It’s a simple sentence, really. Goal 2 of the N.C. Coastal Habitat Protection Plan reads:

Identify, designate and protect strategic habitat areas.

As simple as it reads, it is no easy task for the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries to point to these particularly important fisheries habitat areas.

It has taken several months of working with university scientists and other agencies to gather and sort through available data to determine what marine fisheries habitats fit the bill – that’s just in the Albemarle Sound area.

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New computer program helps
determine strategic habitat areas

By Richard Davis
Fish-Eye Staff

Biologists with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries have a powerful new tool to assist with managing the state’s coastal resources.

They are using the computer program MARXAN, developed by the University of Queensland in Australia, to locate areas of exceptional marine habitat. Designating these areas as “strategic habitats” is a key element of implementing the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan (CHPP).

Scott Chappell is the division’s point man for the MARXAN mapping project.

“It’s a site selection tool. It’s doing work we couldn’t manually. The number of maps, calculations and time involved would make it impossible. But the program is able to handle huge amounts of data and produce results that best reflect the selection criteria,” Chappell said.

According to Chappell, computer assistance is critical to the success of this complex task because the six habitats covered by the CHPP occur within an area covering 2.5 million acres of water and coastal wetlands.