Thank you very much. I probably won't take all of the 10 minutes.
I'd like to begin by providing you a bit of background on who I am and wherein lies my expertise. This might help people frame their questions later.
I'm an academic. I've worked in research in deep-sea ecology since 1983, so it's been quite a while. In 1999, along with two other academic researchers, we drafted the candidacy proposal for Canada's first marine protected area, the Endeavour hydrothermal vents, an area of deep-sea hot springs off the west coast of Vancouver Island.
For the last seven years, I've been a member of the leadership of the Canadian Healthy Oceans Network, which is a strategic network partnership between academia and DFO that has been working, among other things, on developing criteria for the selection and networking of marine protected areas.
I am also a member of the deep ocean stewardship initiative, which is an international ad hoc organization of researchers that supports the paired engagement of science and policy-making in efforts to protect the deep ocean.
In my capacity as chief scientist with Ocean Networks Canada, I've worked closely with DFO in developing a monitoring capacity for the very remote and very deep Endeavour hydrothermal vents marine protected area.
The focus of my opening statement here will be the criteria and process for both establishing and, most important, maintaining marine protected areas so that the intended benefits can be achieved. In particular, I'm referring to benefits that are related to the conservation of biodiversity and the protection of ecosystem services, those services that are provided to society by intact marine ecosystems.
I'm primarily motivated by recent global trends to create very large MPAs in remote areas as most states look to fulfilling their obligations to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and to achieving the 10% EEZ MPA goal by 2020. This creation of both offshore and remote MPAs is in some ways the easy way out.
I listened earlier to the Parks Canada description of how, when you have few stakeholders, it's sometimes easier and more expeditious to avoid lengthy and difficult stakeholder interactions related to fisheries, coastal development, and land claims, but I think that in this context it's really important to point out that the most diverse, most productive, and primarily the most threatened marine ecosystems are in Canada's Pacific and Atlantic coastal zones, not way offshore and in remote Arctic waters. That's not where the immediate need for protection lies. At the same time, these offshore and remote Arctic waters are not representative of coastal marine ecosystems in what I will refer to as “southern coastal Canada”.
That was the first point I wanted to make. It's important to protect these areas offshore, but at the same time, let's not do this and then not worry about things that are more difficult to achieve, where we have much of our biodiversity and much of the most threatened ecosystems.
Let's assume anyway that Canada is going to follow, to some extent, this global trend and create future MPAs in these remote regions. How are we going to go about monitoring these MPAs and know that we're actually achieving our conservation objectives?
My experience in working with DFO on monitoring of the Endeavour MPA has been really rewarding, but it has also made me aware that DFO does not have the capacity to monitor our existing MPA network on a regular basis without help from academia. We've had a very successful partnership, but this will need to continue as we go forward.
This is particularly important for remote deep-sea MPAs, where we essentially require robotic submersibles to survey and to collect samples. In many ways, much of the biodiversity we're trying to protect with these MPAs lies on the sea floor itself, not in the water column, and this is, in many ways, in deep water sites, the most inaccessible.
I really strongly recommend, therefore, that any increase in the number and size of marine protected areas in Canada be accompanied by a proportional increase in monitoring capacity. I can provide some specific examples for later questions on why we need to be monitoring, but I wanted to make this initial point. Also, I think the partnership that's been developing between DFO and academic researchers for MPA network research and developing and monitoring is one example of how both the costs and the responsibilities for this really important conservation tool can be shared between government and other stakeholders.
These are the two points I wanted to make. I'm happy to take questions.
I can answer them in both official languages.