MPAs: Fitting the Pieces into the Fisheries Mosaic

Moderator: Suzanne Iudicello
Email: suzanneiudicello@rushmore.com

Date: Thursday, September 15, 2005
Time: 1:20 pm to 5:40 pm
Location: Egan 6

The theme of the conference is Creating a Fisheries Mosaic: Connections across Jurisdictions, Disciplines and Cultures. Marine Protected Areas are themselves a mosaic: of marine organisms, habitats and processes; of resources and users; of science and culture; of multiple jurisdictions. The objective of this half-day symposium is to present lessons learned from designations of marine protected areas—lessons in scientific integration, management overlap, stakeholder engagement, and communication. Over the past several years, the National Fisheries Conservation Center has worked with the National MPA Center, NOAA Fisheries and the State of California on several projects that have examined the interface between creation of protected areas and fisheries management. The application of tools new to fisheries, such as the scientific consensus conference, decision analysis and joint fact-finding, as well as cross-jurisdictional case study approaches to distill lessons learned from various designation processes would offer symposium attendees a summary of the most current thinking about the science of MPAs, designation processes, stakeholder engagement, and integration of conventional fishery management and marine reserve ecology. The half-day symposium would bring together managers, marine scientists, policy analysts, social scientists and fishermen to share perspectives that span not only multiple jurisdictions, disciplines and cultures, but points of view and approach that have not always intersected easily in the designation of marine protected areas. NFCC’s mission has been to create venues for disparate voices to come together for dialogue and creative problem-solving; the symposium would provide yet another opportunity for exchanging information and opinion on a topic that is highly visible, sometimes contentious and thoroughly current on the fishery management scene.

Link to list of presentations in this symposium

Sponsor:

National Fisheries Conservation Center