Project 4. Management Tools

Contact Chris Wilcox

The project will develop methods for evaluating management options that complement the National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (NRSMPA) to achieve CAR biodiversity conservation in marine ecosystems that are subjected to commercial fishing and tourism (primarily recreational fishing). There are two primary foci, the use of incentives to influence the spatial overlap between biodiversity impacts and assets and the incorporation of biodiversity offsets to reduce the complexity of the spatial management problem.

Project Tasks

Spatial Management of Marine Impacts Using Incentives
Permanent MPAs in the NRSMPA will be taken as a given that we will complement with additional off-reserve management. Management options of particular interest will be spatial management and the use of spatial incentives. The project will use scenario modeling to predict the outcomes of management strategies, and compare multiple objective decisions with multi-criteria decision analysis to evaluate the strategies in terms of stock, biodiversity and economic objectives.

Biodiversity Offsets
Will develop tools to use biodiversity offsets firstly for threatened marine species and secondly exploring how they might be applied beyond TEPs to other bycatch species and impacted habitats. Initially, the biodiversity offsets that we will examine will be options for terrestrial activities for seabirds and turtles to offset fisheries interactions and mortalities. The aim is to enable marine industries to maintain profitability while reducing their biodiversity impacts to or even below sustainable levels.

Identified PhD Projects

No specific PhD projects have been identified for this project area as yet. Interested applicants are encouraged to contact the project leader to discuss potential PhD topics.