15 Aug 2023
Marine environmentalists have reacted with concern at news the UK will allow commercial fishing of bluefin tuna for the first time in 60 years. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have announced that 10 licences would be issued for a small-scale trial of commercial fishing, with the tuna brought ashore for consumption, […]
15 Aug 2023
The UN treaty on the high seas, signed in June, succeeded the fishing treaty, as an even more useful legal tool for protecting international waters. To date, all of the Arctic’s protected marine regions have been inside the 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of individual countries. The largest such protected area, designated in 2019, is […]
15 Aug 2023
Many areas outside national and regional protected area networks contribute to the effective in-situ conservation of biodiversity. Appropriately recognising, reporting and supporting such areas is increasingly important in the context of biodiversity loss and climate change. Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) recognised early in the CBD’s Strategic Plan (2011-2020) that ‘other effective […]
15 Aug 2023
Dogger Bank, a sandbank in the North Sea was designated a marine protected area more than decade ago to conserve its sensitive seabed habitat. Yet for most of that time, industrial fishing vessels legally dragged damaging gear across the seabed, prompting NGOs to cite it as one of Europe’s emblematic “paper parks,” where the designation […]
15 Aug 2023
A paper, published in Conservation Letters, assesses how existing recommendations for climate resilience are applied in real-world MPA management, using criteria from five key management components: objectives, assessments, design, monitoring, and management. The review evaluates 172 management plans for 555 MPAs across 52 countries. The researchers found that MPA management plans contain many underlying scientific […]
15 Aug 2023
A recovery in the number of corals growing on the Great Barrier Reef over recent years has paused, with government scientists blaming bleaching, disease and attacks by starfish. Results from the latest annual surveys of more than 100 individual reefs show a small drop in coral cover over the northern and central parts of the […]
15 Aug 2023
Kelp forests are found along 25% of the world’s coastlines, generally in cold and nutrient rich water, in temperate and polar regions. These marine forests play a critical role in balancing the health of the ocean and the planet. They provide food and shelter for many marine species, create complex habitats, and are considered hotspots […]
08 Aug 2023
The average daily global sea surface temperature beat a 2016 record this week, according to the EU’s climate change service Copernicus. It reached 20.96°C (69.73°F) – far above the average for this time of year. Warmer waters have less ability to absorb carbon dioxide, meaning more of that planet-warming gas will stay in […]
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