy choices regarding the allocation of scarce fishing opportunities between different user groups. To inform the MCDA, the three main English sea bass fishing methods (nets, hooks, and trawls) are evaluated across thirteen social, economic, and environmental criteria to generate a performance score. Importance weightings for each criterion, developed from 50 surveys of fishers, industry representatives, managers, non-governmental organisations, and the wider public, are used to combine these performance scores generating an overall score for the MCDA. Results show that regardless of stakeholder group questioned, hooks achieve the highest MCDA performance, followed by nets, and then trawls. This suggests that taking a performance-based approach to the allocation of fishing opportunities in the English fishing fleet have a prioritisation by fishing type. MCDA could be used to promote transparency, objectivity and social, environmental and economic sustainability into European and UK fisheries

Reply to White et al.: Providing perspective on ocean conservation targets

In O’Leary et al. (2016), we undertook a quantitative synthesis (rather than a true statistical meta-analysis) of research to consider how much of the sea should be protected to achieve various conservation and management goals. We aimed to provide perspective on the appropriateness of global marine protected area coverage targets, particularly the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14/Convention on Biological Diversity goals to protect >10% of the sea by 2020. White et al. (2017) question the methodology of our approach, and we offer the following response