This report takes a landscape approach in examining Canada’s marine coasts. While focus is placed on the shoreline as the interface between land and water, the scope of interest extends landward and oceanward to the degree that those areas affect the sustainability and well-being of coastal communities and ecosystems.
Dr. Nancy Doubleday (OCP Arctic Working Group) and students Sarah Newell (PhD. candidate) and Kathryn Pringle (B.A. candidate), participated in the 3rd Annual Spring Water Forum at McMaster University on April 18. The Water Forum is organized by the McMaster Water Network, a University-wide initiative to connect water science, technology and policy to deliver local and global impacts. The network provides opportunities for students, both undergraduates and post-graduates, and faculty to engage with the community and develop partnerships on issues related to this important and life-giving resource.
This article compares the law and policy frameworks for protecting marine species at risk in Australia and Canada. The sea of practical challenges is examined, including achieving listing of threatened commercial species; attaining timely and effective recovery planning; and identifying and protecting critical habitats.
Canada’s ocean ecosystem health and functioning is critical to sustaining a strong maritime economy and resilient coastal communities. Yet despite the importance of Canada’s oceans and coasts, federal ocean policy and management have diverged substantially from marine science in the past decade. In this paper, key areas where this is apparent are reviewed: failure to fully implement the Oceans Act, alterations to habitat protections historically afforded under Canada’s Fisheries Act, and lack of federal leadership on marine species at risk. Additionally, the capacity of the federal government to conduct and communicate ocean science has been eroded of late, and this situation poses a significant threat to current and future oceans public policy. On the eve of a federal election, these disconcerting threats are described and a set of recommendations to address them is developed. These trends are analyzed and summarized so that Canadians understand ongoing changes to the health of Canada’s oceans and the role that their elected officials can play in addressing or ignoring them. Additionally, we urge the incoming Canadian government, regardless of political persuasion, to consider the changes we have documented and commit to aligning federal ocean policy with ocean science to ensure the health of Canada’s oceans and ocean dependent communities.
With increasing human population, large scale climate changes, and the interaction of multiple stressors, understanding cumulative effects on marine ecosystems is increasingly important. Two major drivers of change in coastal and marine ecosystems are industrial developments with acute impacts on local ecosystems, and global climate change stressors with widespread impacts. We conducted a cumulative effects mapping analysis of the marine waters of British Columbia, Canada, under different scenarios: climate change and planned developments. At the coast-wide scale, climate change drove the largest change in cumulative effects with both widespread impacts and high vulnerability scores. Where the impacts of planned developments occur, planned industrial and pipeline activities had high cumulative effects, but the footprint of these effects was comparatively localized. Nearshore habitats were at greatest risk from planned industrial and pipeline activities; in particular, the impacts of planned pipelines on rocky intertidal habitats were predicted to cause the highest change in cumulative effects. This method of incorporating planned industrial development in cumulative effects mapping allows explicit comparison of different scenarios with the potential to be used in environmental impact assessments at various scales. Its use allows resource managers to consider cumulative effect hotspots when making decisions regarding industrial developments and avoid unacceptable cumulative effects. Management needs to consider both global and local stressors in managing marine ecosystems for the protection of biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services.
The rapidly progressing field of cumulative effects mapping is highly dependent on data quality and quantity. Availability of spatial data on the location of human activities on or affecting the ocean has substantially improved our understanding of potential cumulative effects. However, datasets for some activities remain poor and increased access to current, high resolution data are needed. Here we present an updated analysis of potential cumulative effects in Canada’s Pacific marine waters. New, updated datasets and methodological improvements over the previous analysis were completed, including a new index for land-based effects on marine habitats, updated habitat classes and a modified treatment of vulnerability scores. The results show increased potential cumulative effects for the region. Fishing remains the biggest overall impact amongst marine activities, while land-based activities have the highest impact per unit area in affected ocean areas. Intertidal areas were the most affected habitat per unit area, while pelagic habitats had the highest total cumulative effect score. Regular updates of cumulative effects assessments will make them more useful for management, but these require regularly updated, high resolution datasets across all activity types, and automated, well-documented procedures to make them accessible to managers and policy-makers.
This episode features Director and Professor at the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at UBC, Dr. Rashid Sumaila. He explained to us the threat of over-fishing and how taxpayer money is currently being used to actually support the over-fishing that is occurring in Canada. Siting recent research he gives a great understanding of where the fishing industry is at and how long we have before things get even worse. Reality check!