Marine Conservation

Science, Policy, and Management

G. Carleton Ray, Jerry McCormick-Ray, Robert L. Smith

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118714430
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Providing a guide for marine conservation practice, Marine Conservation takes a whole-systems approach, covering major advances in marine ecosystem understanding. Its premise is that conservation must be informed by the natural histories of organisms together with the hierarchy of scale-related linkages and ecosystem processes. The authors introduce a broad range of overlapping issues and the conservation mechanisms that have been devised to achieve marine conservation goals. The book provides students and conservation practitioners with a framework for thoughtful, critical thinking in order to incite innovation in the 21st century.

" Marine Conservation presents a scholarly but eminently readable case for the necessity of a systems approach to conserving the oceans, combining superb introductions to the science, law and policy frameworks with carefully chosen case studies. This superb volume is a must for anyone interested in marine conservation, from students and practitioners to lay readers and policy-makers."
—Simon Levin, George M. Moffett Professor of Biology, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University

CHAPTER 1

In Pursuit of Marine Conservation

There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune …

On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves

Or lose our ventures.

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Open-ocean systems may seem not to be so disturbed at their surface, but signs of ecological disruption are apparent. The lone walrus on our cover is a metaphor for Planet Earth's fragmented habitats, disrupted ecosystems, and diminished biodiversity. As oceans change, tropical reefs die, polar regions lose sea ice, and marine life that we hardly know is increasingly becoming vulnerable to extinction. Nowhere is this change more apparent than in the land-sea coastal realm (Frontispiece), where the majority of humanity lives, ecosystems are most productive, and biodiversity is greatest.

During the rise of human civilizations, societies have inherited the economics of resource exploitation from an ocean perceived as “limitless.” Fisheries, shipping, and coastal settlement as old as civilization, have increasingly expanded to force conservation into defense of species and spaces. And as the ecosystems upon which species depend have changed, scientists have become increasingly involved. Modern science, which had moved from studies in natural history to environmental modeling and statistics to better understand marine systems, is returning to natural history, recognizing that it forms the basis for environmental and evolutionary science itself (Box 1.1). The advancing state of knowledge and the increasing need for sustainable ecosystems are forcing marine conservation science to become more proactive and to expand its scope to encompass whole regional seas. Recognition of depleted fisheries, coastal catastrophes, and consequences of natural events tied to human activities have led to new ways of thinking about how marine conservation may modify society's relentless pursuit of ocean wealth.

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Box 1.1 The importance of studying nature outdoors

Paul K. Dayton

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, USA

The most basic rules of the world—the ones we all live by—are ecological rules. You can't study them or even perceive them very well in a classroom or laboratory. It is imperative to go out on the mountainside, watch the rain fall over a valley, dig into the earth beneath a fallen tree, or wade a creek for cobbles with sources upstream. The best work in the natural disciplines all starts with observations in nature.

Kenneth S. Norris, in Dayton (2008)

Ken Norris wrote this, in late 1960, making a pitch to the University of California Regents to create a natural reserve system. He was successful and the UC Natural Reserve System has grown into the best such system in the world. But to what avail are patches of nature if people do not immerse themselves in those natural systems?

In the past few decades the powerful tools of molecular biology and capacity of modern computers have joined with technical advances that allow us to monitor and analyze the world around us with unprecedented precision. These new and powerful tools have seduced would-be ecologists into the comfortable idea that they can do good ecology in the laboratory or at a computer terminal without bothering to actually study nature. Indeed, the tools are so complicated that there has been strong selection for ecologists to become increasingly specialized with a laser-like focus. We have thus deprived ourselves of a sense of place of nature that comes from personal experiences, smelling, feeling, and seeing important if episodic relationships. Many ecologists and especially universities have lost respect for the broad view of nature, the understanding of the components and processes of the whole natural world or “natural history” of the systems we study. These specialists fail to perceive the critical relationships and ecosystem workings that their powerful machines were not designed to study. Deprived of personal experience in nature, many forget natural history and accept habitats and systems that are a pale shadow of their former selves and substitute simplistic models for understanding of nature.

