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Research Document 2020/011

Elements of a framework to support decisions on authorizing scientific surveys with bottom contacting gears in protected areas with defined benthic conservation objectives

By Benoît, H.P., Dunham, A., Macnab, P., Rideout, R., Wareham, V., Clark, D., Duprey, N., Maldemay, É.-P., Richard, M., Clark, C., and Wilson, B.

Abstract

Canada is rapidly increasing the number of protected areas in its domestic coastal and marine waters to meet international conservation targets. This has created an urgent need for approaches and frameworks for determining which human activities will be allowed within these areas in light of site-specific conservation objectives and monitoring requirements. Scientific activities contribute information that can support conservation-related management decision making within protected areas and in the broader ecosystem (e.g., advice for sustainable fisheries, species recovery, and ecosystem status). However, many of these same scientific activities can harm organisms, populations, assemblages and habitats within protected areas and therefore can hinder the achievement of conservation objectives, suggesting a need to evaluate the relative costs and benefits of conducting scientific activities within protected areas. This is particularly true for areas with ecologically sensitive benthic taxa and features, which can be harmed by bottom-contacting sampling gear such as bottom-trawls used in multispecies surveys. In January 2018, when a national peer review meeting on the subject was held, there were no existing frameworks or approaches in Canada or elsewhere to assist in determining under what conditions scientific surveys employing bottom-contacting gear should be permitted in protected areas. Such a decision requires consideration of the potential harm caused by the scientific activity, opportunities to mitigate this harm, potential benefits of the scientific activity for the monitoring and management of the protected area and potential consequences for science-based decision making in the broader ecosystem if the scientific activity is not authorized. This report reviews and discusses the key elements to be considered in such permitting decisions and which are incorporated in a new decision framework for Canadian coastal and marine protected areas developed at the January 2018 review. First, we review the key policy and legal frameworks in place to manage human impacts on benthic communities. Second, we review the available information, mainly from the fisheries literature, on the impact of bottom-contacting sampling gear on benthic ecosystems. Third, we propose and estimate metrics to define the potential impact of scientific activities in Canadian waters, with a focus on the full suite of ongoing long-term surveys. Fourth, we review and evaluate approaches for mitigating impacts, such as changes in the sampling gear and in sampling procedures. Fifth, we review the uses and utility of scientific monitoring activities, as well as the potential consequences that eliminating ongoing sampling activities in newly protected areas might have on the formulation of science advice and for management decisions within the broader ecosystem. These considerations and the inherent trade-offs are then illustrated with a case study and outstanding key uncertainties and considerations are discussed. The elements discussed here and linked together in the new framework do not lead to prescribed decisions. Rather, they support an information gathering process that will assist the management sectors in any region of Canada in their review for authorizing proposed scientific activities with bottom-contacting gears in protected areas.

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