This is the first volume of theMARE Publication Series, and a cause for celebration. The initiating agency, the Centre for Maritime Research (MARE), is an interdisciplinary social-science organisation based in the Netherlands, whose aim is to provide a platform for the development and exchange of scientific knowledge on the use of marine and coastal resources. Its mission is to be a European research centre that is also explicitly concerned with maritime issues in the South. Its activities include the publication of the refereed journalMaritime Studies/MASTand, on a regular basis, the organisation of conferences on maritime and coastal...

This book is the first volume of the new MARE Publication Series. It brings together several papers showing different disciplinary perspectives on the complex and dynamic interface between people and the sea.People and the Seawas the title of the first International Conference organised by the newly established Netherlands Centre for Maritime Research. MARE¹ was formally established in 2000 upon the initiative of social scientists at the University of Amsterdam, who were mostly involved in fisheries research in Europe and in Asia. During the first three years of its existence MARE has rapidly expanded both in scope and in...

The past forty years have been a time of momentous change globally. An important part of that change has been an increasing awareness of and mounting concern for the erosion of the natural environment including, in particular, the world’s coasts. This paper addresses the conceptual and methodological challenges that are increasingly apparent with regard to the dominant strategy that responds to degradation of the world’s coasts: integrated coastal zone management (ICZM). One of the most important realisations within ICZM in recent years is that natural sciences alone cannot meet the current challenges posed by coasts. It is becoming increasingly apparent,...

Biological diversity (or biodiversity) concerns the richness of life at three levels: genetic, species, and ecosystem (Norse 1993; Heywood 1995). These three aspects are interrelated, since an area with a high environmental variability most likely contains many species, and many species represent a high genetic variation. Within a species, isolated or distant populations may also show genetic diversity. Species richness is the most obvious form of biodiversity.

Concern with regard to the loss of global biodiversity has increased during recent decades (McNeely et al. 1990; Courrier 1992; Groombridge 1992; Dobson 1995; Heywood 1995). Few people realise that the seas and...

Managing a national park of international repute does not mean only preserving its landscape, fauna, and flora in as pristine a state as possible but also comprises the difficult task of reconciling this approach with sometimes very ancient uses of the land and resources. In the case of theParc national du Banc d’Arguinin the West African state of Mauritania the permanent presence of populations within the limits of the park was ignored for many years until conflicts arose, forcing the park’s authorities and their closest partners to rethink their management strategies.

The evolution of fishing practices of the...

The establishment of protected areas is based on the notion that ‘wild’ nature needs to be kept separate from human society in order to preserve it and that it is the duty of the State and its agencies to restrict the use of ecosystems in need of protection (Peluso 1993; Colchester 1994). In this view, protected area establishment and management are largely ‘technical’ matters and the realm of natural scientists such as ecologists, biologists, and conservation managers. These scientists assess the ecological significance of potential protected areas on the basis of ecosystem characteristics, species composition, endemicity, levels of disturbance, and...

Pacific island countries cover a very wide geographical area, spanning more than 10,000 kilometres from west to east. This region is the most diverse in the world for shallow water marine life, a characteristic due in large part to the presence of its extensive coral reefs. There are well over five thousand fish species known to date in this area, of which several hundred have not yet been described. This diversity is reflected in the number of coastal organisms of human interest in this area, as well as by the variety of the uses of lagoon and reef fishes or...

This paper focuses on two European Community instruments, the Birds Directive² and the Habitats Directive,³ that,inter alia, provide for the establishment and management of protected areas, including marine protected areas. The paper uses the examples of shipping and oil exploration to illustrate how the international law of the sea does not permit a coastal state to restrict all human activities to the same degree and by the same route. This paper is a follow-up to a previous paper by the author which addressed more generally the source of European Community Member States’ powers under international law to implement the...

Coastal resources are often managed by more than one agency (e.g. different branches of the government, private, and community organisations) at different political scales (local, municipal, state, national, and international) and in distinct sectors of an economy (e.g. fisheries, tourism, urban development, maritime transportation, and oil drilling). For instance, fisheries departments at any governmental level usually deal with regulations concerning only access to, and use of, fish stocks. Little attention is given to the fact that fishing areas and fishers’ livelihoods are affected by other economic activities taking place at the same time and in the same locality. This lack...

Before any fishing gear was invented, men, women, and children used their hands and feet to capture fish and other aquatic organisms along the shores of rivers and seas. Over the years they developed artisanal fishing techniques to adapt to local conditions, the desired species, and the size targeted. The term ‘fishing’ does not exclusively refer to the catching of fish, instead it touches on the capture of all aquatic organisms (Brandt 1972:2). On Cat Hai Island in North Vietnam I found that people use, a variety of techniques to catch fish and other aquatic organisms (Van Duijn 2002). The...