Unit 4: Marine Resource Management: Comprehensive Study Guide

1. Marine Resources and Commercial Uses

Definition and Classification of Marine Resources

Marine resources consist of biological, physical, and chemical components located within oceans, seas, and coastal environments that offer ecological, economic, or socio-economic benefits.

Definition: Marine resources encompass all biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) elements present in ocean systems that are utilized or valued by human society and essential for maintaining natural ecosystems.

• Biotic Resources: Living marine organisms, including commercial fish species, shellfish, crustaceans, marine algae, seaweeds, and microbial genetic material utilized in biotechnology.
• Abiotic Resources: Non-living materials, including seabed hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas), polymetallic nodules, sand, gravel, marine minerals, sea salt, ocean space for transport, and ocean energy (tidal, wave, and ocean thermal energy).

Commercial Use of Marine Resources

Marine environments support fundamental global economic industries across primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors.

2. Threats to Marine Ecosystems and Resources

Anthropogenic activities and climate-induced stresses present critical threats to the stability and biological productivity of marine ecosystems.

Major Anthropogenic and Environmental Threats

• Overexploitation and Destructive Fishing: Overfishing reduces target stock populations below sustainable biological limits, while destructive practices like bottom trawling degrade benthic ocean floor habitats.
• Marine Pollution: Land-based agricultural runoff introduces excess nutrients leading to eutrophication and hypoxic dead zones. Microplastics, heavy metals, synthetic chemicals, and offshore oil spills pollute food webs through bioaccumulation.
• Habitat Destruction: Physical clearing of critical coastal habitats including mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and coral reefs due to urban coastal expansion, port construction, and land reclamation.
• Climate Change and Ocean Acidification: Thermal stress causes mass coral bleaching and shifts species distribution ranges. Elevated absorption of atmospheric CO₂ lowers ocean pH, hindering shell and skeleton formation in calcifying organisms.
• Invasive Species: Biological invasion via ship ballast water discharge displaces endemic marine species and destabilizes local ecosystem balances.

3. Marine Ecosystem and Resource Management

Sustainable marine management involves integrated planning frameworks, specialized coastal engineering, and continuous environmental monitoring.

Planning Approaches for Coastal Zones

• Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM): A comprehensive planning framework that aligns policy, economic development, and environmental protection across land-sea interfaces involving multiple stakeholders.
• Marine Spatial Planning (MSP): A public, geographic allocation process that analyzes and assigns human activities in space and time to reduce resource conflicts and safeguard ocean biodiversity.
• Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM): An integrative management approach that focuses on whole ecosystem health, ecological interactions, and human impacts rather than isolated single-species management.
• Marine Protected Areas (MPAs): Geographically defined marine areas regulated to achieve long-term nature conservation by restricting extractive practices like industrial fishing and seabed mining.

Construction Techniques in Coastal Zones

Coastal infrastructure and defense engineering are categorized into hard and soft techniques to mitigate shoreline erosion and sea-level rise impacts.

Monitoring of Coastal Zones

• Remote Sensing and Satellite Tracking: Continuous regional observation of sea surface temperature, ocean color, turbidity, shoreline retreat, and oil spill slicks.
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Spatial mapping software used to analyze biological distributions, resource extraction zones, and coastal vulnerability metrics.
• In-Situ Environmental Sampling: Field testing of physical and chemical parameters, including dissolved oxygen levels, pH, salinity, heavy metal concentrations, and nutrient loads.
• Biological Monitoring: Field assessments measuring fish population demographics, coral cover percentage, biological indicator health, and benthic biodiversity indices.

4. Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs)

Definition and Concept of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs)

Concept of EEZ: Established under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is an ocean zone extending beyond the territorial sea where a coastal state exercises sovereign rights over the exploration, exploitation, conservation, and management of all natural resources (living and non-living) in the water column, seabed, and subsoil.

The EEZ framework balances the sovereign economic jurisdiction of coastal states with maritime freedom rights reserved for foreign nations, such as navigation, overflight, and the laying of submarine cables.

Criteria for Determining the Extent of EEZs

• Baseline Origin: The inner boundary of the EEZ is measured from a state's legal baseline, typically the low-water line along the coast or straight baselines across indented shorelines.
• Standard 200 Nautical Mile Distance: The maximum outer limit of the EEZ cannot exceed 200 nautical miles (NM) from the baseline (where 1 NM ≈ 1.852 kilometers).
• Median Line Principle for Overlapping Claims: When the distance between the baselines of opposite or adjacent coastal states is less than 400 NM, boundaries are established through international agreements using the median or equidistance line principle.
• Extended Continental Shelf Provisions: Sovereign rights over seabed and subsoil non-living resources can extend beyond 200 NM up to a maximum limit of 350 NM or 100 NM beyond the 2,500-meter fathom line if physical continental shelf criteria are validated by the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS).

Common Challenges Faced by Coastal States in Managing EEZs