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INTERNATIONAL MEETING IN COPENHAGEN WAS DEDICATED TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF A UNIFIED METHODOLOGY FOR DETERMINING VULNERABILITY DEGREE OF SEA AQUATORIES

On May 23–24, 201, scientists from the Barents region gathered in Copenhagen for a working meeting on the Barents Sea under auspices of ICES, a global intergovernmental organization promoting the development of marine science and providing recommendations to support the sustainable use of the seas and oceans. The working meeting was devoted to the problem of identifying areas of the Barents Sea that are of special natural and ecological value in order to obtain the necessary information for spatial planning of economic activities on the Barents Sea shelf. Marine spatial planning, in turn, is one of the main tools for integrated ecosystem-based and environmentally sustainable management of the marine environment of the Barents Sea, including coastal zones.

There are no clear agreed criteria between countries of the Barents region for determining ecological significance of marine areas, their identification and mapping, at present time. Policies and approaches to this problem in the Russian and Norwegian parts of the Barents Sea differ. Consequently, the development of a unified methodology, on the basis of which scientists of two countries could work together in this area, common criteria and formats of scientific data is an important task. Scientists from Murmansk Marine Biological Institute, Senior Researcher of the Laboratory of Plankton, Ph.D., Igor Berchenko and Deputy Director for Science, Ph.D. Denis Moiseev took part in the discussion of these important issues as invited experts.

More information about the event on the ICES website