As the Earth’s changing climate has deepened into a crisis, Arctic region emerged as one of clearest indicators scale and pace that change. ice melts, opportunities are expanding to exploit Arctic’s oil gas reserves, precious metals, fish stocks maritime routes. Increased access development will inevitably generate “system-wide environmental impacts” pose novel management challenges for states....

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is widely used as an initial step towards assessment of environmental status. In the present study, underwater ambient sound recordings from two locations in marine-protected areas (MPAs) Gulf Riga were analysed. Both belong to natural habitat pinnipeds whose vocalisations detected and An increase vocal activity during mating period late winter was revealed, in...

" The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! " —Bryan W. Procter, ca. 1837 There appears to have been little consideration given to the concept of marine reserves in open-ocean ecosystems , whereas a large number of protected areas for coastal marine and estuarine ecosystems have been or are now being developed around the world (Agardy 1994; Rowley 1994). We argue that,...