Biodiversity: The full range of natural variety and variability within and among living organisms, and the ecological and environmental complexes in which they occur. It encompasses multiple levels of organization, including genes, species, communities and ecosystems.
Bycatch: Non-targeted species or reproductively immature juveniles of a target species that are retained, sold or discarded after being caught in a fishery.
Conservation: The act of systematically protecting natural resources including biodiversity; managing the environment in a manner that does not despoil, exhaust or extinguish. Biological conservation has been applied to the principles of ecology, biogeography, anthropology, economy and sociology. The term conservation may cover concepts ranging from genetic diversity to cultural diversity.
Dispersal: The movement of individual organisms away from a starting location, such as the site where they were spawned. Dispersal may be active or passive.
Ecological Sustainability: Upholding and supporting the biodiversity of life and the basis of its productivity through economic, social, and environmental measures. These measures protect, conserve and preserve ecosystem resources so that the needs of the present generation are met without compromising future generations’ access to ecological resources.
Ecoregions: Relatively large geographic areas of land and water delineated by climate, vegetation, geology and other ecological and environmental patterns.
Ecosystem: An area that contains organisms (e.g. plants, animals, bacteria) interacting with one another and their non-living environment (e.g. sand, currents, temperature) and functioning together as a unit. Ecosystems can be any size (e.g. ocean basin, inlet, sea grass bed).
Endangered Species: A population of an organism which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters. An endangered species is usually a taxonomic species but may be another evolutionary significant unit.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the best-known worldwide conservation status listing and ranking system. The system divides threatened species into three categories: Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Vulnerable.
Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA) became law in June 2003. The following ‘Endangered Species’ and associated definitions are the legal terms used under SARA
- Endangered Species: A wildlife species that is facing imminent extirpation or extinction.
- Extirpated Species: A wildlife species that no longer exists in the wild in Canada, but exists elsewhere in the wild.
- Species at Risk: An extirpated, endangered or threatened species or a species of special concern.
- Species of Special Concern: A wildlife species that may become a threatened or an endangered species because of a combination of biological characteristics and identified threats.
- Threatened Species: A wildlife species that is likely to become an endangered species if nothing is done to reverse the factors leading to its extirpation or extinction.
Fauna: Animals, especially the animals of a particular region or period, considered as a group.
Fisheries: The industry and occupation of catching, processing and selling fish or other aquatic species.
Fisheries Conservation: Measures for protecting and conserving fish and other aquatic species, particularly in ocean waters.
Fisheries Management: A system of management rules, based on defined objectives and a mix of management means to implement the rules, which is put in place by a system of monitoring, control, and surveillance (MCS). Modern fisheries management is most often based on biological arguments where the intention is to protect the biological resource in order to make a sustainable exploitation possible.
Flora: Plants considered as a group, especially the plants of a particular country, region, or time.
Marine Protected Area: An area of the ocean that is set aside to help restore populations of fish and marine species whose numbers have dropped because of overexploitation and other industrial activities. MPAs allow rare and endangered species to recover, and protect sensitive habitats, spawning and rearing grounds.
Marine Reserve: See ‘No-take MPA’
Marxan: MARXAN is a decision-support tool for MPA system design. MARXAN finds reasonably efficient solutions to the problem of selecting a system of spatially cohesive sites that meet a suite of biodiversity targets.
Networks of MPAs: A collection of individual MPAs or reserves operating cooperatively and synergistically, at various spatial scales and with a range of protection levels that are designed to meet objectives that a single MPA cannot meet.
No-Take MPA (also known as Marine Reserves): A special type of MPA or zone within a multiple-use MPA where full protection from human activities that remove animals and plants or alter habitats such as fishing, aquaculture, dredging, mining and offshore oil and gas exploration is strictly enforced. Allowable activities permitted within the area range from scientific use only, to swimming, boating and scuba diving activities.
Population: A geographically or otherwise distinct group within a wildlife species that has little demographic or genetic exchange with other such groups.
Precautionary Principle: The 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development defines the precautionary approach in the following manner: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
Preservation: Measures that protect wildlife, natural resources, areas and their biophysical systems by preventing human and commercial industry activities that will alter, disturb, harm or destroy the flora and fauna inhabiting an ecosystem.
Protected Area: A clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated and managed through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystems services and cultural values
Rearing Grounds: Marine, freshwater or terrestrial wildlife habitat areas or ecosystems inhabited by fauna during their early life stages (ranging from the first few weeks to the first year after hatching).
Recruitment: The addition of a new cohort to a population. The magnitude of recruitment depends on the time and life history stage at which it is recorded.
Resilience: The ability of a system to maintain key functions and processes in the face of stresses or pressures by either resisting or adapting to change. Resilience can be applied to both ecological systems as well as social systems.
Retention: Avoidance of dispersal from a natal site either due to a specific hydrographical features or by active behavioral processes used by the larvae.
Spawning and Rearing Grounds: A body of water and its substrate area or aquatic ecosystem where fish and other aquatic species mate and produce their eggs annually.
Species at Risk: An extirpated, endangered or threatened species or a species of special concern.
Spillover: The emigration of adults and juveniles across MPA borders.
Stocks: Subpopulations or genetically discrete fish species (isolated from other stocks of the same species and usually identified by their location) for which intrinsic parameters such as growth, recruitment, mortality and fishing mortality are significant for defining population dynamics that comprise a fishery population and are of interest to natural resource, fishery, ecosystem and conservation managers.
Sustainable Fisheries: Industry measures such as ecosystem-based management that ensures the conservation of fish and other aquatic species harvested; it includes protecting, enhancing and preventing overfishing of vulnerable species to ensure their perpetuation and productivity in the present and for future generations.
System of MPAs: See ‘Network of MPAs’
Wild Population: A population within its natural range in which the individuals are the result of natural production (i.e. not the result of human-mediated release or translocation).
Zones/Zoning: Zones are mapping units that delineate the parameters of an area and are important measures for defining protected areas in the marine environment. Zoning is the grouping of unique marine habitats and their associated resources as well as demarcation of their boundaries (zones). The complexities of MPAs have brought about the need for multiple objectives and complex management schemes. Zoning is recommended in the IUCN best practice guidelines on MPAs as the best way of managing multiple-use marine areas (Kelleher 1999; Day 2002). Multiple-use MPAs may have a spectrum of zones within them, each zone type having different objectives with some allowing greater use and removal of resources than others (e.g., no-take zones are commonly designated as one of the zones of a multiple-use MPA).
