Costa Rica Creates Giant Marine Reserve

Two weeks ago the Costa Rican government announced formation of one of the biggest marine protected areas in the eastern Pacific Ocean—a move that will help protect habitat for sharks, tuna, sea turtles, and other tropical marine species. The new Seamounts Marine Management Area surrounds Cocos Island, a tiny tropical island more than three hundred miles off the western shore of Costa Rica. The area is home to thirty forms of marine life found only in the waters off Costa Rica, and supports one of the largest concentrations of big sharks found anywhere in the world.

“This new protected area gives us a better chance to ensure that these species will thrive for future generations to marvel at for many decades to come,” said Dr. Bryan Wallace of Conservation International, one of the groups that pushed to create the new reserve.

The Seamounts Marine Management Area covers close to a million hectares (a hectare is about two and a half acres), and dramatically expands the boundaries of an existing protected area in the waters of Cocos Island National Park. The protected area gets its name from a cluster of seamounts, or underwater mountains, located within its boundaries. Seamounts are among the least-explored but most vulnerable ecosystems in the oceans, making protection of the ones near Cocos Island particularly important. The tops of many seamounts are home to a vast diversity of slow-growing invertebrates such as corals and sea lilies.

Some seamount species are unique to a particular cluster of seamounts, having evolved in isolation over millions of years. Unfortunately many of these ecosystems have been severely damaged by ocean trawling, a fishing practice that involves scraping the ocean floor to catch bottom-dwelling fish. Fishing trawls break, bury, and otherwise damage corals and other life forms that live on seamounts, devastating marine habitats that will take centuries to recover. Luckily seamounts near Cocos Island have never been trawled so far, and the new protected area should help keep them safe for the future.

“Creating a protected seamount area sets an important precedent,” said Marco Quesada from Conservation International. “Seamounts host endemic species, and the deep water that upwells along their sides brings nutrients that support rich feeding grounds for sea life on the surface. Seamounts serve as stepping stones for long-distance migratory species, including sharks, turtles, whales and tuna.”

In addition to preserving important seamounts, the new protected area excludes certain types of fishing within its boundaries. At the same time long-line fishing will still be allowed in parts of the protected area—a decision that has already drawn criticism from environmentalists. Conservation groups say all types of fishing should be banned in the protected area, providing a fully protected sanctuary where large fish populations can recover.

Even with the continued practice of long-line fishing, establishment of the Seamounts Marine Management Area is a big leap forward for threatened sea life. The protected area is home to large but vulnerable fish species like the white-tipped reef shark, scalloped hammerhead shark, whale shark, and tuna. It also provides habitat for the critically endangered leatherback turtle. Sharks and other large fish are concentrated in the area near Cocos Island partly because the cluster of now-protected seamounts provides habitat for the smaller fish they feed on.

The Marine Seamounts Management Area is bigger than Yellowstone National Park in the United States, and is the second largest protected area in the eastern tropical region of the Pacific Ocean. If protections for the area can be successfully implemented by the Costa Rican government, it could serve as a model for other countries looking to protect their own marine resources.

Source: http://featured.matternetwork.com/2011/3/costa-rica-creates-huge-marine.cfm

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Oh! Canada! Study: Fishing Allowed In 99% of MPAs On Canada's Pacific Coast

Kim Wright, Marine Planning and Protected Areas Campaign Manager for Living Oceans Society. credit Living Oceans


VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Fishing is allowed in all but one percent of Marine Protected Areas (MPA) on Canada's Pacific coast, according to a study conducted by Living Oceans Society and published in Marine Policy this month. This is in spite of the fact that over half of the MPAs are officially rated as "strictly protected" and are intended to prohibit all fishing.

"Marine Protected Areas should be safe havens where species can regenerate, but the great majority of our MPAs are really just paper parks that offer almost nothing in the way of ocean conservation or sustainable fisheries," says Kim Wright, Living Oceans Society's Marine Planning and Protected Areas Campaign Manager.


