Conservationists Campaign for Underwater â

Tag : Seaweed Paper


By Moises Velasquez-Manoff
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"It seems to be working," says John Ugoretz, a habitat conservationmanager with California's Department of Fish and Game. He's aboarda furiously bobbing 40-foot research vessel, Garibaldi, a few milesfrom Santa Cruz, the largest island in the Channel Islands NationalMarine Sanctuary.
By "it" he means the marine sanctuary around the islands, which liesome 25 miles off Santa Barbara's coast. Five years ago, fishingwas either prohibited or greatly limited in about one-fifth of theocean around the islands. Since then, the marine protected areas(MPAs) have seen a greater abundance of marine life. It's almostmore than many involved in the effort dared to expect. They thoughtthat the benefits, if there were any, would be at least a decade incoming. That's what Mr. Ugoretz means by "working."
"When you create marine protected areas, you end up impactingpeople's livelihoods," says Ugoretz. "It's good to know that itactually works."
MPAs protect a portion of the ocean and its inhabitants the way anational park does on land. Fishing and other human activities arerestricted or banned, so fishermen tend to view them withsuspicion. But scientists increasingly think that they are key tosustaining sea-life diversity and bounty.
In times past, vast areas of the ocean were naturally off limits tohuman activity. They were too distant or too deep to fish.Scientists now say that the abundance humans associate with the seawas possible only because of these natural refuges. But technologyhas made nearly every corner of the ocean accessible. Humans fishalmost everywhere. Many say the added burden of climate change,with its potentially negative effects on sea life, makes theestablishment of refuges even more urgent.
"The only places that will serve as refuges in the ocean are thoseplaces we intentionally put off limits," says Callum Roberts, aprofessor of conservation at the University of York, England. "Wehave to ... take control of the refuges ourselves."
The national-park metaphor works from a conservation point of viewas well. Nations have long protected swaths of wilderness not onlyout of utility, but also because they were viewed as part of anatural heritage. The sea deserves the same consideration, theargument goes.
"There's a value in having unaltered areas," says Pete Raimondi,chair of the University of California at Santa Cruz's Department ofEcology and Evolutionary Biology. "It's a good idea to set asidesites for our children that are kind of pristine."
Scientists often cite Australia's 1,200-mile-long Great BarrierReef Marine Park, established in 1975, as the best example of alarge, well-managed MPA. Although closures for military and otheruses created de facto MPAs earlier, the US's first national marinesanctuary was established in 1975 around the remains of a sunkenCivil War-era ship, the USS Monitor, off North Carolina's coast.That was just over 100 years after the first US national park wasestablished. Today the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration oversees 13 such MPAs.
About 13 percent of Earth's land is protected, up from 3 percent in1962. But less than 1 percent of the world's seas enjoy protectionof any kind, according to the International Union for Conservationof Nature (IUCN), a nonprofit environmental group. Only a tinyfraction - 0.05 percent - is completely off limits to fishing. TheIUCN estimates that, as on land, between 20 and 30 percent of thesea should be set aside to preserve marine ecosystems.International organizations, including IUCN, the G-8 Group ofNations, and the Convention on Biological Diversity, have calledfor the establishment of a worldwide MPA network representing theentire range of marine ecosystems by 2012, a goal many considernoble if not entirely realistic.
But many countries are moving ahead. As of 2004, South Africa has0.4 percent of its 200-mile-wide exclusive economic zone (EEZ)protected, and is looking to expand it. New Zealand hopes to have10 percent of its EEZ protected by 2010. And back in 2000,President Bill Clinton signed an executive order calling for thestrengthening and expansion of the nation's MPAs. In 2006,President George Bush signed the 139,797-square-milePapahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument into law. Today it'ssecond in area only to the California-size (158,453 square miles)refuge created this year by the small Pacific island nation ofKiribati. Not counting de facto reserves - areas off limits forreasons like shipping and military use - the US currently has about3 percent of its EEZ protected for conservation purposes.
