Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a widely‐used tool for conserving biodiversity. Features that support marine mammal foraging have been suggested as important components to include in MPAs, but research is needed to understand the relationship between these features and diversity. For example, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument represents an area known to support marine mammal foraging and was designated to protect an area of high marine mammal diversity. However, no comparisons have been made between marine mammal diversity in the Monument and other areas. We used 3,174,167 km of survey effort and 189,175 sightings to assess alpha and beta diversity in the Monument and 500 randomly selected sites along the east coast of the United States. We used linear models to relate diversity to variables that represent marine mammal foraging areas. Our analyses showed a gradient of higher to lower diversity from north to south and that the shelf‐edge, canyons, and areas of likely upwelling support high diversity. We also found that the Monument protects a diverse and unique marine mammal community. Our analyses contribute to efforts to designate MPAs to conserve habitat that is important for protecting species by identifying drivers of biodiversity and potential sites for protecting 30% of the planet by 2030.
One of today’s greatest conservation challenges is balancing policies, laws, and management strategies established to achieve economic goals that depend on extracting ocean resources with those established to conserve marine biodiversity. We use the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument (NCSM) as a case study to explore the consequences of changing from a policy that prevents fishing to a fisheries management policy. We found that opening the NCSM to commercial fishing reduces species protections. Fishing with pelagic and bottom tending fixed gear exposes species inhabiting the sea surface and midwater regions to entanglement and bycatch risk. Fishing with bottom tending fixed gear also exposes deep-sea coral habitat to gear known to have detrimental impacts. The NCSM was designated as a marine national monument due to the area’s unique ecological resources that are a subject of scientific interest. Our case study demonstrates that a fisheries management policy is insufficient to protect these ecological resources.
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