There is a need for a new system of boundary demarcation based on coordinates of latitude and longitude, to simplify boundary description, as has been implemented in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) of Australia [11]. The latter interfaces zoning boundaries with modern navigating devices, such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and contributes to improve public understanding, enforcement and compliance in the GBRMP. Concerns have also arisen with the original names assigned to each

subzone, which proved complicated, confusing and difficult to remember. In fact, the names have been already changed by stakeholders. For example, fishers refer to the conservation, extractive and non-extractive use subzone selleck screening library as the “Fishing zone”, while tourism operators refer to the conservation and non-extractive use subzone as the “Tourism zone”. A large

Selleck PD 332991 amount of spatially-explicit ecological and fishery related-data has been collected over the last 13 years, but such information has never been integrated and analyzed in a comprehensive way. Indeed, integrated and interdisciplinary studies have been relatively rare in Galapagos, representing only 8% of scientific references published between 1535 and 2007 [41]. Accordingly, there is a need for comprehensive evaluation, integration and coordination to produce suitable spatial planning information. Furthermore, most research has focused on the baseline assessment and ongoing monitoring of biological and oceanographic aspects of the zoning with little attention to the “people side”. For example, in not contrast to the large amounts of temporal and spatial information on the abundance and distribution of target and non-target species that has been collected on a regular basis during

the last decade, little information has been collected on such topics as local fishery knowledge, perceptions about management regulations, market and non-market values of ecosystem services, and historical and current resource use patterns. It is important to recognize that not only fishery management but also the planning, implementing and managing of MPAs require taking into consideration the human dimensions (social, economic and institutional) that affect the outcomes of implementation [35]. Adaptive management has been institutionalized as a management principle in the Galapagos legal framework (i.e., GSL and GMRMP), but it has not been properly implemented. For example, the GMRMP indicates that the zoning system would be adapted and made “permanent” after a two-year period time after declaration, based on the results of an assessment of management effectiveness [17].