ABSTRACT1. Place-based conservation can be an effective tool for addressing threats to marine mammals, but this approach presents many challenges, such as the dilemma of whether to aim for protection at appropriately large scales or through networks of smaller protected areas, and how to address the socio-economic conditions of human societies whose welfare may conflict with marine mammal survival.2. Protecting places to conserve marine mammals started about 50 years ago, when the first parks and reserves were established to protect the critical habitat of specific populations. However, the challenges of protecting habitats that cross national borders and span oceans including the high seas remain problematic. International cooperation is needed, e.g. within the framework of multilateral environmental agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), as well as a potential new agreement through the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).3. Increasingly, the process of demarcating marine protected areas (MPAs) is being supported by other spatial designations, including CBD's ecological or biologically significant areas (EBSAs), the International Maritime Organization's particularly sensitive sea areas (PSSAs), IUCN's key biodiversity areas (KBAs), and biologically important areas (BIAs) adopted by the USA and Australia. Recently, the important marine mammal areas (IMMA) designation has been introduced by the IUCN Task Force on marine mammal protected areas. Such approaches have the potential to increase the protection of marine mammals within the overarching approach of systematic marine spatial planning.4. Considering the attributes of marine mammals as sentinel, umbrella and flagship species, it is likely that emerging place-based approaches that incorporate IMMAs will not only benefit marine mammal populations, but also contribute more generally to the conservation of marine and aquatic species and ecosystems.
The Arctic region is changing rapidly and dramatically as a result of climate change, perhaps two to three times faster than other areas of the world. Its inaccessibility, remoteness, and low population density no longer offers sufficient protection from expanding human use and development for its rich and diverse natural and cultural heritage. While considerable attention is being focused on better understanding and more effectively protecting its natural resources, far less is being done to identify and preserve this region's significant maritime heritage resources. This remoteness and inaccessibility that has protected Arctic resources for so long has also constrained our capacity to conduct sufficient archaeological studies to inform and guide the place-specific identification and preservation of what remains of this compelling history and heritage. The wilderness landscape of the Arctic has a rich and relatively well-documented historical record, spanning more than 2000 years of exploration and commerce, and of Indigenous cultures stretching further back over 4000-6000 years. More effectively using this historical record to identify significant maritime cultural landscapes in the Arctic and expanding the use of precautionary approaches to the preservation of these landscapes will not only assist in establishing regional priorities for targeted archaeological surveys and investigations, but will also likely minimize what will be lost forever as the inevitable "ice-free Arctic", as well as its expanded human footprint, approaches.
During 2015, the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries led a systematic seabed mapping survey along the Arctic coast of Alaska in search of whaling ships abandoned in 1871. The purpose of the expedition was to determine if wreckage from these abandoned ships was still present in the survey area, and, if so, to assess and document its location, status and condition. The project mapped approximately 50 km2 of seabed using sidescan sonar and magnetometry and identified six sites that contained wreckage from at least two whaling ships. Magnetometry data also suggested that additional wreckage may be buried in the seabed.
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