ABSTRACT
Ocean zoning is best conceived as a management process utilizing many different tools, as the circumstances warrant and allow. This zoning process is commonly embedded in the wider and much more nebulous management endeavour known as marine spatial planning or maritime spatial planning (the favoured term for integrated marine management in Europe). As discussed in Chapter 1, not all MSP efforts necessarily result in comprehensive ocean zoning, nor does ocean zoning only result from a stated MSP process. I have argued that undertaking the MSP process without committing to zoning misses a great opportunity to improve ocean management and in some cases is just a new way of dressing status quo approaches to new and growing marine management challenges. But let's explore the ocean zoning process itself: where it is generic, and where the process must be tailored to the special circumstances of time and place.
