I'll just begin by thanking the committee for allowing me to contribute to the study of the Oceans Act's marine protected areas.
I'd like to give you just a little bit of background to explain my expertise in this area. Over the past three decades I've written more than 160 scientific papers on marine-related issues. My group pioneered the use of meta-analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation intervention.
Meta-analysis is a mathematical way to combine the results of many separate studies. Several of my papers have focused on using this method to measure the effectiveness of marine protected areas, particularly their effectiveness at rebuilding fish populations and understanding the characteristics of both MPAs and the fish themselves that lead to positive outcomes for protection.
I've acted as an expert for Parks Canada's science advisory group for the designation and zoning of Gwaii Haanas, an MCA in B.C. I was part of the Royal Society of Canada's panel on sustaining Canada's marine biodiversity. I have also served, since 2010, as an academic representative on the Bowie Seamount MPA advisory committee.
Today I would like to make three points about marine protected areas in general, which are relevant to our MPAs in Canada.
My first point is that we already know what it takes to make an MPA successful. There have been dozens upon dozens of studies to date that have compared the numbers, sizes, and diversity of fish and invertebrate species in and out of marine protected areas. Very few of these studies, you should note, have been conducted in Canada, largely because we don't have enough meaningful MPAs to do these kinds of studies.
The lessons we've learned from other countries, whether they're temperate or tropical, apply to our waters as well. When you bring all the results of these studies together in meta-analyses, they point to five characteristics of MPAs that are necessary to rebuild depleted populations. These five features have come to be known under the acronym NEOLI. “N” stands for no take; “E” for effectively enforced; “O” for old, meaning they're older than 10 years old; “L” for large, meaning that they're larger than 100 square kilometres; and “I” stands for isolated, usually by deep water or by sand.
The more of these features an MPA has, the more effective it is. MPAs with just one or two of these features have a biomass of fish that is not distinguishable from the biomass in unprotected areas. The benefits of protection start being seen in MPAs that have three of the features. In those MPAs there is about 30% more biomass than in unprotected sites, and the benefits increase greatly in MPAs that have four or five of these features. In MPAs that have five features, you see a whopping 244% more fish biomass than at unprotected sites.
These are figures across all species. If you focused only on the very large fish species, which are the species that are targeted by fishing, then the results are even more staggering, with upwards of 800% more biomass inside MPAs.
The five features all contribute to the success of MPAs, so we can't just create, for example, very large MPAs and then expect them to perform if they don't have the other characteristics as well.
My second point is that strict protection is crucial. This is the “N” in NEOLI. Many studies have compared the effectiveness of marine protected areas that are completely closed to all forms of exploitation or extraction with the effectiveness of MPAs that are only partially protected, meaning that they do allow some extraction or some exploitation within their boundaries. Again and again, the compilations of these studies in meta-analyses show that partially protected MPAs are far less effective at meeting conservation objectives than fully protected MPAs.
A recent paper by Sciberras and colleagues in 2013, for example, found that across more than 50 MPAs around the world, fish biomass was about 50% higher in partially protected areas than in unprotected areas, which is pretty good, but it was 90% higher in no-take areas compared with partially protected areas.
Partial protection is actually what we provide right now in most of the 10 Oceans Act MPAs we currently have. Five of our Oceans Act MPAs have no areas within them that are designated as no-take areas. The other five have some no-take areas that vary from 3% to 100%, but large proportions of some of these are open to exploitation.
My third point is related to this proportion of area that we need to protect. It's a clarification, really, on how much of the ocean we need to close. There are several reports and peer-reviewed papers that have specifically examined how much of the sea should be closed to fishing to meet a variety of goals, including protecting biodiversity, but also preserving ecosystem services such as fisheries yields, as well as achieving various socio-economic priorities. Interestingly, these reports and papers all point to around 30% of an area that needs to be closed.
Now, there are two things that really alarm me about this evidence.
The first is that our national goal of protecting 10% of our marine and coastal areas doesn't even come close to 30%. I know that 10% is a minimum target, but given that we now stand at 1% and that we only have about three years to reach our goal, I cannot imagine that we're going to go much beyond 10%.
The second thing that alarms me is that the results of these studies are actually very often misinterpreted as meaning that one third of the area of MPAs or of networks of MPAs should be designated no take. Just yesterday, for example, I reviewed a paper for DFO on design strategies for the northern shelf bioregional MPA network, and there it was—a recommendation that 30% of the MPA network should be in no-take reserves.
This interpretation is incorrect. The targets for strict protection documented in most of these studies do not apply to individual MPAs, and they don't apply to networks of MPAs. They apply to the whole ocean, or to the whole fishing grounds, or to the whole ecosystem that were targets of these studies.
This is critically important, because if Canada reaches its target of 10% of oceans under protection by 2020 and we implement this common misunderstanding, it means that a mere 3% of our waters are going to be strictly protected. I seriously question how effective that's going to be to sustain our marine biodiversity into the future, so I have two key recommendations that are really simple.
First, let's aim far higher than the 10% that we've set for ourselves. All the evidence right now tells us that 10% is simply not enough.
Second, let's not be shy about implementing no-take areas. They are really what works best when it comes to MPAs. I believe that it's time for everyone to start seeing no-take marine areas not as fortresses that keep fish and other harvestable species locked up and away from fishermen, but as fish banks with very high interest rates. In fact, these no-take MPAs are leaky fish banks, because the accumulated interest in the form of harvestable biomass spills out and enhances fisheries, if given enough time.
Now, I know that MPAs are not a silver bullet. They're definitely not the only tool in our tool box for managing the oceans, but they are a very effective tool that we're not using effectively at all right now.
Thank you very much.