Research Document 2019/067

Design Strategies for the Scotian Shelf Bioregional Marine Protected Area Network

By King, M., Koropatnick, T., Gerhartz Abraham, A., Pardy, G., Serdynska, A., Will, E., Breeze, H., Bundy, A., Edmondson, E., and Allard, K.

Abstract

Canada has made domestic and international commitments to establish a national network of marine protected areas (MPAs), including a commitment to protect 10% of coastal and marine areas by 2020. Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is leading the development of the national MPA network on behalf of the Government of Canada. Network development is guided by the 2011 National Framework for Canada’s Network of MPAs, which states that MPA network planning and design will take place at the bioregional scale and will involve other federal, provincial, and territorial government departments, First Nations and Indigenous groups, stakeholders, and other interested parties. Over the last decade, DFO Maritimes Region has taken significant strides toward developing an MPA network plan for the Scotian Shelf Bioregion, including engaging interested parties and technical steps, such as compiling relevant ecological and human use data, setting MPA network objectives, selecting conservation priorities, and developing a preliminary MPA network design. Technical work to date has followed international guidance provided through the Convention on Biological Diversity and national direction. A hierarchy of objectives, which includes high-level national goals, regional strategic objectives, conservation priorities, operational objectives, and design strategies, has been developed to guide regional-scale MPA planning.

This document presents the coastal and offshore design strategies developed for the Scotian Shelf bioregional MPA network. Design strategies are detailed statements for each conservation priority and associated operational objective that specify the area or feature to be conserved and how much of that area or feature (i.e., the target) should be captured in the bioregional MPA network. Due to significant differences in the types of ecological data that are available in the coastal and offshore components of the bioregion, different methods were used to develop coastal and offshore design strategies. Coastal and offshore conservation priorities were organized into the two categories: coarse-filter features and fine-filter features. Coarse-filter conservation priorities are larger features (e.g., geomorphological features such as offshore banks) that generally have lower targets (e.g., 10–20%) while fine-filter conservation priorities are smaller features (e.g., significant concentrations of large gorgonian corals) that warrant higher targets (e.g., 80–100%). The design strategies presented in this paper will be used to develop a draft MPA network design for the Scotian Shelf Bioregion.

Research Document 2019/067 (PDF, 8,692 KB)

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