The oceans provide highly important benefits to humans, ranging from sustenance
and travel to livelihoods and spiritual wellbeing to climate stabilisation.
Yet, globally the use of the marine environment has been unsustainable with
extensive pressure being applied either directly or indirectly. This has led to the
degradation of almost all marine ecosystems, with no system considered pristine
from the depths of the Marianas trench to the inshore seas.Destabilisation
of the ocean systems is jeopardising their ability to slow down the effects of
climate change. This destabilisation is being driven in part by unsustainable
and destructive human practises, such as: overfishing, pollution, coastal development,
deep sea mining and habitat destruction. To counteract the negative
effects of these practises, spatial management of the marine environment is
highly important. The most common form of marine spatial management is the
creation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).
MPAs are being championed as a method to decrease negative impacts to
marine systems, while also allowing a certain level of benefit to humans, with
inclusion to legislation guidance from organisations such as: Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature
(IUCN) and European Union (EU: Marine Strategy Framework Directive and
Water Framework Directive). MPAs can be highly varied in multiple ways: geographic
extent, from tens of square metres to thousands of square kilometres;
level of protection, from total prohibition of all activities to personal quotas for
specific activities; enforcement, from heavy military enforcement to no enforcement
and designation rationale, from fisheries and conservation to personal or
spiritual. This variety in MPAs, alongside the inherent variability of the marine
environment in which they are applied, makes the application and assessment
of successful MPAs a significant challenge. Therefore, effective and efficient
MPA assessment is highly important, not only to allow for the adaptive management
of current MPAs but also to inform the best approach for implementing
new MPAs elsewhere.
Here a model system, Lyme Bay in the United Kingdom, is used to assess
non-extractive MPA monitoring methods. The system includes multiple management
strategies, with differing geographical, temporal and protection scales;
many of the details are unique to the location but could, if beneficial, be applied
more widely throughout the United Kingdom (UK) and potentially the globe.
University of Plymouth staff, students and volunteers have applied a range of
monitoring methods yearly to assess different MPA effects since the summer of
2008. Discussed is the assessment of the methods themselves, some of the
potential analysis techniques and the use of these techniques to assess the
different management strategies within the model system.
Date of Award | 2021 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | |
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Supervisor | Emma Sheehan (Other Supervisor) |
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- Marine Protected Areas
- Lyme Bay
- Marine Biology
- Long Term Monitoring
- Benthic Survey
The Effectiveness of Partially Protected Marine Areas for Ecosystem Based Management
Davies, B. F. R. (Author). 2021
Student thesis: PhD