This report details the results of testing the draft criteria for the identification of nationally important marine areas (Connor et al., 2002), within the framework of the Irish Sea Pilot. Under the criteria, areas may qualify as nationally important based on their typicalness, naturalness, biodiversity, size, and whether they are a critical area for a mobile species or an important area for a nationally important marine feature (as defined in Lieberknecht et al., 2004a). "Nationally important marine areas", in the context of this report, refers to areas of importance under biological criteria. Areas of importance under geological criteria (nationally important marine earth heritage areas) are discussed in chapter 10 of Vincent et al. (2004).

 

Two approaches to applying the criteria were tested. The first main section of this report (part A) outlines the initial approach, which was to apply the criteria directly at the marine landscape scale, making use of the marine landscape classification developed by Golding et al. (2004). The second approach tested (part B) was to examine the use of the reserve selection software, Marxan, in aiding the process of identifying nationally important marine areas at the regional sea scale.