To build an effective network of MPAs, federal, provincial and municipal government agencies that designate MPAs need to ensure that the appropriate fishing closures are put in place by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). The Marine Policy article, Commercial Fisheries Closures in Marine Protected Areas on Canada's Pacific Coast: The Exception, not the Rule, reveals all levels of government are failing to coordinate their efforts and provide real protection for the ocean ecosystem.

Dr. Isabelle Coté, a Marine Protected Area specialist and professor at Simon Fraser University says that this study emphasizes the need to improve our network of MPAs if we want to reap the benefits. "Marine reserves, in which no fishing is permitted, increase the abundance and diversity of marine life within their boundaries," says Coté. "This study shows that the MPAs on Canada's Pacific coast are less likely to show the same positive effects."

Living Oceans Society is calling on the federal and provincial governments to address this issue coast wide, starting with the region known as the Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area (PNCIMA) which extends from Vancouver Island north to the Alaska Border. The federal government, First Nations governments and stakeholders are currently working together to develop a marine plan for this region. According to Living Oceans Society, this is the perfect opportunity for all parties to work together to upgrade and improve the existing network of MPAs.

This will also help Canada live up to its international commitment, through the Convention on Biological Diversity, to build a network of MPAs by 2012 that encompasses 10 percent of every habitat type globally.

"As the nation with the longest coastline in the world, it is shocking so few MPAs exist and that fishing is allowed in almost all of them, including those classified as strictly protected," says Wright.

Source: http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=17509610384

What YOU can do:
Contact Fisheries and Oceans Pacific offices and encourage them to enforce MPAs. Respectfully ask that these areas be protected according to the committements the Canadian government set forth through the Convention on Biological Diversity:

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Contact-eng.htm

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About Oceanic Defense
We are an international non-profit organization with members in over 60 countries, spanning 6 continents with 1 mission; healthy aquatic ecosystems free from human abuse and neglect. Oceanic Defense teaches people to protect our oceans by acting responsibly as consumers and by making smart decisions in our daily lives. Whether we are buying groceries, commuting to work, planning a vacation or advocating within our own communities; each action we take or decision we make either helps or hurts our oceans. We empower people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and work together to protect our blue planet.

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Chagos designated as a no-take marine reserve

From our friends at Protectchagos.org:

David Miliband today designated the Chagos as a no-take marine reserve.
This declaration will make it the largest marine protected area in the world, totaling more than 210,000 square miles - an area twice the size of the UK. The combination of tropical islands, unspoiled coral reefs and adjacent oceanic abyss makes this area comparable in global importance to the Great Barrier Reef or Galapagos Islands.

As a fully protected marine reserve, all extractive activities, such as industrial fishing and deep sea mining will be prohibited. This decision will safeguard the rich diversity of marine life found in the Chagos.

More than 275,000 people from over 200 nations and territories, as well as many leading scientific and conservation organizations, sent messages in support of full protection of the Chagos Islands and their surrounding waters. Thank you so much for being one of them!
Research indicates that 90 percent of large fish species have been wiped out over the past five decades by commercial fishing, and the hunt for what remains continues unabated. No-take marine reserves are scientifically proven to be an effective tool to protect and restore marine ecosystems and the species they support.

The waters around the Chagos are by far the richest marine ecosystem under UK jurisdiction. They have the largest and some of the most diverse undisturbed reefs in the Indian Ocean and are home to the world’s biggest living coral structure – the Great Chagos Bank - with over 220 coral species (almost half the recorded species of the entire Indian Ocean) and more than 1,000 species of reef fish.

Once again, thank you so much for supporting this campaign. Following pressure from the Chagos Environment Network and others, the government has made a truly historic decision and set a new global benchmark for responsible ocean stewardship. But we couldn’t have done it without you.

For more information on the Chagos please visit: http://protectchagos.org

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About Oceanic Defense
We are an international non-profit organization with members in over 60 countries, spanning 6 continents with 1 mission; healthy aquatic ecosystems free from human abuse and neglect. Oceanic Defense teaches people to protect our oceans by acting responsibly as consumers and by making smart decisions in our daily lives. Whether we are buying groceries, commuting to work, planning a vacation or advocating within our own communities; each action we take or decision we make either helps or hurts our oceans. We empower people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and work together to protect our blue planet.

