Global leaders pledged to protect 10% of the oceans by 2020. We’re nowhere close and the goal has proven particularly challenging to achieve in international waters.
The Southern (Antarctic) Ocean is our planet’s primary storage of heat and carbon, and it’s home to extraordinary life forms, from tiny algae and spineless creatures to penguins, seals and whales.
Biodiversity is often highest in places with human activity. The fishing industry has shown we can often have it both ways: maintain important livelihoods while protecting precious marine life.
Under a new proposal, bourzwa fish will only be permitted to be caught and sold in Seychelles.
James Robinson
Fish can’t read maps, and their eggs and larvae drift across national boundaries. Recent research shows that local problems in one fishery can affect others across wide areas.
Though they’re protected worldwide, great white sharks encounter longline fishing vessels in half of their range.
Wildestanimal/Shutterstock
Alison Kock, South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity
A new network of 20 sites have been declared as marine protected areas in South Africa.
The West Moberly First Nation would like to see biodiversity-rich riparian areas in the Peace River Valley, in northeastern British Columbia protected. They will be destroyed by the Site C hydro dam, currently under construction.
Garth Lenz
How can marine preserves best protect sea creatures that move in and out of them? Two ocean scientists describe new thinking about designing marine protected areas.
Nature offers many benefits to people.
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