This is the first in a series of baseline marine biological inventories for the Queen Charlotte Islands archipelago including Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve. It focuses only on seaweeds, seagrasses, and marine lichens and begins with an overview of these three types of plants along with their traditional use by the Haida people. Inventory data collection methods are then described and results are presented in the form of species lists and dot maps showing geographic distribution of species. Finally, marine plant issues in Gwaii Haanas management are discussed, including the need for near-shore marine environmental monitoring, kelp forest ecosystem issues (kelp deforestation, the role of sea otters and red sea urchins, kelp forest-associated fisheries), and visitor impacts.

Providing a guide for marine conservation practice, Marine Conservation takes a whole-systems approach, covering major advances in marine ecosystem understanding. Its premise is that conservation must be informed by the natural histories of organisms together with the hierarchy of scale-related linkages and ecosystem processes. The authors introduce a broad range of overlapping issues and the conservation mechanisms that have been devised to achieve marine conservation goals. The book provides students and conservation practitioners with a framework for thoughtful, critical thinking in order to incite innovation in the 21st century. "Marine Conservation presents a scholarly but eminently readable case for the necessity of a systems approach to conserving the oceans, combining superb introductions to the science, law and policy frameworks with carefully chosen case studies. This superb volume is a must for anyone interested in marine conservation, from students and practitioners to lay readers and policy-makers." —Simon Levin, George M. Moffett Professor of Biology, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University