**2. Marine spatial planning applied to seagrass management**

Seagrasses thrive in aquatic ecosystem, especially in open tidal areas and coastal waters or lagoon that are basically mud, sand, gravel, and dead coral faults, with a depth of 4 meters. Seagrass beds are formed on the seabed which is still penetrated by enough sunlight for growth [1]. In the world, there are estimated 55 species of seagrass, 12 of which are found in Indonesia. Almost all substrates can be overgrown with seagrass, ranging from muddy to rocky substrates. But extensive seagrass beds are more often found in thick sandy-mud substrates between mangrove swamp forests and coral reefs [2]. Some species such as *Thalassia testudinum* can grow rapidly, with a leaf growth rate of 2 cm per day.

Coastal water seagrass habitats are of critical importance to many factors in the life cycle of fish such as spawning ground, nursery grounds, and feeding grounds. The costal living organisms that live in association with physical coastal and marine environment include baronang fish (*Siganus sp.*), groupers, green turtles, dugong, crustaceans, mollusks (*Pinna sp., Lambis sp., Strombus sp.*), Echinodermata (*Holothuria sp., Synapta sp., Diadema sp., Archanster sp., Linckia sp.*), and sea worms (*Polychaeta*). Therefore, waters that have seagrass beds are productive fishery regions, where many methods can be employed, such as net sets, lift nets, clam collectors, and seaweed collectors.

The existence of seagrass beds makes the location of fish life relevant to the fishing area at the marine spatial planning areas. The utilization of Indonesian marine fish resources in various regions is uneven. In some territorial waters, there are still big opportunities for underexploited development, while in some other areas, it has reached overfishing conditions. The division of fishing areas between small- and medium-scale fisheries has not been well implemented. Fishing pressure is common in coastal areas where small- and medium-sized fishermen carry out fishing activities at the same time.

The main problem faced in an effort to optimize fishing is the very limited data and information regarding oceanographic conditions that are closely related to potential fishing areas. The Indonesian fishing fleet is dominated by smallscale community fishing fleets, while the number of fishermen from year to year shows significantly increasing numbers. The fleet of fishers departs from the base not to catch but to find fishing locations so that it is always in an uncertainty about the potential location for fishing, so the catch is also uncertain. Besides that, as a result of the uncertainty of fishing locations, fishing vessels spend a lot of time and fuel searching for fishing ground locations, and this means there is a waste of fuel.

*Strengthening Democracy in Indonesian Marine Spatial Planning through Open Spatial Data DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88287*
