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2.1.6 Zones
Many activities in Cardigan Bay are zoned.
These include certain recreational, military and fishery
activities. There are also ‘zones of influence’ for
each of the Bay’s relevant authorities, areas over which
they have jurisdiction.
Cardigan Bay does not easily fall into
readily identifiable physical or biological zones as the
fluid nature of the marine environment blurs lines of demarcation
between physical and chemical processes. However, there are
likely to be key habitats or areas of particular importance
to the bottlenose dolphins and it may be possible eventually
to use this information to better compartmentalise the site
as an aid to management. These zones may be based not only
on dolphin preferences but also on physiographic features
such as depth, substrate and currents, and/or maritime activities.
One aim of such zoning would be to reduce detrimental impacts
on the bottlenose dolphins through, for example, reducing
the occurrence of disturbing activities in important dolphin
areas whilst allowing disturbing activities to continue in
non sensitive areas.
Whilst it is currently possible to tentatively
identify some such areas, considerable further research is
required to enable any definitive zoning of the site. This
knowledge shortfall is currently being addressed, in part,
by research projects supported by CCW and the EU Life programme,
for example:
- Broad scale acoustic discrimination
system surveys have mapped the bathymetry and distribution
of seabed communities within the Cardigan Bay cSAC;
- A project to sample benthic fish
within the cSAC will improve our knowledge of the variety,
distribution and abundance of potential seabed prey (in
winter) of the bottlenose dolphins;
- Comparative trials of monitoring
methodologies is providing further information on dolphin
distribution.
