The Marine Mammal Twinning

Marine mammals play a crucial role in marine ecosystem function, providing valuable ecosystem services. However, many continue to be adversely impacted by human activity and are often underrepresented in Marine Protected Area (MPA) management plans, commonly as a result of low capacity, lack of resources and/or knowledge to implement such plans.

To address this, the Marine Mammal Twinning, entitled ‘Marine mammal protection, a way to enhance transatlantic cooperation between MPA’, and as a part of the EU-funded Ocean Governance Project, has designed and created a toolkit for the inclusion of marine mammals into MPAs, to enable MPA managers to contribute more effectively to the conservation of marine mammals.

Objectives

The Twinning aims to:

Build technical capacities of MPA managers by sharing knowledge, expertise and good practice;
Provide MPA managers with a toolbox (a self-assessment tool to ‘track’ the integration of marine mammals into MPA management plans and a checklist);
Create a peer network to provide assistance to other MPA managers;
Promote the toolbox; and
Adapt the toolbox to other migratory species such as turtles or other significant species in South-East Asia.

Activities & Results

The key components of the project are:

Further refine and develop the products created in the previous phase: a self-assessment tool (for the integration of marine mammals into MPA management plans) and a checklist, testing the self-assessment tool at larger scales.

Promotion and uptake of the toolkit to become a reference tool for marine mammals managers, policy makers and those interested int he conservation of marine mammals.