World coming up short on promised marine sanctuaries
"With less than 10 percent of the ocean designated as MPAs (marine protected areas) and only 2.7 percent fully or highly protected, it is going to be difficult to reach the 30 percent target," said Lance Morgan, head of the Marine Conservation Institute in Seattle, Washington.
The institute maps the MPAs for an online atlas, updating moves to meet the 30 percent goal that 196 countries signed onto in 2022, under the Kunling-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
The ambition is notably at risk because "we see countries like the US reversing course and abandoning decades of bipartisan efforts" to protect areas of the Pacific Ocean, Morgan said.
That referred to an April executive order by President Donald Trump authorising industrial-scale fishing in big swathes of an MPA in that ocean.
Currently, there are 16,516 declared MPAs in the world, covering just 8.4 percent of the oceans.
But not all are created equal: some forbid all forms of fishing, while others place no roles, or almost none, on what activities are proscribed or permitted.
"Only a third of them have levels of protection that would yield proper benefits" for fish, said Joachim Claudet, a socio-ecology marine researcher at France's CNRS.
Daniel Pauly, a professor of fisheries science at Canada's University of British Columbia, said "the marine protected areas have not really been proposed for the protection of biodiversity" but "to increase fish catches".
A proper MPA "exports fish to non-protected zones, and that should be the main reason that we create marine protected areas -- they are needed to have fish", he said.
When fish populations are left to reproduce and grow in protected areas, there is often a spillover effect that sees fish stocks outside the zones also rise, as several scientific journals have noted, especially around a no-fishing MPA in Hawaiian waters that is the biggest in the world.
One 2022 study in the Science journal showed a 54 percent in crease in yellowfin tuna around that Hawaiian MPA, an area now threatened by Trump's executive order, Pauly said.
Fishing bans
For such sanctuaries to work, there need to be fishing bans over all or at least some of their zones, Claudet said. But MPAs with such restrictions account for just 2.7 percent of the ocean's area, and are almost always in parts that are far from areas heavily impacted by human activities.
In Europe, for instance, "90 percent of the marine protected areas are still exposed to bottom trawling," a spokesperson for the NGO Oceana, Alexandra Cousteau, said. "It's ecological nonsense."
Pauly said that "bottom trawling in MPAs is like picking flowers with a bulldozer... they scrape the seabed".
Oceana said French MPAs suffered intensive bottom trawling, 17,000 hours' worth in 2024, as did those in British waters, with 20,600 hours. The NGO is calling for a ban on the technique, which involves towing a heavy net along the sea floor, churning it up.
A recent WWF report said that just two percent of European Union waters were covered by MPAs with management plans, even some with no protection measures included.
The head of WWF's European office for the oceans, Jacob Armstrong, said that was insufficient to protect oceanic health.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Euronews
a day ago
- Euronews
AI pioneer launches non-profit to develop safe-by-design AI models
One of the world's most cited artificial intelligence (AI) researchers is launching a new non-profit that will design safe AI systems. Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian-French AI scientist who has won the prestigious Alan Turing Prize for his work on deep learning and has been dubbed one of the "godfathers" of AI, announced the launch of LawZero in Montreal. The new non-profit is assembling a "world-class" team of AI researchers that is dedicated to "prioritising safety over commercial imperatives," a statement from the non-profit reads. "Today's frontier AI models are developing dangerous capabilities and behaviours, including deception, self-preservation, and goal misalignment," Bengio said in the statement, noting that the organisation will help unlock the "immense potential" of AI while reducing these risks. Bengio said the non-profit was born of a new "scientific direction" he took in 2023, which has culminated in "Scientist AI," a new non-agentic AI system he and his team are developing to act as a guardrail against "uncontrolled" agentic AI systems. This principle is different than other companies in that it wants to prioritise non-agentic AIs, meaning it needs direct instructions for each task instead of independently coming up with the answers, like most AI systems. The non-agentic AIs built by LawZero will "learn to understand the world rather than act in it," and will be trained to give "truthful answers to questions based on [external] reasoning". Bengio elaborated on Scientist AI in a recent opinion piece for Time, where he wrote that he is "genuinely unsettled by the behaviour unrestrained AI is already demonstrating, in particular self-preservation and deception". "Rather than trying to please humans, Scientist AI could be designed to prioritise honesty," he wrote. The organisation has received donations from other AI institutes like the Future of Life Institute, Jaan Tallin, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in its incubator phase. LawZero will be working out of the MILA - Quebec AI Institute in Montreal, which Bengio helped co-found.
