Bonn, 7 June 2022 - The 2nd ASCOBANS Workshop on MPA Management for Small Cetaceans took place in Helsinki, at the kind invitation of the Ministry of the Environment, Finland, from 31 May to 2 June 2022.

The workshop objectives were to strengthen and expand the toolbox from the 1st Workshop (2021), with circa 20 people attending. The intention was to improve on the conservation objectives that had been developed in the 1st Workshop by answering the questions left from the previous meeting; and clarifying, expanding and adding descriptions for conservation measures. The 1st Workshop had considered measures related to bycatch, impulsive/acute underwater noise, continuous/chronic underwater noise, environmental contaminants and pollutants, prey depletion, disturbance fro the presence of humans, and habitat quality (see report). The 2nd Workshop also considered additional conservation measures related to pressures in two groups: i) direct threats and contaminants, and ii) prey depletion and habitat quality.

The workshop agreed on suggesting some precautionary measures in case there was limited knowledge available, and did exercises using result chains to explore how measures would work where the perception of what would happen were true as a way to assess progress. The workshop report will be made available on the ASCOBANS website in due course. The intention was that the report will be an expanded version of the report from the 1st Workshop to have all the results in one document, so it can work as a toolbox for MPA managers. The organising committee for the MPA Workshop also discussed the possibility of extracting the toolbox from the report, to make it available separately online, for example.

Workshop participants. © ASCOBANS Secretariat

The workshop was jointly organised by the Ministry of the Environment of Finland, WWF Germany, WWF Sweden, Coalition Clean Baltic, Natura 2000 Biogeographical Process, and ASCOBANS.