Here we are concerned with the conservation of these habitats. We understand that we are reducing populations and losing species, and we are disrupting the important relationships that define our ecosystems. As populations decline, the relationships that define the ecosystems are lost long before the species go extinct, and it is precisely these relationships that we most need to protect. The damage to these relationships and ecosystems is often so persuasive that it may be impossible to understand what has been lost because generations of biologists have reduced expectations of what is natural. This sliding baseline of reality is exacerbated by the lack of personal experience in nature. Without a deep understanding of the history of their systems, ecologists can be beguiled by short-term events or introduced, inappropriate imposters that replace and mask the traces of the natural systems we hope to study and protect. The natural relationships simply disappear, leaving no conspicuous evidence of what has been lost. This loss is paralleled by the loss of human cultures and languages with the passing of elders; we, too, have lost the ecological cultural wisdom of the ages as well as the evolutionary wisdom found in intact ecosystems.

Conservation biologists face extremely difficult problems much more complex than most realize. For example, we need to understand ecosystem stability, recoverability, and resilience. How do we define stability, and what processes maintain it? What spatial and temporal scales are optimal for the analyses of trends? How do we define ecosystem stress? How can we understand when “natural” disturbances ratchet into new “stable states” that resist recovery? What relationships are most critical, what processes define strong and weak interactions, and how do we evaluate the most critical interactions? How do we define multispecies relationships important to ecosystem resilience? Can we predict thresholds in these relationships?

Sustainable ecosystem-based management is an ecological mantra, but how does “single-species management” morph into ecosystem-based management? What do we need to protect and how can we prioritize the relationships? People perturb all ecosystems, but how do we evaluate cumulative effects and understand how much is too much? That is, all ecological relationships have thresholds defined in the context of ongoing natural interactions, but which thresholds are most critical and how do we measure them?

The above questions focus on difficult science that cannot be done without a very deep sense of place that only comes from intimate familiarity with the natural world. But consider also the great importance of social values in addition to the natural sciences. The scientific focus is on important relationships critical for management, but how do we evaluate the value of species? Do we also need to protect weak interactions? Ecologists lose credibility when they claim that every species and interaction is critical to the ecosystem, because this assertion simply is not true. Most systems are comprised of many populations that can be altered without much ecosystem effect. There are many rare and very obscure species with no discernible interactions, and there are charismatic species such as pandas or leatherback sea turtles with roles that are hard to evaluate. Thus, we are asked whether some species are expendable, and we must learn to shift seamlessly from our scientific value systems to cultural value systems that define human values. It is very hard to argue for aesthetic or cultural values for nature without having an intimate understanding of the natural world. If you have not experienced first hand the awe and wonder of nature, it is very hard to communicate it!

Finally, you went into biology because you love nature, and this involves regular contact with nature. The intuitive sense of place so very important to ecological understanding must come from personal experience—smelling, feeling, and seeing the important lessons nature offers an open and prepared mind. It is easy to be seduced by the demands of everyday life and to forget to visit nature and fuel your passion and sense of self as well as a sense of place necessary for your science.

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The past decades' tendency to compartmentalize marine conservation issues has changed. Marine conservation is now forced to embrace the totality of issues together, because the oceans are interconnected, dynamic, and complex. Knowing how marine life makes a living is fundamental in the vast, bio-energetic marine environment undergoing continual change. And the dynamic features of the global ocean and of the coastal realm make the pursuit of marine conservation different from that for the land.

1.1 The Emergence of Modern Marine Conservation

Modern marine conservation arose after World War II when the oceans took on greater political, economic, and social importance. The oceans became viewed as a “supplier” to meet expanding human wants for food, resources, and wealth. Humans rapidly began to acquire the ability to explore and exploit this last, previously unavailable portion of Earth—the oceans—to fish and seek petroleum and minerals facilitated by new technology that allowed humans to invade, and also better to understand the oceans to their utmost depths. We call this era of emerging ocean importance the “Marine Revolution” (Ray, 1970). It followed the Industrial Revolution of about two centuries before, which had expanded the human footprint with the invention of the steam engine, electric power, industrialization, and urbanization. And the Industrial Revolution followed the Agricultural Revolution, circa 10,000 to 5000 bp, that transformed landscapes into patches of farmland on such massive scales as to alter Earth processes, including climate (Ruddiman, 2005). Each successive revolution promoted human well-being and population growth as it also depleted natural resources, and as land resources became depleted and consumption grew, societies looked to the oceans for food, energy, and economic benefits. Today, human activities are globally pervasive, marked by resource shortages and the need to conserve what remains in the new age of the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000; Steffen et al., 2007).

