Research Document - 2015/056

The Gully Marine Protected Area Data Assessment

K. Allard, N. Cochrane, K. Curran, D. Fenton, T. Koropatnick, C. Gjerdrum, B.J.W. Greenan, E. Head, P. Macnab, H. Moors-Murphy, A. Serdynska, M.K. Trzcinski, M. Vaughan, and H. Whitehead

Abstract

The Gully, located at the eastern edge of the Scotian Shelf, is the largest submarine canyon in Atlantic Canada and its seabed and waters support a unique and highly diverse ecosystem. The Gully has long been a focus of conservation interest and was designated a Marine Protected Area (MPA) under the Oceans Act in May 2004. In 2008, the Gully Marine Protected Area Management Plan outlined four priority conservation issues to be the focus of monitoring in the near term: protecting cetaceans from impacts caused by human activities; protecting seafloor habitat and associated benthic communities from alteration caused by human activities; maintaining or restoring the quality of the water and sediments of the Gully; and conserving other commercial and non-commercial living resources. To develop a monitoring plan for these conservation issues, as well as the current and potential pressures that may affect them, 47 indicators were proposed. This document presents an assessment for many of these indicators, written by scientific experts in government and academia, to evaluate whether the available data meet the indicator monitoring requirements. Overall, 44 of the indicators were evaluated. Data availability and analysis were inconsistent across the indicators, with more opportunistic than targeted studies taking place in the Gully MPA. Generally, indicators related to the conservation objectives themselves rely more on external funding to obtain data, while indicators related to current and potential pressures on conservation objectives have more stable sources of ongoing data collection through regional and national programs.

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