Marine Management Challenges: How Ocean Zoning Can Overcome Them

There is a fundamental dilemma in ocean management: the scales at which we can readily practise effective management, and the scales upon which marine ecosystems operate, are wholly different. This is not an esoteric problem; the result of this mismatch of scales is that most of the small-scale management interventions we practise today – regulations regarding a single fishery or establishment of an MPA – do not add up to effective protection across the scales of marine or coastal ecosystems, let alone regions, whole seas or the global ocean (Agardy, 2005).