Science Advisory Report 2018/040

Reassessment of the Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) in the Pacific Northern Shelf Bioregion

Summary

• Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) are areas of relatively higher ecological or biological significance than surrounding areas, where greater risk aversion is required in the management of activities and which are important for the healthy functioning of the oceans and the services they provide (DFO 2004, CBD 2008).
• Following a recommendation that EBSAs should be re-evaluated and updated with new information every five years (DFO 2011) re-assessment of the original EBSAs in the Pacific Northern Shelf Bioregion (Clarke and Jamieson 2006a,b, DFO 2013) was carried out with available empirical data, to increase understanding of the underlying ecological support for the existing EBSAs.
• Available and appropriate research and commercial fishing data was collated for 44 species or species groups listed as important to the original EBSAs.
• The bootstrapping method used to compare biological data for each species inside and outside of the EBSAs was determined to be appropriate for assessing empirical support for existing EBSAs.
• Empirical support was found for all EBSAs where information was available and appropriate for analysis. Support for some EBSAs was also found for additional species that were not originally identified in those EBSAs’ designation.
• A method (Getis-Ord Gi*) was presented and determined to be adequate for identifying areas of high habitat richness in the nearshore; a region not comprehensively addressed in previous EBSA processes. The extent to which the nearshore habitat richness layer can be used as a proxy for species diversity should be validated with species-specific data when available.
• Methods were presented to identify hotspots of productivity and diversity, two EBSA criteria not evaluated in the first process. Several areas were identified as having high biodiversity or high biomass (as a potential proxy for productivity) via two complementary approaches (Getis-Ord Gi* and top decile of Kernel Density Estimates (KDE)). Some of the resulting hotspots occur outside of existing EBSAs.
• The glass sponge reef EBSAs were updated with new geological signature information to include newly found reefs in Chatham Sound and several fjords.
• Areas of high habitat richness, high biodiversity, and high biomass identified in this process should be fully evaluated against the EBSA criteria using the template developed in Ban et al. (2016) prior to being designated as EBSAs.
• The data used in the EBSA reassessment were limited to what was available at the scale of the NSB for each of the species of interest. Spatial and seasonal gaps exist in some datasets.  Future iterations of EBSA assessment should attempt to include a seasonal and temporal component to ensure the inclusion of migrating or transient species and to account for seasonal shifts in productivity, and climate change impacts.
• Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Local Ecological Knowledge, and First Nations Knowledge are not included in the analyses but efforts should be made to include it in future iterations. In addition, First Nations science program data should also be incorporated where possible.

This Science Advisory Report is from the Nov 1-2, 2017 Reassessment of the Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) in the Pacific Northern Shelf Bioregion Regional Peer Review Meeting. Additional publications from this meeting will be posted on the Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Science Advisory Schedule as they become available.

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