09. Seventy-one Important Research Questions for Marine Conservation

Scientific research is something all of us were exposed to in school and something we hear routinely in the news.  In principle, science is supposed to interact with agencies and organizations entrusted with managing protected areas and other managed areas.  Science ultimately provides the information for management decisions and to understand ecological processes and patterns, even while identifying new issues not yet recognized by the public or protected area managers.  We have neither the expertise nor the funding to study everything that needs to be studied.  However, recently the Society for Conservation Biology’s Marine Section developed a list of 71 research questions critical to the advancement of marine conservation.  These questions concern the following:

1. Fisheries
2. Climate Change
3. Other Anthropogenic threats
4. Ecosystems
5. Marine Citizenship
6. Policy
7. Social and Cultural Considerations
8. Scientific Enterprise

An open access paper, Seventy-One Important Questions for the Conservation of Marine Biodiversity, published in Conservation Biology details the questions