Blogs

OpenChannels has a team of dedicated bloggers addressing targeted aspects of ocean planning and management, including communication, technology, ocean uses, and more. Our bloggers are experts in the field, drawing from their own knowledge and experience.

The OpenChannels community can also benefit from your knowledge and experience. We appreciate the diversity of perspectives in this field and welcome the use of OpenChannels for sharing these views. Do you have a perspective on ocean planning you would like to share? We'll help you do that right now: just click the button above and follow the prompts. If you are interested in blogging but have questions, please email Nick Wehner at nwehner [at] openchannels [dot] org. We look forward to your contribution!

The OpenChannels Team

Global Survey of Tools Used for Marine Spatial Planning, Round 5: Benefits and Challenges of Using Tools

By Sarah Carr

In December 2012-January 2013, the EBM Tools Network and OpenChannels conducted a survey of MSP practitioners worldwide to learn what tools practitioners are actually using in the field and how well those tools are working. 91 practitioners reported using one or more tools for an MSP process or processes, and they cited a wide range of benefits of using tools. Some of the most commonly-cited benefits of using tools are that the tools:

A sombre milestone for humanity

By Laurence Mee, SAMS, Scottish Marine Institute, laurence [dot] mee [at] sams [dot] ac [dot] uk

Ralph Keeling runs the Mauna Loa observatory where his father began CO₂ measurements 55 years ago. He recently had the unenviable responsibility to tell the world that CO₂ levels have passed the 400ppm mark for the first time, the highest level for about 4 million years. The news fleetingly passed through the front page of some newspapers; others steadfastly ignored it. Disbelief and overt scepticism maybe, but also the denial of an alcoholic diagnosed with the early stages of cirrhosis.

Solution: Escape Gaps for Fish Traps

By Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Director of Science and Solutions, Waitt Foundation

Bycatch. That’s the fish that fishers didn’t mean to catch but did – baby fish, species people don’t like to eat, fish no one will buy. High levels of bycatch make fishing unsustainable, not to mention it’s a huge waste. So what can be done about it? Well, that depends on the type of fishing gear being used. For fish traps (often called fish pots), I have a solution: put a hole in the corner. No, I’m not being glib. Putting vertical, rectangular holes, aka escape gaps, in opposing corners of fish traps can reduce bycatch by up to 80%, without reducing (and potentially even increasing) the value of the catch. How, you ask? Escape gaps allow the narrow-bodied and juvenile fish (including lots of herbivores) to escape, while retaining the larger, meatier fish that fishers want to catch. It’s that simple.

Methods to Consider Predators in Fishery Management

Predator-prey relationships can have profound effects on fish populations, but they are generally not considered explicitly in fisheries management. Several methods are available today to incorporate predators, a practical step toward ecosystem-based management.

Background

Managing fisheries is a complex undertaking. This is partly because it is difficult or impossible to directly observe fish populations and the many factors affecting them. So managers and scientists use mathematical models to estimate fish abundance and evaluate possible management actions. At the most basic level, models use estimates of deaths and births, among other things, to calculate how many fish can be caught without reducing the longterm health or productivity of the fishery.

Focus inward before reaching outside: the importance of internal communication for marine organizations

By Toni Parras, Communications Professional, toniparras [at] yahoo [dot] com

I know, it sounds like the title to a self-help book, but it’s true. I’ve seen it time and again – organizations expend vast amounts of resources to promote themselves before they’ve even cultivated and internalized their image within their own organization. In this age of fast, and often social, media demands, it may be that we are rushing headlong into campaigning without fully understanding what it is we’re promoting.

Branding is not just something for big corporations like Coca-Cola and Microsoft. NGOs – whether in the marine or terrestrial realm – have to think about their image beyond simply having a nice logo. Their image, values and messages must be well-integrated into the organization's operations and staff’s mindset.

The Business of Marine Reserves: Achieving Financially Sustainable Ocean Conservation

By Rod M. Fujita, Environmental Defense Fund, rfujita [at] edf [dot] org

Ocean conservationists have been arguing for a long time that marine reserves are a good investment, because they help sustain many ecosystem services, including fisheries and tourism. Various studies have helped to quantify the value generated by marine reserves, but a new study puts it all together and presents a convincing value proposition for marine reserves. Now all we need are investors who can appreciate that value proposition and make it work economically, and the right combination of rules and governance that will make these new kinds of markets – ecomarkets – viable.

NEOAN Works to Keep New England’s Ocean Plan on Track

By Jennifer Felt, Conservation Law Foundation, JFelt [at] clf [dot] org

New England Ocean Action Network (NEOAN) was founded on the belief that improved management of our ocean and coasts will provide substantial benefits to all ocean users. This is why our membership is so diverse. We have fishermen, surfers, environmental groups, aquariums, and renewable energy industry representatives, all working together to promote regional ocean planning.

NEOAN members know that an important part of ocean planning is a robust public participation process, in which New England’s ocean and coastal users are fully engaged. This was the message delivered loud and clear by NEOAN members at New England’s second Regional Planning Body (RPB) meeting in Narragansett, Rhode Island April 11 and 12^th. NEOAN was founded to promote public participation in this process – and NEOAN is participating. Seven members of NEOAN provided official comments to the RPB, emphasizing the importance of effective and meaningful stakeholder engagement.

Global Survey of Tools Used for Marine Spatial Planning, Round 4: Geographies Represented, What Tools are Being Used For, and How Useful They Are

By Sarah Carr

Survey respondents were asked to provide some identifying information about their MSP projects, and from this information, we can get an idea where a large number MSP projects (> 100) are occurring. (Note: These results do NOT mean that MSP projects are not occurring in other locations, and they may not be representative of the geographic distribution of MSP projects as a whole.) Since the vast majority of responses were associated with a specific country or countries, we grouped results by continent where the project countries are located with the exception of a project in the Southern Ocean.

Mining Twitter for Marine Spatial Planning

By Scott Stewart, NBT Solutions, scott [dot] stewart [at] nbtsolutions [dot] com

Many of the geospatial data sets used in the MSP process already exist or can be compiled with minimal effort and coordination. However, the lack of data representing human use or the socioeconomic dimension of coastal and marine resources is well-documented and accepted by MSP planners. Called the “missing layer,” the human dimension of the marine environment has been used only sparingly in the MSP process, and even less in the GIS-based decision support systems on which the MSP process relies.

One possible way to include this “missing layer” is to mine social networks for human-use activities—Twitter, for example.

New England’s Regional Planning Body is Making Progress

By Sean Cosgrove, Conservation Law Foundation, SCosgrove [at] clf [dot] org

Those of us who have been watching the regional ocean planning process in New England evolve were happy to see the progress made at the second Northeast Regional Planning Body meeting last week. The group has convened through the National Ocean Policy to develop a region-wide ocean management plan. They gathered around the “big table” once again to push forward toward that goal.

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