Marine Protected Areas

Huntsman Marine offers extensive Marine Protected Area planning, baseline, and monitoring experience for use within Atlantic Canada and globally. Our experiences may be leveraged to provide a collaborative approach amongst stakeholders ranging from environmental groups and industry to the benefit of all sectors.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are powerful ocean management tools to protect biodiversity and critical habitats while also providing opportunities for tremendous positive spillover effects to local fisheries (e.g., lobsters, scallops, etc.). In 2023, there were 14 MPAs across Canada to protect over 350,000 km2 or 6% of our total marine and coastal waterways. These MPAs are located in our three oceans with the majority of protected area by far off the northwest coast of Ellesmere Island, Arctic Ocean in the Tuvaijuittuq Marine Protected Area established in August 2019 and contributing 5.55% of our national marine conservation target. Coastal waters adjacent to New Brunswick are presently a minor contributor to meet the Canadian target to protect 30% of our ocean habitats by 2030 with only the Musquash Estuary Marine Protected Area encompassing 7 km2 or < 0.01% of our total marine conservation target. While small this MPA has provided protection since 2006 to the largest ecologically intact estuary in the Bay of Fundy.

If you are inspired to support Huntsman Marine efforts towards biodiversity and marine protected area research then please donate or choose other ways to support our mission today!

Taxonomy & Biodiversity – Huntsman Marine operates a well-established taxonomic identification laboratory, especially focused on benthic and plankton samples from the northwest Atlantic Ocean. We have used this expertise to process benthic samples collected from the Musquash Estuary Marine Protected Area to provide long-term monitoring datasets.

Toxicology – Huntsman Marine toxicology capacity has provided seasonal baseline monitoring assessments with Atlantic silverside (Menidia menidia) captured from the Musquash Estuary Marine Protected Area, including condition, reproductive status, and contaminant exposures as determined by the EROD assay.

Ascension Island Marine Protected Area – In 2019, the entire 445,000 km2 marine zone surrounding Ascension Island was declared to be a Marine Protected Area where no commercial fishing or seabed mining is permitted. Dr. Claire Goodwin visited this MPA has part of an expedition to study the biodiversity using SCUBA. Her efforts included collection of 58 sponge specimens from 17 locations around Ascension Island at depth of 0.5-30 m. Nine new species of demosponges were described to science from this expedition, adding 50% to the number of known species while adding two new genera and on family to the known Ascension Island sponge fauna.

The South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands Marine Protected Area (SGSSI-MPA) – The SGSSI-MPA is one of the largest MPAs in the world with an area of 1.24 million km2 – 17 x larger than New Brunswick! This MPA manages about 4.4% of its area as a no take zone to protect the most biodiverse regions of the seabed with the remaining areas managed through a series of strict seasonal and spatial fishery management measures. Dr. Claire Goodwin recently participated in a SCUBA expedition within the SGSSI-MPA and provided an informative blog series of her time there to enhance our public engagement on marine science, environmental monitoring, SCUBA and MPAs.