The anticipated audience for this workshop report is familiar with the use of Marxan and conservation planning theory, and wishes to explore good practices around employing robust Marxan analysis or incorporating human use and socio-economic data in a Marxan analysis. Those interested in proposed ways to take the uncertainties related to climate change into account in Marxan analysis may also find value in this report.

Working closely with DFO staff, PacMARA designed and delivered a workshop and generated a CSAS report on the establishment of a science monitoring program for the Bowie Seamount Marine Protected Area.  This workshop was the first time that PacMARA used the innovative Challenge DialogueTM for creating effective communication and structuring the response from the workshop.
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PacMARA convenes an enthusiastic group of people from various disciples and backgrounds to develop a logic model and list of immediate actions that need to be taken to implement ecosystem-based management in Canada’s Pacific Ocean. This initiative continues and more perspectives and opinions are being solicited. You are invited to participate. To see the progress made to date, click here.

The objective of this report is to help inform the EBM community of practice about information and data gaps existing in the EBM framework in BC marine waters and plan to fill the gaps.

Bowie Seamount is located 180 kilometres west of Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) in the northeast Pacific, off the coast of British Columbia. Also known by the Haida as Sgaan Kinghlas, which means “Supernatural Being Looking Outward,” Bowie Seamount is the shallowest seamount known in Canada’s Pacific waters. It rises from a depth of approximately 3,000 metres to within 24 metres of the sea surface. The Marine Protected Area in the vicinity of Bowie Seamount will give protection to a complex of three offshore seamounts – Bowie, Hodgkins and Davidson seamounts.

The goal of the Data Gaps Inventory is to identify what data currently exist in BC and where they can be found, as well as where the knowledge gaps lie. The emphasis is on geo-referenced datasets such as GIS, or those that could easily be imported into a GIS.

Translation of the Marxan User’s Manual to Spanish: is available here for download: Manual_Espanol.

This research analyses the literature around collaboration and the role of science in policy development in order to discover whether collaborations are actually better at asking and answering the questions needed to inform an ecosystem-based approach to planning and decision making.

The purpose of this project was to identify an appropriate boundary for the Central and North Coast Fisheries and Oceans Canada planning area. Several boundaries have been suggested, and PacMARA was approached by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to evaluate them and make recommendations.

PacMARA partnered with the B.C. Conservation Planning Tools Committee (CPTC) for the workshop with a goal to review the current and planned marine biodiversity spatial analyses and/or conservation planning assessment projects (tools) available in BC and to identify how the tools can be used individually and together as an assessment “system” of the status of marine biodiversity and as a foundation of a conceptual framework to guide conservation planning in BC.