The First International Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas

• Important issues for possible MMPA database design and management issues
are: the requirement for minimum core fields; determining who will manage and
update the database; making it simple for people to contribute to; and keeping up
with technological advances.
• Globally, cetacean “hotspots” do not often overlap with existing MPAs,
particularly on the high seas but also in national waters. <strong>The</strong> workshop
concluded that only a tiny percentage of the world’s critical habitat for cetaceans
is effectively protected in MPAs.
Strategies for identifying critical habitat for cetaceans: from GAM-based spatial modeling to mapping
areas of overlap between wildlife and anthropogenic activities
Rob Williams
• A number of options are available for researchers aiming to identify high-density
or preferred habitats for cetaceans, ranging from opportunistic sightings
databases to density surface modeling from systematically collected line transect
survey data. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. Generally (but not
always), there is a tradeoff between cost of data acquisition and the ability to
make sound inferences from the sample. Studies that aim to estimate distribution
can benefit from being designed in the context of estimating abundance, because
one aspect of the habitat’s “criticalness” demands an estimate of population size
– i.e., one metric of habitat importance is a measure of the proportion of the
population that uses it.
• Low-cost, small-boat surveys can be used to collect data on distribution and
abundance, but close attention needs to be paid to survey design and protocols.
It is always preferable to follow a systematic rather than haphazard design,
especially when the area is new to science. Time invested at the design stage
saves time at the analysis stage and usually results in gains in precision and
statistical power. For example, the results of one low-cost, small-boat survey in
British Columbia (BC) (for which 10% of the overall budget was allocated to
survey design) produced line transect and mark-recapture estimates of abundance
that compared well with the estimates derived from annual censuses by the
Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
• Recording behavior as well as sighting locations makes it possible to identify not
only the area used preferentially by the animals, but also the subset of habitat
they use for different behavior and the type of behavior in which they are most
vulnerable to human activities.
• Social, cultural, political, and economic factors should be taken into account
when designing MMPAs. In the case of Robson Bight (a killer whale sanctuary in
BC), the process of identifying and protecting the habitat was driven by the local
whalewatching and research communities.
• Combining data on habitat use by cetaceans with data on human activities and
threats can help elucidate critical habitat (e.g., overlap between GAM-based
density surface models and data on shipping intensity was used to identify areas
where cetaceans are most susceptible to ship strikes and oil spills).
ICMMPA <strong>Conference</strong> Proceedings
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