Meeting big challenges with big solutions

The world’s ocean is crucial for transport, trade, as a sink for our waste products, and as a source of food and materials. Throughout human history these resources have been used with little concern for how the ocean will be impacted over time. However, overexploitation, especially throughout the 20th century, has led to sharp declines in the state of many marine ecosystems and the services they provide.

Overfishing is a particular cause for concern, as it may lead to simplified food webs and functional extinction of certain species. Although predictions that ‘we will all be eating jellyfish sandwiches’  have not yet come to pass, the advice from scientists is clear: declare large areas of the ocean off-limits to fishing and all other extractive uses, and reduce fishing capacity. Consequently, the High Ambition Coalition for People and Wildlife (an intergovernmental group of over 90 countries) is championing a deal to protect 30 per cent of terrestrial and marine habitats by 2030 (30x30). Over 100 nations have now committed to this ambitious target, but it will require a substantial increase in marine protected areas and in the quality and nature of management.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are designed to restrict human activity for a particular purpose, usually conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) defines an MPA as a ‘… clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values’.

The level of protection of an MPA depends on its management objectives and governance types (see Box 1). Creating a new MPA is a complex undertaking in which legal, scientific, and societal considerations feed into an established process. Limits on human activities may be regulated by legal instruments or voluntary arrangements, depending on scale and local circumstances.

Most MPAs cover small areas under 1 square kilometre, and account for less than eight per cent of the ocean (as of 2022). Only 2.7 per cent of global ocean is covered under the highest protection category, despite studies showing that full protection substantially increases conservation by being the most successful tool to deliver restoration and recovery (Fig. 2).

Figure 1 Official Map of all Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in 2020.

Large-scale MPAs

Since 2010, MPA coverage has increased steadily, mostly due to the designation of large-scale MPAs (LSMPAs), which span regions over 100,000 km². Currently more than 50 per cent of the world’s MPA coverage is accounted for by the 10 largest LSMPAs. The first area to be designated as such was a large section of the Australian Great Barrier Reef in 1975. The largest LSMPA to date is the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, which surrounds a portion of the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific and encompasses 1,508,721 km². 100 per cent of its area is designated as a no take zone, the strictest of all MPA categories, where all human activity is strictly limited, and all forms of exploitation are prohibited.

The remote and highly-protected Pitcairn Islands Marine Reserve is the UK’s largest LSMPA and encompasses 834,334 km² in the southern Pacific (Fig. 3). This vast LSMPA aims to protect the area’s remote and pristine environment, such as its elevated coral atoll ecosystem, which has been designated as a World Heritage Site, and several endangered species listed on the IUCN Red List, such as the hawksbill turtle and green turtle. Another key management goal of this important LSMPA is the preservation of customary fishing practices of Pitcairn residents to protect the cultural values of the local community (UK Government, Pitcairn; 2021).

‘Paper parks’ or true conservation?

Although the recent rise in LSMPA designation is encouraging, we should ask whether designation equals effective protection. In general, highly protected MPAs are successful in enhancing fish stocks outside as well as inside MPA boundaries through ‘spillover’ of surplus fish from within the MPA. Furthermore, many fisheries outside MPAs would likely be unsustainable without this spillover. MPAs positively impact biodiversity within their borders. A more diverse fish community may be more resilient to temperature variations, therefore MPAs may indirectly provide some buffering to future climate change.

Advocates of large-scale MPAs argue that larger areas are more effective for regeneration of fish stocks due to increased availability of nursery habitats and more space for larval dispersal. Small MPAs struggle with the protection of highly mobile species such as marine mammals,

sharks, and seabirds, for which LSMPAs can offer improved coverage. Additionally, LSMPAs protect biologically connected and varied ecosystems, as well as offshore and deep ocean habitats such as seamounts, which are particularly vulnerable to, for example, large-scale fishing, deep-sea mining, climate change, and bottom trawling. Ascension Island MPA, in the centre of the Atlantic Ocean, covers an area of 445,000 km², making it one of the 10 largest protected areas in the world. Aside from a narrow band of shallow water habitat around the island and several seamounts, 99.9 per cent of this MPA is comprised of pelagic habitats: open ocean waters between 500 and 4,000 m deep. The Ascension Island MPA offers protection of breeding areas for seabirds and turtles, and large fish such as yellowfin tuna and Galapagos sharks (Ascension Island Government, 2021).

Another important aspect of LSMPAs is that they enable scientists and policy-makers to differentiate between global stressors, such as climate change or ocean acidification, and local stressors, such as resource extraction and lowered water quality, as the latter are often absent in remote LSMPAs.

Many LSMPAs are part of larger collaborative networks such as the Blue Belt Programme, which supports UK Overseas territories with the sustainable management and protection of their environments, currently covering more than 4.3 million km² of ocean (UK Gov, 2022). Another collaboration is the international Big Ocean network of LSMPAs, which includes 17 sites and aims to establish a support and communication platform for LSMPA managers. Their website already features recent updates on LSMPA policies and shares information on how LSMPAs are achieving their objectives. As the website develops, they aim to provide regular ocean podcasts and case studies (Bigoceanmanagers.org, 2022).

