A project that was co-negotiated by John Driscoll, a Ph.D. student in the CHANSlab, has won the 2016 Vancouver Aquarium Murray A. Newman Award for significant achievement in aquatic conservation. This award is shared by the team of environmentalists and fishing industry representatives that negotiated the British Columbia bottom trawl habitat management agreement. This agreement, which went into place in 2012, resulted in a suite of regulations that have reduced the fishery’s annual bycatch of coral and sponge by two orders of magnitude, reduced the fishery’s allowable spatial footprint by over 20% from historic levels, prevented the fishery from expanding into previously un-trawled areas, and permanently protected over 80% of particularly sensitive deep-sea habitats from the effects of trawling.
Learn more about the B.C. bottom trawl agreement:
Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARUJb9g3e3o
Initial media: http://www.nafo.int/about/media/oth-news/2012/03-29.html
Journal article: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X15001931