For years, the people of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation watched over their waters and waited. They had spent nearly two decades working with Canada’s federal government to negotiate protections for Kitasu Bay, an area off the coast of British Columbia that was vulnerable to overfishing.

But the discussions never seemed to go anywhere. First, they broke down over pushback from the fishing industry, then over a planned oil tanker route directly through Kitasoo/Xai’xais waters.

“We were getting really frustrated with the federal government. They kept jumping onboard and then pulling out,” says Douglas Neasloss, the chief councillor and resource stewardship director of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation. “Meanwhile, we’d been involved in marine planning for 20 years – and we still had no protected areas.”

Instead, the nation watched as commercial overfishing decimated the fish populations its people had relied on for thousands of years.

Nestled on the west coast of Swindle Island, approximately 500km north of Vancouver, Kitasu Bay is home to a rich array of marine life: urchins and abalone populate the intertidal pools, salmon swim in the streams and halibut take shelter in the deep waters. In March, herring return to spawn in the eelgrass meadows and kelp forests, nourishing humpback whales, eagles, wolves and bears.

“Kitasu Bay is the most important area for the community – that’s where we get all of our food,” Neasloss says. “It’s one of the last areas where you still get a decent spawn of herring.”

So in December 2021, when the Department of Fisheries and Oceans withdrew from discussions once again, the nation decided to act. “My community basically said, ‘We’re tired of waiting. Let’s take it upon ourselves to do something about it,’” Neasloss says.

What they did was unilaterally declare the creation of a new marine protected area (MPA). In June 2022, the nation set aside 33.5 sq km near Laredo Sound as the new Gitdisdzu Lugyeks (Kitasu Bay) MPA – closing the waters of the bay to commercial and sport fishing.

It is a largely unprecedented move. While other marine protected areas in Canada fall under the protection of the federal government through the Oceans Act, Kitasu Bay is the first to be declared under Indigenous law, under the jurisdiction and authority of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation.

Pictured: "In some ways, I hope someone challenges us" … the Kitasoo/Xai’xais stewardship authority.

Although they did not wait for government approval, the Kitasoo did consult extensively: the declaration was accompanied by a draft management plan, finalised in October after three months of consultation with industry and community stakeholders. But the government did not provide feedback during that period, according to Neasloss, beyond an acknowledgment that it had received the plan...

Approximately 95% of British Columbia is unceded: most First Nations in the province of British Columbia never signed treaties giving up ownership of their lands and waters to the crown. This puts them in a unique position to assert their rights and title, according to Neasloss, who hopes other First Nations will be inspired to take a similarly proactive approach to conservation...

Collaboration remains the goal, and Neasloss points to a landmark agreement between the Haida nation and the government in 1988 to partner in conserving the Gwaii Haanas archipelago, despite both parties asserting their sovereignty over it. A similar deal was made in 2010 for the region’s 3,400 sq km Gwaii Haanas national marine conservation area.

“They found a way to work together, which is pretty exciting,” says Neasloss. “And I think there may be more Indigenous protected areas that are overlaid with something else.”

-via The Guardian, 5/3/23

Ottawa and Quebec have announced their intention to protect the waters near a picturesque territory in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that was recently named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and his provincial counterpart, Benoit Charette, said today they're taking the first steps toward creating a protected marine park off Anticosti Island. They say the proposed site, stretching north from the island to the Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve, is home to marine mammals -- including the endangered North Atlantic right whale -- as well as colonies of seabirds and important fish populations.

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Tagging @politicsofcanada

Map locating the Salas y Gomez and Nazca submarine mountain ranges and Chilean offshore sites.

From the article:

In international waters off the coasts of Chile and Peru, the ocean teems with plant and animal species—some do not exist anywhere else and many are endangered.

Urgently seeking to prevent biodiversity loss in these waters, Chile is pushing for a new marine protected area (MPA) to be created, and hoping to seal the deal during an upcoming summit at UN headquarters in New York.

[....]

A 2021 study in the academic journal Marine Policy said the high seas areas of the Salas y Gomez and Nazca ridges are "under threat from a variety of stressors, including climate change, plastic pollution, overfishing, and potential deep-sea mining in the future."

