Monitoring Coral Reef Marine Protected Areas
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MONITORING CORAL REEF MARINE PROTECTED AREAS CLIVE WILKINSON, ALISON GREEN, JEANINE ALMANY AND SHANNON DIONNE VERSION 1 A PRACTICAL GUIDE ON HOW MONITORING CAN SUPPORT EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF MPAS The research reported herein is based on early analyses of complex data sets and should not be considered defi nitive in all cases. Institutions or individuals interested in all consequences or applications of this research are invited to contact the authors. Acknowledgements: Special thanks go to all those people who contributed case studies and other material. Support for this book came from the US Department of State, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and AIMS. Additional funds were provided by the IUCN Marine Programme, the ICRAN project, Ministry of the Environment, Japan, and the Great Barrier Reef Research Foundation. UNEP, IOC-UNESCO, IUCN, the World Bank, the Convention on Biological Diversity; AIMS, WorldFish Center and the ICRI Secretariat support the GCRMN as the Management Group. Anne Caillaud, Jos Hill, Will Oxley and Madeleine Nowak assisted with proof reading. Finally, we owe a special vote of thanks to the Science Communication team at AIMS - Steve Clarke and Wendy Ellery; they turned chaos into this valuable product – thank you. © Australian Institute of Marine Science and the IUCN Marine Program, 2003 Australian Institute of Marine Science PMB No 3, Townsville MC Qld 4810 Australia Telephone +61 7 4753 4444 Facsimile +61 7 4772 5852 [email protected] www.aims.gov.au IUCN Global Marine Program Rue Mauverney 28 Gland 1196, Switzerland Telephone +41 22 999 0204 Facsimile + 41 22 999 0020 email: [email protected] www.iucn.org ISBN 0 642 32228 7 Cover Photographs from right to left, top to bottom from the front: Pulau Redang fi shing village, Malaysia (Chou Loke Ming); fl ourishing table Acropora corals on Great Barrier Reef (Lyndon Devantier); Eleutherobia aurea, endemic soft coral, St Lucia MPA, South Africa (Michael Schleyer); coral reef shells for sale, Tanzania (David Obura); fl ourishing branching Acropora corals on GBR (Lyndon Devantier); children in dugout canoe, Toliana Madagascar (Pierre Vasseur); shipwreck on Rose Atoll, American Samoa (James Maragos); scientists monitoring the GBR (AIMS); Carrie Bow Cay research station, Belize (Clive Wilkinson); beach on Ant Atoll, Federated States of Micronesia (Clive Wilkinson); repairing fi ne mesh fi shing nets, Kenya (David Obura); women and children gleaning on coral reef fl ats in Toliana, Madagascar (Pierre Vasseur); monitoring deep reefs in the Bahamas (Clive Wilkinson); plague of crown-of-thorns starfi sh on the GBR (Peter Moran); spearfi shing on coral reef fl ats East Africa (Bernard Salvat); Buginese (sea gypsy) fi shing boat in Indonesia (Sue English). ii CONTENTS Summary ..........................................................................................................................................................1 Purpose of this Book ....................................................................................................................................2 Marine Protected Areas and Monitoring .....................................................................................................2 What is Monitoring — Important Defi nitions..............................................................................................2 How Monitoring Can Help ..........................................................................................................................3 How Monitoring Can Help — in More Detail..............................................................................................4 Good Examples: Case Studies from Around the World .......................................................................... 13 Case Study 1 — St Lucia, South Africa...................................................................................................... 14 Case Study 2 — Bleaching in Seychelles................................................................................................... 16 Case Study 3 — Tourism in Indian Ocean ................................................................................................ 18 Case Study 4 — Komodo National Park, Indonesia .................................................................................. 20 Case Study 5 — Apo Island, Philippines................................................................................................... 22 Case Study 6 — Gilutongan, Central Philippines ..................................................................................... 24 Case Study 7 — Ishigaki, Japan ................................................................................................................ 26 Case Study 8 — Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea ...................................................................................... 28 Case Study 9 — AIMS monitoring, Australia ............................................................................................ 30 Case Study 10 — GBRMPA Bleaching, Australia ....................................................................................... 32 Case Study 11 — Nelly Bay, Australia ....................................................................................................... 34 Case Study 12 — Pago Pago Harbor, American Samoa ............................................................................. 36 Case Study 13 — Scuba fi shing, American Samoa.................................................................................... 38 Case Study 14 — Shipwreck, Rose Atoll, American Samoa ...................................................................... 40 Case Study 15 — Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles ....................................................................................... 42 Case Study 16 — Broadscale monitoring, Colombia ................................................................................. 44 Case Study 17 — Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary ...................................................................... 46 Methods.......................................................................................................................................................... 48 Method 1 — Select the scale ..................................................................................................................... 48 Method 2 — Handling the data ................................................................................................................. 49 Method 3 — Ecological monitoring........................................................................................................... 50 Method 4 — Socio-economic monitoring.................................................................................................. 52 Method 5 — Large fi sh monitoring ........................................................................................................... 54 Method 6 — Water quality monitoring ..................................................................................................... 56 Appendices.................................................................................................................................................... 59 Appendix 1 — ITMEMS 2 Recommendations........................................................................................... 59 Appendix 2 — References..........................................................................................................................61 Appendix 3 — Monitoring programs and sponsors .................................................................................. 62 Appendix 4 — History of monitoring ...................................................................................................... 66 Appendix 5 — The authors ....................................................................................................................... 68 iii SUMMARY Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are an important tool for marine conservation and management; monitoring plays a critical role in managing these MPAs. Monitoring provides the essential information required to make management decisions and determine if the decisions are working. Without monitoring, managers are essentially operating in the dark! This book was written in response to requests from many managers of MPAs from around the world who asked for advice on how to design and implement monitoring programs that can help them manage their MPAs more effectively. The goals of this book are to: � Demonstrate how monitoring can play a major role in the effective management of MPAs; � Provide advice on which monitoring programs to use to facilitate effective management; and � Demonstrate how monitoring has played an important role in the effective management of MPAs summary using case studies from around the world. Coral reefs around the world are at risk from many threats including global warming causing coral bleaching, over-fi shing or destructive fi shing, pollution by sediments, nutrients and toxic chemicals, coral mining and shoreline development, and unregulated tourism. Monitoring the ecology of the reefs and the socio- economics of the people is the only way to understand the extent, nature and causes of the damage, and to identify ways to address these threats. How can monitoring assist in the effective management of MPAs? Monitoring assists through the following tasks: 1. Resource Assessment and Mapping 2. Resource Status and