Some states, meanwhile, are moving ahead in state waters, whichextend out three miles from shore. California's Marine LifeProtection Act (MLPA) Initiative, an ambitious attempt to establishan MPA network along the state's 1,100-mile coastline, justcompleted a laborious, year-long phase. Heartened by results so farin the Channel Islands, in April a 45-person stakeholder group thatincluded fishermen, divers, teachers, and harbor masters submittedproposals for the north central coast. Many say the proposal was asmuch an experiment in sociology as it was in marine biology.
The classic approach is to simply declare an area off limits. Butincreasingly scientists and lawmakers see that if those living nearMPAs don't buy in, the MPA will exist only on paper. This is aglobal problem. Of the 1,300 MPAs worldwide, says Robert Steneck, aprofessor of oceanography at the University of Maine's DarlingMarine Center in Walpole, Maine, most are ineffectual.
"Until the fishing community can see that it's in their bestinterest ... there will simply not be enough government agencies onthe planet to make protected areas work," he says. "It has to comefrom the stakeholders."
Fishing removes both large species and larger individuals within aspecies. But larger fish are much more fertile, producing anexponentially greater number of eggs compared with smaller fish. Intheory, MPAs provide a haven for BOFFs (big old fat females),creating a de facto nursery. Fish larvae then spill over andreplenish adjacent areas. Indeed, satel­lite data from the USNortheast show that the most intense fishing - and presumably thebest catches - occur along the borders of closed areas.
MPAs have other, less-direct effects. In California's ChannelIslands, for example, lobsters have grown in size and abundancesince closure. Bigger lobsters eat more sea urchins. Sea urchinseat kelp, so fewer urchins means more kelp. The end result of morelobsters is a healthier kelp forest, which provides more habitatfor ­seaweed-loving fish like kelp bass.
Increased biodiversity is another gain. Like diverse stockportfolios, biologically diverse ecosystems tend to fail less oftenthan simpler ones. They're more resilient to disease and extremeweather.
Intact ecosystems are thus more likely to survive the predicteddisturbances of human-induced climate change. And for fisheriesbiologists, closed areas serve as a reference, a way to determinewhat percentage of observed changes are due to local human impactsversus natural variation or global climate change.
"Climate change is going to affect inside and outside, but now youcan actually use [MPAs] to decouple the relative effects of climatechange from the effects of fishing," says Mark Carr, a professor ofmarine ecology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, andscience adviser to California's MLPA Initiative.
Confronted with the prospect of losing fishing grounds, fishermenoften assume they'll lose income, too. But Chris Costello, anassociate professor of resource economics at the University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara, says MPAs' economic impact depends onplacement. If they are placed wisely (closing remote areas that arecostly to fish, anyway, rather than heavily fished ones that arecloser), economic losses can be minimized. In closing some 20percent of California's north central coast, for example, heestimates only a 6 percent loss to fishermen. Modeling indicatesthat if MPAs are placed in alignment with ocean currents, they cancontinually flood adjacent areas with larvae, having a net positiveeffect on nearby fisheries.
"This is not intuitive to policymakers or fishermen," Dr. Costellosays. But "at least in theory, you can have your cake and eat it,too."
Scientists conceived California's MPAs as a network. Each area hasto be larger than the distances that target organisms wander, 6 to12-1/2 miles along the coastline and extending three miles out tosea. They have to be spaced close enough (no more than 62 milesapart) so that larvae from one MPA can drift and settle intoanother. Designed with the greater whole in mind, in theory thenetwork's benefit will be greater than the sum of its parts.
Not everyone agrees with all the assumptions guiding the process.
Ray Hilborn, a professor at the University of Washington's Schoolof Fishery and Aquatic Sciences in Seattle, and a science adviserto the north central coast process, thinks the presumed benefits tofisheries are questionable. The MPAs are only large enough toprotect the least mobile of species, which leaves out commerciallyimportant ones like hake, squid, and sardines - open-water speciesthat swim hundreds of miles during feeding and spawning cycles.
Also, he says, traditional management schemes are working fine inCalifornia waters. (Many fault poor oceanographic conditions andwater use in the Sacramento River, not overfishing, for this year'sdramatic West Coast Chinook salmon collapse.)
"The MLPA was basically sold on the ...