Pulling Back the Blue Curtain: A Pelagic Monitoring Program for the Blue Belt

Abstract

Ocean health is fundamental to human prosperity. However, fisheries exploitation, industrialization and climate change imperil our oceans. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been established in coastal habitats since the 1970s and the ongoing monitoring of these MPAs has shown their general ecological and economic value. Demonstrable benefits can include biodiversity conservation, fisheries enhancement and climate resilience. Since the 2000s, large scale MPAs (LSMPAs) are increasingly established, with new parks including extensive areas of pelagic habitat. Seminal was the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) MPA created in 2010. In 2016, the United Kingdom Government established the Blue Belt Programme to provide long-term protection of the marine environment across the United Kingdom Overseas Territories and LSMPAs have now been established or designated in a number of these territories. However, empirical data for the Blue Belt LSMPAs are needed to test their effectiveness in conserving pelagic species and to allow managers to monitor and assess the LSMPAs based on the best available evidence. This Perspective presents current advances in video-based monitoring of pelagic wildlife and provides examples of key ecological insights gained from their use that are relevant to LSMPA planning and management. We present a case study from the BIOT MPA and finally generalize with respect to key learning’s that will support planning and monitoring of LSMPAs within the Blue Belt Programme.

Multiple Lines of Evidence Highlight the Dire Straits of Yellowfin Tuna in the Indian Ocean

“…Fisheries-independent, non-destructive techniques such as baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVS) are another potential source of additional information on populations. Stereo-BRUVS record biological and ecological data such as relative abundance, size, biomass, and prevalence of pelagic species and have been utilized in survey locations worldwide (Meeuwig et al, 2021). Data collected with BRUVS have been used to investigate direct and indirect effects of fishing (Langlois et al, 2012b) and the effects of fisheries closures (Mclean et al, 2011) and could potentially yield a more holistic and unbiased picture of the status of the populations when combined with fisheries-dependent data and analyses.…”

Measuring the Impact of Conservation: The Growing Importance of Monitoring Fauna, Flora and Funga

“…Ecosystems are dependent on the complex interactions between functional species to be healthy, dynamic and resilient [116]. A focus on sampling whole assemblages is therefore needed to understand the trajectories of all components of ecosystems, not just large vertebrates [117].…”

“…However, each tool is also gradually being adapted for use with species formerly covered by others: SRS can now monitor some species as well as habitats; camera traps can be used to detect threats such as poaching, illegal fishing and bycatch; baited remote underwater video has been extended from reefs to the deep sea and open-ocean habitats; acoustic monitoring is being used more for invertebrates and can detect forest degradation and poaching; and eDNA has proven successful in some terrestrial settings [230], including biodiversity surveys, diet analyses and niche partitioning assessments. Technological advancements open up the possibility of monitoring marine species that were neglected before through, for example, the passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammals [231,232], animal-borne telemetry systems such as the Integrated Marine Observing System's Animal Tracking Facility [233], and video-based sampling methods [117].…”

Global human footprint on fish size-spectra across marine ecosystems

“…For instance, while pelagic habitats are conventionally sampled through sheries catches 14 or acoustic techniques 15 , benthic habitats in shallow waters (<50 m) are mainly surveyed through underwater visual census 5 , or with trawls and other selective gears 16 , making inter-systems comparisons di cult. Stereo Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations (BRUVS) are a unifying method that are sheries independent and can e ciently estimate individual abundance and body size in virtually any marine habitat 17 . However, their stereo-video deployment and corresponding size measurements have yet to be synthesised at large scale.…”