I'd look at Australia and Canada.

In belgium we are at the stage of implementing 4 small zones with 'a certain type of fisheries management' (excluding type of bottom trawling, or only allowing experimental not bottom disturbing fisheries) in a N2000 habitat. Additionally we enlarged the coastal fisheries management zone from 3 to 4.5 nMiles (which has been largely contested by Dutch fishermen, but now seems to have been accepted, meaning full implementation will probably start from 2017 onwards; Of course Belgium only have a small part of the sea and the 4 zones are quite small, but still..

Already longer ago (2005) we designed a specific area for blue energy (offshore wind energy) where no fishing is allowed. So not really taking into account fisheries management, although the 'acceptance' idea behind it for fishermen was that aquaculture would be made possible, thus compensating for the loss (but still is not allowed).

There's some very good examples from Canada particularly from Bay of Fundy.

Good examples from scallop industries and detailed marine data leading to sustainable fishing by shorter targeted reduction of effort. Scottish Fisheries Institute did a number of research projects looking at actual available area for fisheries in relation to other marine constraints.

All,

Many thanks for your contributions. I am looking for examples which are comparable to Scotland (mixed fisheries, mobile static conflict in parts, push for renewables, aquaculture) .  I am interested in the Belgium example and your 3-4.5km management zone, but ideally applied to a large sea area.  The Bay of Fundy and Nova Scotia is more the scale and looks interesting also, especially the area limitations, so thank you I will dig further into both. Any other examples would be most welcome.

Thanks again, Estelle

I'm also interested in that question. In Uruguay we are in the middle of those conflicts and still far away from a marine spatial planning iniciative.

Please check this one out: http://www.wwf.org.my/media_and_information/updates__former_newsroom_main_/?19725/First-Marine-Spatial-Planning-in-Sabah-Launched-to-Further-Protect-Semporna-Priority-Conservation-Area-PCA

I may give you some details about the restrictions and organization on our dredging licensed area off Dieppe (eastern Channel, France).

As the site is very close to the coast (3 NM) and of Dieppe harbour, fishermen are used to come on our license thanks to positive behavior of some fish species (mainly netting for sole)

For a smart cohabitation, some administrative restrictions exist:

-          During the herring spawning period, extractions are not allowed during 3 full months (November to January)

-          During five weeks (May to June), fishermen are allowed to catch cuttlefish within the 3 nautical miles. As the Southern part of the License is in the 3 NM, extraction is locally closed in this area during these five weeks and is moving outside the 3 NM.

You’ll find in the attached file a map of the licenced area and the spatial restrictions during the cuttlefish fishing period.

On top of the French Administration restrictions, we have decided to let the fishermen work on our license:

-          For trawling gears, fishermen can work when the dredger is loading if they observe a safety distance with the dredging vessel

-          For nets and pots, regarding the spatial incompatibility with dredging activity, we send messages to the Regional Fisheries Committee relieved to the fishermen 24-48h before vessel arrival on the License.

 I hope this small-scale example can be useful. Best regards. Michel

We also performed a PhD study in the coast of Suriname (Phd of Tomas Willems) on the effects of a designated area for seabob trawl fishing on the benthos and the ecosystem. THis zone has already been established for some years now and is specifically dedicated to seabob fishing (with the first MSC label for a tropic shrimp fishery). As such conflicts with larger trawlers (fishing more offshore) and artisanal fishermen (fishing near the coast and estuaries) have been minimized. This strategy seems to work quite well and all levels (government, fishermen, scientists, ngos) are working together to maintain this.

Hi Estelle,

We worked about the integration of trawl fishing into MSP in the Mediterranea region. The following paper can be downloaded from Scholar

Pipitone, Badalamenti, Vega Fernández, D’Anna (2014) Spatial Management of Fisheries in the Mediterranean Sea: Problematic Issues and a Few Success Stories. Advances in Marine Biology 69: 371-402.

Also, we carried out a governance analysis taken into account trawl and artisanal fisheries within a MPA in an area which is now implementing the so called Local Management Plans. These should manage all human activities within 3 nm from the coastline. The reference of the analysis is cited below. You can ask to any co-author for a pdf.

D’Anna, Vega Fernández, Pipitone, Garofalo, Badalamenti (2016) Governance analysis in the Egadi Islands Marine Protected Area: A Mediterranean case study. Marine Policy 71: 301-309.

There is actually a good deal of work in MSP in the Adriatic Sea. A project named AdriPan was recently funded and I suppose they will take trawling into consideration. Also Algeria has recently developed a very good national management plan for fisheries recently developed with the support of international organizations. Just google it or try this link

https://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/sites/maritimeaffairs/files/docs/body/algeria_01_en.pdf

Hope this help.

