SeaSketch for Transboundary Marine Mammal Management
In May, 2012, Dr. McClintock participated in the United Nations Environment Program LifeWeb Inter-regional Workshop on Broad-Scale Marine Spatial Planning and Transboundary Marine Mammal Management. In a workshop that brought together marine resource managers, planners and other experts from Aruba, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, France, Grenada, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Norway, Canada, Columbia, the United Kingdom, Barbados, and the United States, McClintock shared how SeaSketch can be used to explore options for corridors designed to protect marine mammals with special focus on humpback whales, sperm whales and dolphins. Using SeaSketch as a platform to share, gather and analyze geospatial information, nations participating in this exercise could potentially collaborate to develop innovative spatial management plans to reduce human impacts on key migration corridors. After SeaSketch is launched in August, the group will create a SeaSketch project as a proof-of-concept and a potential means to tackle the challenge of designing spatial management plans for migratory species.