Management of Ocean Resources under Shifting Expectations: bringing the historical perspective into marine mammal conservation – MORSE

Le projet MORSE commencera par compiler les donnés historiques de distribution et d’abondance des espèces, issues de la littérature en écologie, histoire et archéologie. Ces donnés seront ensuite utilisées pour comprendre la distribution et l’abondance antérieures à l’exploitation humaine. En comparant le passé et le présent nous évaluerons l’impact de l’Homme sur les communautés des mammifères marins à une échelle globale. Ces résultats serviront de base à une réflexion multidisciplinaire sur les objectifs, les cibles et les options pour la conservation et la gestion des mammifères marins dans un monde dominé par l’Homme.

Les résultats préliminaires de ce projet suggèrent que pour au moins 30 espèces, l’exploitation par l’Homme a eu pour effet la contraction de leur distribution globale, résultant en l’appauvrissement des communautés de mammifères marins, surtout dans l’Atlantique Nord et le Pacifique Nord.

Ce projet devra contribuer à de meilleures stratégies de conservation et gestion des mammifères marins à l’échelle globale.

Une présentation orale sera donnée en novembre 2012 lors de la Conférence « Oceans Past », en Australie. Celle-ci montrera les résultats préliminaires de la revue des données historiques sur la distribution et l’abondance des mammifères marins.

We live in a human dominated planet, and the oceans are no exception. Through a combination of a growing population, our mounting consumption and waste, and our increasingly sophisticated technologies, human activities now impact all marine ecosystems, from deep-sea to coral reefs, to remote islands to the open ocean. Whereas these changes are accelerating, significant human impact on marine systems started millennia ago. Yet because such change took place gradually and with little recorded evidence, the full scale of the cumulative human impact on marine systems has only recently began to be understood, as anecdotal historical records showed evidence of past seas of spectacular abundance. This case of collective amnesia by the progressive adjustment to increasingly impoverished ecosystems has been termed the ‘shifting baseline’. It affects not only our scientific and popular perception of what natural ecosystems look like in terms of species composition and abundance, it also narrows our perception of the options available for the future.

In this project we investigate the extent to which the introduction of an historical perspective affects perceptions of past human impact, projections of future change, the goals, targets and options considered, and ultimately the recommendations for conservation and management of marine natural resources. We do this through the lens of marine mammals, a particularly interesting group given their strong and long relationship with humans, from millennia-old cave-art, to the near-obliteration of some species through commercial exploitation, to the emotional attachment felt even by many who never been in direct contact with these species. Furthermore, some of these species have important roles in shaping ecosystems, and despite their charisma many remain very poorly known.

In this project, we will bring together an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional, team of experts in complementary fields – including global biodiversity conservation, macroecology, modelling of marine ecosystems, ecology and conservation of marine mammals, and the philosophy of biodiversity conservation – in order to:

1) Bring together information on the historical and current distribution of marine mammals, as a basis for conservation and management strategies at the global scale.

2) Develop robust models for predicting the global distribution of marine mammal species, testing both how these can be improved by better historical baselines and how they can improve our understanding of those baselines.

3) Quantify and map the impact of historical global change on marine mammals, and investigate how they are likely to respond in the future under different scenarios of global change.

4) Develop a coherent and multidisciplinary reflection of the goals, targets and options for the conservation and management of marine mammals within a human-dominated planet, and in that context evaluate the effectiveness of ongoing conservation efforts and develop a future conservation strategy.

5) Finally, to produce a set of policy recommendations for the conservation of marine mammals at the global scale, and disseminate those and the broader results of this project to a wide and diverse audience comprising scientists, stakeholders and the wide public.