I'm not sure why Alex and James think that Canada, or specifically the Bay of Fundy, would be good examples. Our fisheries management has long been spatially structured, perhaps more so than in most other countries, but (where formal management by government is concerned) there has not been a lot of integration across fisheries or between fisheries and other activities that use marine space. There are some requirements that keep larger fishing vessels further from shore -- hence away from one portion of the small-boat fisheries. Otherwise, while there are lots of defined management areas, most (all?) were designed around the needs of one fishery and can be ignored by everyone else.

Offshore petroleum installations and aquaculture operations have surrounding zones from which everyone else is excluded. I expect that the same will be true of tidal-power turbines if those get going. (They are at a very experimental stage so far.) Conversely, the Canadian portion of Georges Bank is, in effect, closed to the petroleum industry. There are a few areas formally designated as "MPAs" but, again, those meet the demands of one policy objective by simply excluding (most) others.

Of course, local peer-group management gives much more importance to the use of marine space, integrated across types of fisheries, but I don't think that that is what Estelle is after.

I am more familiar with tropical examples, but close to home there's the early case of Lundy Island and a no-take area designated there to help the over-fished lobster stock to recover - which it did remarkably well!  This may not be what you are looking for exactly, but Lundy is also an interesting example of progression from voluntary to formal designation of an "MPA" for marine biodiversity and fisheries conservation purposes.

Tabarca Marine Reserve  has been the first MPA established for stock enhancement in Spain in 1984. It has been a success from the fisheries point of view. I send you some papers about this subject

Thanks for all the useful suggestions and papers.  MPAs are new in Scotland's waters so we will see how those develop in the coming years. As Trevor alludes to, I am thinking more of regional management, where commercial activities in the marine environment are expanding - fisheries, having had unrivalled access to the seas from centuries, now being traded off with other emerging industries (including conservation) and any examples of were this is being well integrated... maybe we are just not there yet? (I will look further into the suggestion here, so thanks again). Scotland has advanced MSP, but we are only just starting to implement this and having to address the significant trade-offs (at this point mainly economic and social) assuming we aim to prioritise and work within environmental limits (assuming we can measure what those are - and one can assume too much!).

Estelle: In saying that fisheries have long enjoyed "unrivalled" access to marine space, please don't make the common mistake of forgetting the preeminent human use of the oceans as a surface for marine transport, nor the second one as a surface (and now subsurface volume) for naval activity. Too many theoretical discussions of MSP seem to set those two aside, yet in practical applications the traffic lanes leading to major ports become a substantial constraint around which all else must be arranged, while the US Navy (for one example) has shown understandable reluctance to accept regulated speed limits around right whales.

I'd suggest that the issue is that, in former times, each major user group that utilized marine space (merchant shipping, fighting navies, fisheries, recreation -- usually in that order of importance) enjoyed largely free use of the entire ocean as a group, while organizing its use of that space amongst its own members, without much regard for what the other major groups were doing. In recent decades, we have seen the addition of other user groups/interests (offshore petroleum, offshore renewable energy, aquaculture, protection of special places) which have had solid reasons to restrict access by everyone outside their own group but have only needed to apply those restrictions to small areas. Now we are into a new phase, as the extent of restricted-access areas grows large enough to be a major constraint on everyone else, while preservationist interests see that the use of marine space by the fishing sector has implications for their concerns and hence cannot be left to fishermen and fisheries managers alone. (I don't think that the parallel need to restrict merchant shipping and warships has yet been realized, though it will be in time.)

Working in fisheries management in New England, a decade ago, the scope of the challenge became very evident. It seemed (to me, if no-one else) that we needed to look at marine space in an integrated way: integrated across the whole region and simultaneously integrated across all uses of that space (including the potential for non-use of highly protected areas). Reserving an area for one purpose drove other prior users of that area into some other place, altering the uses made of the latter and possibly displacing its prior users in their turn. Yet we have only one regional space into which all uses (all that we will permit to continue) must be fitted. Optimizing the overall use of space needs an integrated solution.

Unfortunately, few parts of the world yet have the institutional frameworks needed if we are to look across major user groups. Australia has long had that for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and GBRMPA's zoning plans may be the best-developed example of what you are looking for, though one suited to a rather special situation. I haven't followed up but I think that, in recent years, Australia has been looking at doing something similar for the rest of their waters. Your own efforts in Scotland, and those of the rest of the EU, may be more advanced but I know little of the detail. The US has been engaged for some years in a tussle over whether fisheries management should be subject to some broader oceans management and until that is resolved, integrated MSP won't progress there. Canada has done a lot to control use of marine space within the fisheries sector but doesn't yet seem to have recognized the need to look across sectors, save on case-specific issues.

No doubt there are examples of what you are after from other nations and regions that I am unaware of. Hopefully, your question will draw some out!

Hi Estelle,

The Norwegian integrated management plan for the Barents Sea-Lofoten area might be a good example to look at. It specifically tried to integrate fisheries management measures with other marine sectors. As far as I remember, the plan was only advisory though and needed to be implemented by individual ministries. 

Southeast Brazil has a good example

see Article Effects of marine protected areas on fisheries: the case of ...