The economic value that humans place on coastal and marine systems and their workings no doubt arose during the earliest of human cultures. The need for conservation that scientists and writers called attention to focused on over-exploited commercial species as early as the 18th and 19th centuries with the squandering of Steller sea cows, fur seals, and others. George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature (1864) was first to link culture with nature, science with society, and landscape with history, and spearheaded nature conservation by leading to forest conservation and establishment of the first U.S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries. But only since the 1940s did conservation become an ethic among the wider public. Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac (1960), Fairfield Osborn's Our Plundered Planet (1947) and Limits of the Earth (1953), Raymond Dasmann's A Different Kind of Country (1968) and No Further Retreat (1971), and others inspired a conservation movement that saw the founding of governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations dedicated to wildlife management and environmental protection. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962)—on the New York Times' bestseller list for 31 weeks—served as an indictment of the pesticide industry and helped to catalyze ecological awareness and action. However, opposition to ocean abuse—a major feature of the Marine Revolution—has been relatively new.

Little had been said for the marine world until Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us (1951) and, especially, Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Frédéric Dumas' The Silent World (1953) made the oceans and their life familiar to the public. Cousteau and Dumas' invention of the “Aqualung” (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus or scuba) allowed anyone in reasonably good health to explore and find value in the sea and marine life “up-close and personal.” This self-conscious awareness of the sea's value, beyond only “resources,” had immense, global impact. Under a new sense of urgency, Marine Protected Areas began to be established and charismatic species to be protected. Whales, sea turtles, and others that had suffered from over-exploitation, and dolphins and killer whales that were displayed in oceanaria became icons of the ocean's value.

The immediate responses for ocean protection were based on practices that had long proved appropriate for terrestrial environments, namely protection of species—overwhelmingly charismatic ones deemed threatened or endangered—and protection of spaces that served as habitats for unique, endemic, or threatened plants and animals, or as scenic inspirations. Marine conservation had finally joined an era of environmental concern that reached a climax, fervently expressed on Earth Day, 1970, that aroused the necessary social and political will to make transformational change (Graham, 1999): “In 1965 the environment was not a leading issue. Five years later it was the national problem Americans said they worried about most, second only to crime. Earth Day 1970, celebrated just as that crescendo in public concern was reaching its peak, became the lasting symbol of past frustrations and future hopes.” Increased awareness of coastal impacts and recognition of failures to conserve marine resources brought on a quickening pace of change. The public opposed the ruthless slaughter of marine mammals, impacts of polluted water, and shores tarnished by oil spills. The result was a suite of environmental legislation, particularly in the U.S., that set standards that became adopted globally. U.S. legislation centered on species protection, coastal zone management, fisheries management, curbing ocean dumping, and establishment of marine sanctuaries. Marine Protected Areas became institutionalized, albeit operationally stalled by difficulties of designating environmentally or legally defensible boundaries, sizes, and locations, compounded by jurisdictional conflicts, established national priorities, and deficiencies of international ocean law. Internationally, the first effort (mid-1970s) specifically directed towards marine conserva...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contributors
• Preface
• About the Companion Website
• CHAPTER 1: In Pursuit of Marine Conservation
• CHAPTER 2: Marine Conservation Issues
• CHAPTER 3: Marine Conservation Mechanisms
• CHAPTER 4: Marine Systems: The Base for Conservation
• CHAPTER 5: Natural History of Marine Organisms
• CHAPTER 6: Chesapeake Bay: Estuarine Restoration with an Environmental Debt
• CHAPTER 7: Bering Sea Seals and Walruses: Responses to Environmental Change
• CHAPTER 8: The Bahamas: Conservation for a Tropical Island Nation
• CHAPTER 9: The Isles of Scilly: Sustaining Biodiversity
• CHAPTER 10: Gwaii Haanas: From Conflict to Cooperative Management
• CHAPTER 11: South Africa: Coastal-Marine Conservation and Resource Management in a Dynamic Socio-Political Environment
• CHAPTER 12: Species-Driven Conservation of Patagonian Seascapes
• CHAPTER 13: From Being to Becoming: A Future Vision
• Species Index
• Subject Index