Research interest in LSMPAs has increased substantially over the past decade, with 600 scientific articles published in 2021 (Web of Science, 2022), and large news agencies are becoming more and more interested in featuring news about ambitious LSMPA projects (Fig. 4).

Critics of LSMPAs reason that LSMPA designation is often motivated by geopolitical expedience and can be used as a shortcut to achieve international conservation goals with minimal cost and minimal political risk. This is especially true for countries with remote waters, where conservation targets can be met through designating LSMPAs while neglecting domestic conservation. An example of this is the UK, which, as of 2018, protects around 1.5 million km² in overseas territories at a high protection level, but only 7.5 km² within the national waters of the British Isles. Another drawback is that despite the lower protection cost per unit area compared to smaller MPAs, monitoring and enforcement of such vast open ocean areas involves costly investments. Obtaining sustainable funding remains one of the key challenges facing LSMPAs.

Governments often lack the capacity for surveillance and enforcement in remote LSMPAs, the establishment of which may only provide an illusion of marine conservation: the dreaded ‘paper parks’ that effectively do not exist beyond the initial government declaration, while at the same time diverting attention and resources from more threatened, smaller areas near the coast. A number of LSMPA success stories give hope that this issue is resolvable in time. At the Parc Naturel de la Mer de Corail in the Pacific Ocean, a collaboration with oceanic fisheries has been established to support research and surveillance. If funding can be secured, monitoring is likely to be improved through the use of increasingly advanced technology such as drones, autonomous underwater vehicles, remote sensing using satellites, and sensor buoys for acoustic monitoring. In the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) LSMPA, political engagement with Sri Lanka has deterred some fishers engaged in illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUCN Report, 2017). Nevertheless, illegal fishing has driven substantial declines in the shark and reef fish populations, and halting it remains one of the top challenges in this MPA.

Many LSMPAs surround small oceanic islands which rely heavily on international tourism and fisheries. These territories may have to face a choice between poverty or environmentally ruinous growth (see ‘Mass tourism and more fishing. The Blue Belt needs a rethink’, The Marine Biologist, 21, page 16). Some small island governments have attempted to bridge the difficult gap between marine conservation and local fisheries. The Palau Island LSMPA covers an area of 500,000 km² and is fully designated as a no-take area where no fishing is allowed. While this may sound disastrous for local fishers, their income has been largely replaced by high-end tourism. Income from divers prepared to pay a premium for experiencing the recovered stocks of pelagic rays, bigeye tuna, marlin, and swordfish makes up about 40 per cent of Palau’s economy (The Guardian, 2015). Yet, Palau may have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire: the introduction of the fishing ban has resulted in driving up trade in reef fish to replace tuna fishing. This illustrates that LSMPA managers face diverse challenges implementing the correct measures, and more work is needed to prevent unintended consequences.

Box 1. MPA management categories

Category

VI            Sustainable use of natural resources

For an interactive map of all MPAs,
scan this QR code:

Box 2. Citizen science as an additional tool for monitoring and community links

Citizen science programmes which encourage the collection of management-relevant information are a great tool for building links with local communities, and provide hands-on opportunities for volunteers to get involved. One of the most successful citizen science programmes is Eye on the Reef run by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in Australia, which enables reef users to provide scientific data to researchers and reef managers. If you are interested in participating, check out their free app by scanning the QR code below, which allows you to record reef health, animal sightings, or incidents (GBRMPA.gov, 2022). You can also follow their work on Twitter #lovethereef

Going big

Despite some of the current limitations of large-scale MPAs, mainly the maintenance of sufficient funding and achieving effective surveillance and enforcement, they constitute an indispensable tool for healthy oceans. Climate change, including rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification, is a growing threat to marine ecosystems. Direct anthropogenic threats such as habitat destruction, pollution, and overfishing are further increasing the pressure on our seas, urging us to ‘go big’ with marine conservation efforts and to strengthen existing measures. LSMPAs have a number of advantages over small scale MPAs: mainly the coverage of entire ecosystems and ecological processes including migratory species, as well as the protection of cultural spaces and the benefits of international cooperation. In terms of achieving high-level marine conservation goals, LSMPAs are the key players. The sheer size of LSMPAs and their resulting global significance makes them more likely to influence international marine policies compared to small MPAs. Still, it remains the case that the designation of any kind of MPA, whether small or large, in itself will not be enough to ensure true protection and is only the first step towards effective conservation. While some examples of LSMPAs show that management and scientific challenges can be successfully overcome, efficient implementation and governance are required to reach each LSMPA’s full potential and achieve their goal of conserving vast areas of our oceans.   

• Daniela Sturm (danstu@mba.ac.uk), PhD Candidate at the Marine Biological Association.

Further reading

https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/
documents/PAG-026.pdf

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-blue-belt-programme

https://bigoceanmanagers.org/

https://bit.ly/3M5MhV3