1 1.10 Application of estuarine and coastal classifications in marine ...

In 1996, the U.S. Magnuson-Stevens Act (reauthorized 2006) mandated the identification
of essential fish habitat (EFH) for ‘quota’ species. The U.S. Congress defined EFH as ‘those
waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding, or growth to maturity’, a
definition that includes the physical, chemical and biological properties of marine areas and the
associated sediment and biological assemblages that sustain fish populations throughout their full
life cycle (DOC, 1997). Habitat Areas of Particular Concern (HAPC) are discrete subsets of EFH
that provide extremely important ecological functions or are especially vulnerable to degradation
and HAPCs can be designated based on: 1) importance of the ecological function provided by
the habitat; 2) extent to which the habitat is sensitive to human-induced environmental
degradation; 3) whether, and to what extent, development activities are, or will be, stressing the
habitat type, and 4) rarity of the habitat type. The HAPC and EFH designations are classes of
habitat required to help prioritize conservation efforts and more effectively target management
activities. The identification and mapping of ecologically meaningful EFH and HAPC provides
important spatial information to support ecosystem-based fisheries management and marine
spatial planning. Fisheries Management Councils are mandated to include maps showing the
geographical location and extent of EFH and HAPC in management plans and identify the
different habitat types designated as EFH. Most mapping data is unlikely to be able to fully
capture the spatial complexity of EFH for most species, particularly for the highly mobile species
typical of the commercial fisheries. The conventional approach has been to determine habitat
associations and then to assign equal value to all such habitat types in the region. While this
implements a precautionary approach, it does not, however, represent the actual faunal
distribution since much of the functionally important spatial heterogeneity is rarely incorporated
in broad scale mapping used to delineate EFH. Recent work for fish associated with coral reef
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