Podcast on Protecting Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems

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Narrator: For information on Canada’s role to improve science within regional fisheries management organizations, we spoke with Ellen Kenchington, a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada working at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, or NAFO, holds its annual general meeting each September. Ahead of the 2011 meeting, we asked Ellen to describe some of the fascinating work Fisheries and Oceans Canada does to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems, also known as VMEs.

She says she is interested not just in organisms that live on the sea floor, but how they interact and why they are there.

Ellen Kenchington, Scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada:  There are many kinds of species that can live attached to the sea floor and in the international policy guidelines we have a term called vulnerable marine ecosystems and these are related to benthic organisms, the vulnerable part of it means vulnerable to bottom fishing activity so it’s a subset of benthic organisms which can be damaged irreversibly or take a long time to recover when they encounter fishing gear.

Narrator: How has Canada contributed to the protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems within NAFO?

Ellen: Canada has taken a strong position within the NAFO working groups – both the scientific working groups and those that involve fisheries managers to implement closure areas to protect VMEs in the fishing footprint of the area that is being fished in the high seas by the NAFO countries. By taking the lead, we have not only been chairing the meetings and been actively involved in the processes but we’ve also led the science behind it and that has been the analyzing all the data we have behind to identify where are these animals located, what are the animals we need to be concerned about and then giving that information to fisheries managers so that they can then develop protection boundaries around them.

Narrator: Before protection boundaries can be established, areas of corals and sponges need to be identified and Canada has developed a process to do just that.

Ellen: One of the key developments that Canada has played within the NAFO process is the development of a method to identify the significant concentration of corals and sponges in the regulatory area that NAFO governs.

Canada has led the process within the NAFO scientific council for the identification of vulnerable marine ecosystems in the NAFO area and we developed a process using GIS or geographic information, spatial technology to identify these significant concentrations of corals and sponges. This is very important because corals and sponges, just as general groups, are very widely distributed over this area. Not all of the species are particularly vulnerable to the fishing gear. In fact, one of the most abundant species of coral was found in the heavily fished areas. But we have ones that are very vulnerable, they can live hundreds of years and they’re often aggregated and the methods we’ve developed using GIS technology identified where those are so that we could get the highest priority to protecting the ones that are the most significant and the most vulnerable.

Narrator: So, why are we doing this?

Ellen: It’s important to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems because some of these animals and plants, but animals particularly, can live to be hundreds of years old.

If we do damage to them and remove them, chances of them returning to the area or being able to recover from the impact are very small, therefore we have to be very cautious in what we allow to take place around them so that we can preserve them and their functions to the ecosystem – some of which may relate to interactions with commercial fisheries and so relate to our fishing industries.

Narrator: Some important reasons why scientists and industry must work together. For more information on Canada’s role within regional fisheries management organizations, go to our new website at www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/international

This has been an original podcast presented by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, International Affairs Division.