France 24
3 days ago
- France 24
French mathematician Michel Broué on giving free online lectures to Gaza students
A well-known French mathematician who has given a free lecture to students in Gaza online has spoken of his delight at being part of a new programme aiming to ensure that education for Gazans continues. While media coverage of Gaza often features attacks on hospitals and schools, the organisation Academic Solidarity with Palestine says that at least 12 universities and colleges have also been destroyed, along with nearly 100 university professors killed. Michel Broué is now one of a series of high-profile academics – including Nobel Prize winners – who are giving their time in a bid to ensure education in the enclave does not die. He spoke to us in Perspective.
France 24
3 days ago
- France 24
World coming up short on promised marine sanctuaries
"With less than 10 percent of the ocean designated as MPAs (marine protected areas) and only 2.7 percent fully or highly protected, it is going to be difficult to reach the 30 percent target," said Lance Morgan, head of the Marine Conservation Institute in Seattle, Washington. The institute maps the MPAs for an online atlas, updating moves to meet the 30 percent goal that 196 countries signed onto in 2022, under the Kunling-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The ambition is notably at risk because "we see countries like the US reversing course and abandoning decades of bipartisan efforts" to protect areas of the Pacific Ocean, Morgan said. That referred to an April executive order by President Donald Trump authorising industrial-scale fishing in big swathes of an MPA in that ocean. Currently, there are 16,516 declared MPAs in the world, covering just 8.4 percent of the oceans. But not all are created equal: some forbid all forms of fishing, while others place no roles, or almost none, on what activities are proscribed or permitted. "Only a third of them have levels of protection that would yield proper benefits" for fish, said Joachim Claudet, a socio-ecology marine researcher at France's CNRS. Daniel Pauly, a professor of fisheries science at Canada's University of British Columbia, said "the marine protected areas have not really been proposed for the protection of biodiversity" but "to increase fish catches". A proper MPA "exports fish to non-protected zones, and that should be the main reason that we create marine protected areas -- they are needed to have fish", he said. When fish populations are left to reproduce and grow in protected areas, there is often a spillover effect that sees fish stocks outside the zones also rise, as several scientific journals have noted, especially around a no-fishing MPA in Hawaiian waters that is the biggest in the world. One 2022 study in the Science journal showed a 54 percent in crease in yellowfin tuna around that Hawaiian MPA, an area now threatened by Trump's executive order, Pauly said. Fishing bans For such sanctuaries to work, there need to be fishing bans over all or at least some of their zones, Claudet said. But MPAs with such restrictions account for just 2.7 percent of the ocean's area, and are almost always in parts that are far from areas heavily impacted by human activities. In Europe, for instance, "90 percent of the marine protected areas are still exposed to bottom trawling," a spokesperson for the NGO Oceana, Alexandra Cousteau, said. "It's ecological nonsense." Pauly said that "bottom trawling in MPAs is like picking flowers with a bulldozer... they scrape the seabed". Oceana said French MPAs suffered intensive bottom trawling, 17,000 hours' worth in 2024, as did those in British waters, with 20,600 hours. The NGO is calling for a ban on the technique, which involves towing a heavy net along the sea floor, churning it up. A recent WWF report said that just two percent of European Union waters were covered by MPAs with management plans, even some with no protection measures included. The head of WWF's European office for the oceans, Jacob Armstrong, said that was insufficient to protect oceanic health.
