Marine Protected Areas by Nat Spring, Senior Research Director, Earthwatch

There are high hopes for ocean conservation this year, with the UK Marine Bill in the spotlight and government plans in motion for extending protection for marine life around Britain, with seven areas (totalling 10,000sq km) put forward for the UK’s first offshore Special Areas of Conservation (SACs).   The US has also announced huge new protected areas in the Pacific.  These new MPAs, known as “National Monuments” will include some of the Marianas Islands, the deep Marianas Trench and other remote islands such as Kingman Reef and the Palaymara and Johnston atolls*.

During the Vendée Globe, Brian has already sailed past hundreds of protected areas, with hundreds more coming up along the east coast of the Americas.   But why are Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) so important, what can they do to save marine life, and why do we need more if there are so many already?

Although there are over 6,500 MPAs in the world today**, this equates to less than 0.01% of the entire ocean being protected, and many of these MPAs are “paper parks”.   This means that, despite being given official protection, the MPAs have little or no enforcement in place and local communities and other park users are often not aware of the reasons behind restriction to certain activities.  Therefore, the MPA designation can be ineffectual and damaging activities continue.  

However, if managed correctly, MPAs can provide huge benefits to the local population, as well as helping to maintain a healthy marine environment.   Various levels of protection can be set, from no-take zones where no extractive activities are permitted, to carefully controlled multi-use areas.  While all of these approaches have benefits, both environmental and economic, establishing and enforcing no-take zones has proved to be the most successful policy from an environmental point of view.  In no-take zones, marine life is no longer subjected to damage from fishing activities (such as dynamite fishing or trawling), mineral extraction, dredging and other impacts, so it can recover or remain healthy and build up resilience to natural impacts such as storms and hurricanes.   Another benefit is that fish populations do not lose their largest and most reproductively fit adults, which are often targeted by fishermen.  No-take zones provide refuges and act as sources for improving populations in the surrounding area, through processes such as spillover and larval dispersal, which has knock-on benefits for fisheries.  It is also widely realised that an ecosystem that is relatively free from direct human impacts is more likely to be resilient to the impacts of climate change. For example, protected coral reefs often show greater recovery from coral bleaching <http://www.coral.noaa.gov/cleo/coral_bleaching.shtml > than those which are not protected.   An MPA can also become a tourist attraction, and in some instances a selling point for a holiday destination and important for the local economy.  Divers will flock to see an area of healthy coral reef, huge shoals of fish, or endangered shark, dolphin and whale species.  This of course needs to be carefully managed so that tourist activities do not cause further damage to the environment, and some of the income should be directed towards maintaining the MPA.

On all of Earthwatch’s marine projects scientists and volunteers are working closely with local communities to raise awareness of the importance of conserving the marine environment.   Earthwatch is also working with relevant national and international authorities to inform the establishment of new protected areas and to improve the management of existing protected areas on land and in the sea.  For example, research on Dr. Frank Paladino’s project, Costa Rican Sea Turtles , has been instrumental in the establishment of the National Park Las Baulas De Guanacaste.  Dr. Dave Smith’s project in the Seychelles, Coral and Coastal Ecology of the Seychelles , has also made recommendations to enhance protection of coral reefs in the Silhouette Island MPA in the Seychelles.  

* See news stories on the BBC website at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7812786.stm    and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7152087.stm   
**Source www.mpaglobal.org