Abstract

Marine spatial planning is an increasingly important strategy for achieving a variety of stakeholder objectives in ocean environments. While many papers have offered general guidelines for marine spatial planning, few have presented scientific analytical tools and approaches that could guide the development of an actual plan. Using the Caribbean island of Barbuda as a case study, we present a simple approach for evaluating alternate marine spatial plans, offering a user-friendly framework to facilitate stakeholder engagement and data driven decision making. We generate a variety of hypothetical marine spatial plans, where each plan is designed to meet a specific ecological, fishery, or tourism objective. We then develop a tradeoff analysis to evaluate and compare these alternate plans, including determining their fishery impact by employing a simple spatial population dynamics model of the Caribbean spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) fishery and calculating changes in yield over time. Ecological and tourism impacts are evaluated based on the total area and diversity of habitat that is protected, and protected habitat that is accessible to recreational divers/snorkelers, respectively. This study demonstrates how a marine spatial plan can be successfully designed and evaluated using the best available science to balance a diverse set of objectives, even in data-limited situations.

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