Fisheries committee  At the moment, those areas are different from marine protected areas. The origin and journey may be different, but the outcome should be the same: in situ conservation. Your governance of it would need to ensure the continued persistence of the conservation value. As I said earlier, governance comes in many different shapes and forms.

Fisheries committee  I agree with that. For me it is about looking at that intersection between commercial interests and conservation interests, and realizing that protected areas can be an essential part of that process. I would add that I think we may make some interesting strides in this direction in the coming years.

Fisheries committee  Would you like me to go?

Fisheries committee  It depends on the objective of the marine protected area in question. As Dr. Pauly mentioned, countries will put aside areas for strict protection, for the continued survival of biodiversity, where there are only activities like tourist visits. Sometimes tourist visits are compatible.

Fisheries committee  It's the continuum I described in the official guidance we have.

Fisheries committee  That's what I was just talking about as part of the development of the guidance we're working on. In addition to marine protected areas, there is the phrase “other effective area-based measures”. If there is a fisheries closure that achieves in situ conservation of biological diversity as part of broader fisheries management, an area-based closure that is long term and is about actually ensuring the continued persistence of nature and the fish in that context, that is a potential area that could cross over from having the fisheries management target of sustainability to being recognized also as an effective conservation area alongside marine protected areas.

Fisheries committee  Yes, I made that comment. I'm just finding my reference to that. This is the Convention on Biological Diversity that countries signed up to. There was a meeting in Aichi, Japan in 2010 to review and renew the targets. That's why they're called the Aichi targets. There are 22 targets, and target 11 is the one that involves marine protected areas.

Fisheries committee  Yes, as far as I know. I'm not too familiar with all the details of all of the discussions in Canada, but that is behind the commitment to drive forward to meet the 10% target by 2020.

Fisheries committee  Yes, certainly. The Convention on Biological Diversity undertakes regular reviews to see progress on the targets in order to let countries know how well things are going. They are aware of whether particular targets are being well reported or poorly reported. Certainly, target 6, which is about sustainable harvesting—that fisheries should “have no significant adverse impacts on threatened species and vulnerable ecosystems” and that “the impacts of fisheries on stocks, species and ecosystems are within safe ecological limits”—is a target they acknowledge is not being as well reported as it could be.

Fisheries committee  First, I'd be very happy to provide that information. An entire initiative, called the science of marine reserves, has analyzed hundreds of peer-reviewed papers. That is one of the bodies of evidence. There was also a paper published very recently in Nature, and that was the one I was referencing with regard to effective management increasing the benefits.

Fisheries committee  Basically, on the issue of what marine protected areas do when we strictly protect an area of ocean, we find in virtually all cases that we are taking the pressure off and are allowing the ecosystems to recover to a more natural state. The statistics show that on average, we get a 446% increase in the biomass, the amount of organisms in the area, because we're no longer depleting them.

Fisheries committee  I think the issue is that we're taking too much out of the ocean and not protecting enough of the ocean. I think the reality is about getting a better balance on that and ensuring that we do protect a core element of ecosystems along the way, to enable us to maintain those values in the future.

Fisheries committee  It's multiple things. I sit here looking at my own community of marine-protected-area specialists and governments committed to it, saying that we actually need to do better. We need to do better in the level and scale of management. We know that if we put management in place for protected areas, we can triple the benefits that people are currently getting.

Fisheries committee  They represent slightly different approaches in my book. Protected areas that fully protect ecosystems are what we call in situ conservation, which enables you not necessarily to understand all of the linkages in the chain, in the food webs, but that it produces greater resilience, greater protection.

Fisheries committee  It's a simple statistic. It's more complicated under the surface, but this is based on the statistics of the protected areas that Canada has officially supplied to the world database on protected areas. It is an area-based measurement of how much you have currently protected within your area of jurisdiction of sea, compared to statistics from other countries, so it's [Inaudible—Editor].