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Maldives Declares All Its Territorial Waters a Shark Sanctuary

The Maldives definitely knows who's paying the bills these days... The low-lying Indian Ocean nation has declared the entirety of its 90,000 square mile Exclusive Economic Zone a shark sanctuary, banning all fishing as well as imports and exports of shark fins.

Tourism now forms the majority of the Maldives' economy, but fishing is growing in importance and competing with tourism in terms of preserving the very natural resources people come to see. In the case of sharks, the more than 30 species found in the waters around the Maldives.

Praising the move, Matt Rand, director of Global Shark Conservation for the Pew Environment Group said:

Countries are beginning to recognize just how important vibrant shark populations are to healthy ecosystems, and to their ecotourism industries. Today's announcement protects the Maldives' tourism industry from the the ravages of the shark fin trade. It is a bold and farsighted move on the part of the government of the Maldives.

Source: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/03/maldives-declares-all-its-waters-shark-sanctuary.php

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About Oceanic Defense
We are an international non-profit organization with members in over 60 countries, spanning 6 continents with 1 mission; healthy aquatic ecosystems free from human abuse and neglect. Oceanic Defense teaches people to protect our oceans by acting responsibly as consumers and by making smart decisions in our daily lives. Whether we are buying groceries, commuting to work, planning a vacation or advocating within our own communities; each action we take or decision we make either helps or hurts our oceans. We empower people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and work together to protect our blue planet.

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Participation Important for Healthy Marine Parks

ScienceDaily— The involvement of locals is a key ingredient in the success of marine parks which protect coral reefs and fish stocks.

The largest-scale study to date of how coastal communities influence successful outcomes in marine reserves has found that human population pressure was a critical factor in whether or not a reserve succeeded in protecting marine resources -- but so too was local involvement in research and management.

The team looked at how successful coral reef marine reserves were at conserving fish stocks. They studied 56 marine reserves from 19 different countries throughout Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Caribbean.

"About ¾ of the marine reserves we studied showed a positive difference in the amount of fish inside compared to outside -- so most reserves we studied were working" says Dr Josh Cinner of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.

"However, the differences weren't always large. The most successful reserves showed really big differences of 14 times the amount of fish inside compared to outside, but that wasn't always the case.

"What we were most interested in, was understanding what made some reserves more successful than others. One of the best predictors of how 'successful' a marine reserve was, is actually the size of the human communities around the reserve -- but interestingly, this varied in different regions.

"In the Indian Ocean, for example, where reserves are government-controlled and moderate in size (around six square kilometres on average), having lots of people nearby had a positive effect. But this could be because marine resources outside the reserve are heavily degraded, accentuating the healthier state of those inside the reserve.

"In the Caribbean, we found the opposite. Large human populations near reserves led to poor performance of the reserve -- which may be due to low compliance or poor enforcement in marine parks near population centers," Dr Cinner said.

The other key ingredient for a successful marine reserve was the level of poaching in the reserve. But importantly, the team found that compliance with reserve rules was not just related to the level of enforcement, but also to a range of social, political, and economic factors which enabled people to co-operate better in protecting their marine resources. Reserves worked best where there was a formal consultation processes about reserve rules, where local people were able to participate in monitoring the reserve, and when ongoing training for community members was provided so that they could better understand the science and policy.

"It was clear that this type of local involvement was a very important factor in building the local support necessary to make reserves successful. Park agencies need to foster conditions that enable people to work together to protect their local environment, voluntarily, rather than focusing purely on regulations and patrols.

"Enforcement will almost always be an important part of a successful reserve, but there is a lot of ocean out there to patrol and many of the places we studied were poor, developing countries which don't have the luxury of being able to invest in lots of patrol boats.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100222100817.htm

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About Oceanic Defense
We are an international non-profit organization with members in over 60 countries, spanning 6 continents with 1 mission; healthy aquatic ecosystems free from human abuse and neglect. Oceanic Defense teaches people to protect our oceans by acting responsibly as consumers and by making smart decisions in our daily lives. Whether we are buying groceries, commuting to work, planning a vacation or advocating within our own communities; each action we take or decision we make either helps or hurts our oceans. We empower people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and work together to protect our blue planet.

