Research Document - 2014/101

Identification of Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas on the West Coast of Vancouver Island and the Strait of Georgia, and in some nearshore areas on the North Coast: Phase II – Designation of EBSAs

By Glen S. Jamieson and Chantal Levesque

Abstract

This report presents the second phase of Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area (EBSA) identification for the remaining two Pacific continental shelf ecoregions, i.e., the West Coast of Vancouver Island (WCVI) and the Strait of Georgia (SoG), and adds to the EBSAs previously proposed for the Pacific North Coast. Some inshore additions to the earlier proposed Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area (PNCIMA) are also presented. In Phase I, experts identified areas worthy of enhanced protection for each species and habitat feature based on five EBSA dimensions: Uniqueness, Aggregation, Fitness Consequences, Naturalness and Resilience. These areas were called Important Areas (IAs). In Phase II three categories of unique physical features were used as the basis for determining EBSAs. Physical features are useful in these types of area identification exercises because they often form the basis of the ecological communities and provide recognizable physical boundaries for management. The physical features chosen for the WCVI include oceanographic features and bottleneck areas, but because of scale issues, these features were not generally as useful in the SoG. In this latter area, some oceanographic features, only portions of others and sponge bioherms were used in EBSA determination. For the WCVI and SoG, seven and eight respectively of these features were identified and mapped and are presented as EBSAs. The overlap of these features with the remaining IAs was analyzed; the one excluded was “River Mouths and Estuaries”. The WCVI EBSAs had a total area of approximately 18,215 km², i.e., 65% of the WCVI, while the SoG EBSAs cover approximately 2,488 km², i.e., 28% of the SoG. Individual EBSAs were profiled and their rationalization using EBSA criteria was provided. The additional PNCIMA EBSAs proposed are in the archipelago-fjord complex that characterizes the mainland coast of British Columbia.

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