Marine Spatial Planning (OCEAN)
Spatial planning is gaining momentum as an effective means to protect sensitive marine ecosystems around the world. Ecotrust brings years of analytical experience to the design and implementation of spatial planning frameworks. Our methods, analyses and tools illuminate the human dimensions of ecosystem management.
Ecotrust's award-winning OCEAN toolkit builds transparency into the marine spatial planning process. We incorporate fishermen's knowledge about the economic importance of fishing grounds — effectively bringing these expert voices to the table and ensuring that the best available information is utilized. We help scientists, managers and communities to understand the ecosystem in a social context and to implement management decisions at appropriate scales.
OCEAN grows as we build in new functionality. Ecotrust embraces an open development philosophy and publishes Open OceanMap under a GNU General Public License. We offer consulting services to adapt the OCEAN toolkit to specific needs and enable the rapid adoption of these methods and analyses.
Ongoing OCEAN Projects
Ecotrust is engaged in a multi-year process to incorporate local knowledge into the design of a state-wide marine protected area (MPA) network for California's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. With fishermen's information included in the design, the Initiative will consider the potential economic impacts of protected area limitations in the implementation of the MLPA.
The MLPA Initiative has divided the California coast into five regions. In 2007, a team of Ecotrust staff visited port communities in the North Central Coast region to interview fishermen about areas of economic value. We then performed an analysis of the economic impacts of spatial closures. Our work in the Central Coast region contributed to the designation of 29 marine protected areas in 2007. Ecotrust was retained again in 2008 to interview fishermen and support stakeholder design in the South Coast region. The MLPA Initiative is expected to complete its MPA designations by 2011.
In 2008, MarineMap, a consortium of institutions, including the University of California Santa Barbara, The Nature Conservancy, Farallon Geographics and Ecotrust, developed a new web-based decision support tool for use in the California South Coast region. The tool allows stakeholders to explore the region's data and site their design proposals. They can then run real-time analyses and review reports that provide immediate insight into how communities would be affected by a given proposal. The tool also allows stakeholders to share results with each other in online discussion forums.
Throughout the MLPA Initiative process, Ecotrust has tested the effectiveness of MPA network designs in meeting MLPA Initiative objectives, including protecting marine habitats and minimizing impacts on fishermen and coastal communities. With research partners at the Centre for Applied Environmental Decision Analysis at the University of Queensland, we found that using a numerical optimization tool called Marxan to support, not replace, the stakeholder-driven process could produce better MPA network designs that meet (or exceed) ecological objectives (or requirements). Two key outcomes of the paper published in Conservation Letters found that stakeholders could have protected 2–10% more of each habitat in their MPA proposals, without having any additional impact on the commercial fishing grounds. Using the same data, Marxan was able to represent the same amount of each habitat with 30–50% less impact. We have also concluded that employing Marxan with Zones, which considers multiple types of conservation zones and activities in design, reduces the potential impact to the fisheries substantially more than other design methods.
Past OCEAN Projects
Ecotrust's marine spatial planning work began in 2001, with the Groundfish Fleet Restructuring Information and Analysis Project. Together with our partners at the Pacific Marine Conservation Council, we used OCEAN in support of the Pacific Fishery Management Council's reduction of the coast-wide (California, Oregon and Washington) groundfish fleet. We developed a set of analytical tools and proposals that assessed options for the restructuring of the fleet as well as initial approaches to the future sustainability of the fishery.
Ecotrust also employed the OCEAN toolkit in support of the Joint Management Plan Review (JMPR) process to analyze the ways in which commercial fishermen use and value three National Marine Sanctuaries on the central California coast — Gulf of the Farallones, Cordell Bank and Monterey Bay.