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Study: Coral Loss Slowed, Reversed By Marine Protected Areas; 'Cumulative Effects Could Be Substantial'

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina -- A new worldwide study shows marine protected areas (MPAs), underwater parks where fishing and other potentially harmful activities are regulated, provide an added bonus – helping coral reef ecosystems ward off and recover from threats to their health.

Researchers also found the protective effects of MPAs generally strengthen over time.

The findings, published in the Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010, issue of the journal PLoS One, are the first comprehensive global study to gauge the impact of marine protected areas on the health of corals.

Such havens have proved successful in protecting fish, leading to optimism among researchers that they may also indirectly help corals by restoring reef-based food webs. Previous studies also suggested that such conservation zones can directly protect reefs from problems such as overfishing, anchor damage and sediment and nutrient runoff pollution from adjacent land.

Marine scientists Elizabeth Selig, Ph.D., and John Bruno, Ph.D., from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, analyzed a global database of 8,534 live coral cover surveys conducted between 1969 and 2006. They compared changes in coral cover in 310 marine protected areas to those in nearby unprotected areas, looking at 4,456 reefs in 83 countries. Coral cover, or the percentage of the ocean floor covered by living coral tissue, is a key measure of the health of coral ecosystems.

“We found that, on average, coral cover in protected areas remained constant, but declined on unprotected reefs,” said Selig, the study’s lead author, who completed the work for her doctoral dissertation at UNC. She is now a researcher with Conservation International.

Bruno, associate professor of marine sciences in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences, said the results also suggest the protective benefits of such areas increase with time. Initially, coral cover continued to decrease after protections were put in place. However, several years later, rates of decline slowed and then stopped.

For example, in the Caribbean, coral cover declined for about 14 years after protection began – possibly due to the time it took for fisheries to rebound – but then stopped falling and began to increase. In the Indo-Pacific, cover kept declining for the first five years after protections were established, then began to improve, eventually reaching growth rates of two percent yearly after two decades.

“Given the time it takes to maximize these benefits, it makes sense to establish more marine protected areas. Authorities also need to strengthen efforts to enforce the rules in existing areas,” Bruno said.

From 2004 to 2005, the most recent complete year in the database, coral cover within protected areas increased by 0.05 percent in the Caribbean and 0.08 percent in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In contrast, coral cover on unprotected reefs declined by an average of 0.27 percent in the Caribbean, and 0.41 percent and 0.43 percent in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, respectively.

The paper noted that the results may even be a conservative estimate of the benefits because regulations aimed at controlling fishing, poaching and other activities in many MPAs in the tropics are poorly enforced. In addition, most areas have only recently been established (almost 60 percent of the surveys in the analysis were from areas less than 15 years old).

“Although the year-to-year changes in coral cover may seem trivial over the short term, the cumulative effects could be substantial over several decades,” Selig said.

However, Selig and Bruno said it remains to be seen whether the observed benefits of MPAs are sufficient to offset coral losses from major disease
outbreaks and bleaching events, both of which are predicted to increase due to climate change. That concern is backed by their finding that widespread warming events like the strong El Niño climatic event of 1998 drastically reduced the positive effects of protective zones. “Marine protected areas are clearly a key tool for coral reef conservation, but we will still have to focus on implementing policies that will reduce climate change,” they said.

The research was supported by funding from UNC, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation.

Source: http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=02410961875

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About Oceanic Defense
We are an international non-profit organization with members in over 60 countries, spanning 6 continents with 1 mission; healthy aquatic ecosystems free from human abuse and neglect. Oceanic Defense teaches people to protect our oceans by acting responsibly as consumers and by making smart decisions in our daily lives. Whether we are buying groceries, commuting to work, planning a vacation or advocating within our own communities; each action we take or decision we make either helps or hurts our oceans. We empower people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and work together to protect our blue planet.

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New Southern California underwater marine habitats approved

LOS ANGELES - State authorities approved new underwater marine habitats off Southern California's coast Wednesday, restricting fishing and diving in areas where stocks have been severely depleted in recent decades.

