Designating Special Marine Zones Ineffective In Protecting Coral, Fish

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HALIFAX -- A highly touted network of special marine zones is failing to protect the very species of coral and fish it was intended to shield in waters around the world, says a report to be published Friday.

An international team of scientists has found that many of the marine protected areas, created in oceans from Australia to Canada, are too small and not being enforced properly, raising concerns that fragile coral reefs are continuing their downward
slide. "Countries around the world created these things, but then they forgot that they cost money and you have to continue investing in them," said Camilo Mora, a scientist at Dalhousie University and lead author of the study that appears in Science magazine. "Clearly, lines on the map are not enough to protect the world's coral reefs."

The paper contends that only 18 per cent of the world's coral reefs have been placed in the so-called MPAs - zones that prohibit or limit activities that might threaten the survival of various species. And while some are lessening the threats facing corals and declining fish stocks, most are simply parks that exist on paper and do little to reverse the loss of marine biodiversity, said Mora.

"There has been a global effort to reverse this crisis and one of the main approaches that we're using is MPAs," he said. "But the effort we have done so far seems not to have been effective." The researchers surveyed 1,000 managers and scientists in countries around world to assess for the first time the effectiveness of the zones - four of which are off Canada's Atlantic Coast. They found that less than 0.1 per cent of the world's coral reefs are in zones that have stringent restrictions that prevent poaching or fishing.

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http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060623/marine_zones_coral_060623/20060623?hub=SciTech

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1. Sad

The MPA's were one of the last good ideas to try and retain what is left of the marine ecosystems. They do work to some extent in non-coral ecosystems, but Corals just wern't evolved to deal with rapid and repeated human activities.