The move by the California Dept. of Fish and Game Commission comes after months of wrangling over details of the plan, which establishes new, protected marine habitats around the Channel Islands, Palos Verdes Peninsula and near the Bolsa Chica wetlands, among other areas.

Perhaps most controversial for local recreational anglers is the inclusion in the plan of fishing restrictions near Rocky Point - a popular spot off the Palos Verdes Peninsula. While some areas near Point Vicente will fall under protection, large swaths will remain open for fishing and lobster diving.

Scientists have long promoted the creation of underwater marine reserves as a way to protect wildlife and submerged environments - much like national and state parks do on land.

The development of the new zones - or marine protected areas - is the result of a 1999 law known as the Marine Life Protection Act, which established the need for protected wildlife preserves off California's 1,100 miles of coastline.

Biologists believe that by protecting critical breeding and feeding areas, fish and other sea creatures

will eventually return to healthy population levels, creating a "spillover" effect that will ultimately benefit commercial and recreational anglers.

But drawing up the boundaries of those zones has been the subject of a long, heated debate involving marine biologists, commercial fishermen, recreational anglers and business owners for the past year.

In the end, the network of protected areas approved by the Fish and Game Commission during Wednesday's hearing in Los Angeles combined a mix of commercial and environmental priorities.

"It doesn't scratch everybody's itch...but we think it's the best possible approach to lead us into a sustainable future," said Cathy Reheis-Boyd, chairwoman of the Fish and Game task force that drew up the map.

The new rules begin phasing in around late 2010.

See Map here: http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site204/2009/1209/20091209_080147_MLPA%20MAP.pdf

Source: http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_13962234

Marine Reserves Can Be An Effective Tool For Managing Fisheries

Monitoring of marine protected areas ranges from scuba surveys of fish to intertidal surveys of invertebrates and algae. (Credit: Photos by Robert Schwemmer/NOAA)

ScienceDaily — Studies conducted in California and elsewhere provide support for the use of marine reserves as a tool for managing fisheries and protecting marine habitats, according to biologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

A recent study in the Gulf of California, for example, confirmed the validity of a key concept behind marine reserves--the idea that offspring produced in a protected area can replenish the stocks of harvested species outside the reserve.

"It seems really obvious, but it had never been tested," said Peter Raimondi, professor and chair of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC and coauthor of a paper describing the findings in the journal PLoS One.

"We created a model to predict the dispersal of larvae outside the reserves, and the results were completely consistent with our predictions," he said.

Raimondi is involved in a collaborative project (called PANGAS) in which researchers are working with Mexican fishing communities to study and manage fisheries in the northern Gulf of California. Local fishermen in the area of Puerto Peñasco set up a network of marine reserves as part of a community-based effort to manage their resources. Ecological and social studies conducted before, during, and after the establishment of those reserves enabled the researchers to track the results.

Raimondi emphasized that resource managers have a wide range of tools at their disposal and must take into account both biological and social factors in choosing the best approach. Many species, such as tuna and squid, move around too much to be protected by setting aside certain areas. For species that tend to stay put, marine protected areas can range from no-take reserves to various levels of limited harvesting, and sometimes involve restrictions on who can harvest fish in an area rather than how much can be taken.

The establishment of marine protected areas along the California coast, as called for in the 1999 Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), has been controversial. A network of protected areas was established on the Central Coast in 2006, and a plan for the North-Central Coast was adopted in August 2009. In Southern California, a task force will soon make recommendations to the state Fish and Game Commission, while on the North Coast the planning process is just getting started.

Raimondi and Mark Carr, also a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, have been actively involved in this initiative. In addition to serving on science advisory teams, they are engaged in an intensive monitoring program to track the effects of the reserves that have already been established.

"We are monitoring those areas at unprecedented levels. It's a comprehensive effort to characterize the populations and the ecosystems so that we can compare the responses to different types of protection," Carr said. "Monitoring studies around the globe systematically show positive responses within protected areas. We want to really identify what aspects of reserve design are important in influencing those benefits."

According to Carr, it will take a few more years of monitoring to see the effects of the Central Coast reserves. In the Channel Islands, however, where reserves were established in 2003 (separately from the MLPA process), surveys have yielded the kinds of results scientists expect to see in protected areas. For example, fish species targeted by fishermen tend to be bigger and more plentiful within the reserves.

This effect is important, because studies have shown that larger, older females are much more important than younger fish in maintaining healthy populations of species such as West Coast rockfish.

"When you have a protected population, you not only get spillover effects when fish swim out of the reserve and get caught, you also have major effects on larval production," Carr said. "The bigger, older fish in the reserve produce a lot of larvae that replenish the fished populations outside."

Carr, who contributed to a report on the first five years of monitoring in the Channel Islands, said that the conclusions are limited by a lack of data collected before the reserves were created. It is possible that some of the observed differences existed before the areas were protected, but such doubts will be erased if current population trends continue, he said.

In Puerto Peñasco, the shellfish harvested by local fishermen grow and reproduce quickly. As a result, the fishermen saw beneficial effects within a year after they had established a network of reserves. Subsequent events, however, underscored the role of social factors in the success of fishery management efforts. A second paper, published in PLoS ONE in July, describes how, after its initial success, the local reserve system collapsed due to poaching by outsiders.

"The whole thing got wiped out due to disruption of the social structure that had supported it," Raimondi said. "Scientifically it was really interesting, but for the people who experienced it on the ground, it was terrible."

Richard Cudney-Bueno, a research associate at UCSC's Institute of Marine Sciences and cofounder of the PANGAS project, is the lead author of both papers. "Here was a group of fishermen that had already seen some declines in the shellfish they harvested. This led to the implementation of community-based efforts to manage their resources, including the establishment of marine reserves," he said. "We found that local control of community resources can work, but there has to be broader government support to back up the local efforts."

A native of Mexico City, Cudney-Bueno has been working with Mexican fishing communities and conducting ecological and social research in the Gulf of California since the mid-1990s. He now has a joint position with UCSC, the University of Arizona, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The first reserve in the Puerto Peñasco area was established in 2001 around an island. Cudney-Bueno and other researchers, working with a Mexican nonprofit organization (Centro Intercultural de Estudios de Desiertos y Océanos), trained the fishermen to monitor shellfish populations in and around the reserve. "The response was really quick, so they could see a classic reserve effect one year later," Cudney-Bueno said. "That led to more areas being closed, and the first paper shows the effects of the network of reserves."

The cooperative was so successful it was recognized by the Mexican government with a Presidential Conservation Award. But word spread quickly along the coast about the thriving shellfish populations in Puerto Peñasco, and other fishermen from outside the community began to move in and poach from the reserves. After poaching began, the system of cooperation that had established and protected the reserves broke down.

Now, the situation is beginning to improve again, Cudney-Bueno said. The Mexican government has created one of a handful of exclusive fishing zones in the Gulf of California, giving the local cooperative the exclusive legal right to harvest shellfish in the Puerto Peñasco area.

"They now have a strong management plan with legal rights and government support, so I think they will be able to get back to where they were before the poaching started," Cudney-Bueno said. "I see it as part of the evolution of a management system. Social change takes time, and it really hasn't been that long. A lot is happening now in Mexico and around the world as local people are increasingly asking for control over their resources. Various fishing communities in Mexico, including lobster and abalone fishermen in Baja California, have moved forward with the establishment of their own marine reserves and government-backed forms of territorial-use rights."

The PANGAS project, which brings together experts from UCSC, the University of Arizona, and several collaborating academic institutions and nonprofit organizations in Mexico, is working with other fishing communities in the Gulf of California to develop management plans for the region's marine resources.

"PANGAS is now working with the Mexican government to build management plans for a series of species in the northern Gulf of California," Raimondi said. "It's interesting to compare that with the MLPA process in California. The approaches are very different, and it has to do with differences in government and social structures."

According to Carr, the California MLPA process is now being used as a model in other parts of the world, most notably in the United Kingdom.

Souce: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091109142129.htm