As UN member states meet in New York next week in the hopes of finalizing a long-awaited treaty on high seas protection, Chile has already started work on having the area around the two ridges declared an MPA (Marine Protected Area).

It could become the world's first, but time is of the essence.

[....]

Read more.

There are only two marine protected areas in Antarctica — here’s why we need to overcome geopolitics and implement more before it’s too late

#Earth #Environment #ClimateCrisis #NowThis

Excerpt from this story from The Guardian:

New underwater footage taken by environmental campaigners in Scotland has revealed severe damage to marine life and habitats wreaked by scallop dredgers in “marine protected areas” (MPAs).

The Scottish government designated the seabed around the islands of Canna and Rum, on Scotland’s west coast, as the Small Isles MPA in 2014, to conserve Britain’s only colony of rare fan mussels and other features. The islands host a large breeding colony of black guillemots.

But video footage from a camera on an underwater remotely operated vehicle, deployed by Greenpeace and Open Seas, a Scottish charity, show rows of furrowed tracks across the “protected” seabed.

The tracks, from a scallop dredger, show damage to pink maerl, a fragile slow-growing coralline algae that provides fish with a spawning and nursery habitat. Open Seas contrasted the damage with footage they gathered in 2020 of the same area, showing healthy maerl.

Scallop dredgers, which fish using a highly destructive fishing method that drags heavy metal-toothed rakes along the seabed, are legally entitled to fish inside the MPA.

Phil Taylor, head of policy and operations at Open Seas, said: “This is arguably the worst example of a ‘paper park’ [one existing in name only] in Scotland and around the UK.

Dominica Creates World's First Marine Protected Area for Endangered Sperm Whales

Discover the groundbreaking initiative by Dominica to establish a marine protected area for endangered sperm whales, protecting their critical nursing and feeding grounds, combating climate change, and ensuring their survival.

Comprehensive global database of marine and terrestrial protected areas.

The World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA) is the most comprehensive global database of marine and terrestrial protected areas, updated on a monthly basis, and is one of the key global biodiversity data sets being widely used by scientists, businesses, governments, International secretariats and others to inform planning, policy decisions and management. The WDPA is a joint project between United Nations Environment Programme and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The compilation and management of the WDPA is carried out by United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), in collaboration with governments, non-governmental organisations, academia and industry. There are monthly updates of the data which are made available online through the Protected Planet website where the data is both viewable and downloadable. Data and information on the world's protected areas compiled in the WDPA are used for reporting to the Convention on Biological Diversity on progress towards reaching the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (particularly Target 11), to the UN to track progress towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, to some of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) core indicators, and other international assessments and reports including the Global Biodiversity Outlook, as well as for the publication of the United Nations List of Protected Areas. Every two years, UNEP-WCMC releases the Protected Planet Report on the status of the world's protected areas and recommendations on how to meet international goals and targets. Many platforms are incorporating the WDPA to provide integrated information to diverse users, including businesses and governments, in a range of sectors including mining, oil and gas, and finance. For example, the WDPA is included in the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool, an innovative decision support tool that gives users easy access to up-to-date information that allows them to identify biodiversity risks and opportunities within a project boundary. The reach of the WDPA is further enhanced in services developed by other parties, such as the Global Forest Watch and the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas, which provide decision makers with access to monitoring and alert systems that allow whole landscapes to be managed better. Together, these applications of the WDPA demonstrate the growing value and significance of the Protected Planet initiative.

Love to see this! Happy World Oceans Day (June 08) everyone.

Link to the satirical video is here.

Please like, share and reblog on all our platforms.

Action is in our hands, feet, flippers and sails.

History of Marine Conservation

Introduction Marine conservation is the practice of protecting and preserving the marine environment, including its biodiversity, ecosystems, and natural resources. The need for marine conservation arose from the recognition of the many threats facing the marine environment, including overfishing, pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction. The history of marine conservation can be…

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“On Dec. 6, legislators in Argentina’s southernmost province of Tierra del Fuego approved a law to permanently protect the land and sea of the Mitre Peninsula at the tip of South America, considered to be one of the region’s last wild places.

The Mitre Peninsula is known to encompass Argentina’s most important carbon sink through a range of peatlands and the surrounding ocean swirls with giant kelp forests. The newly protected area will span 486,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) — about three times as big as London — and create a haven for numerous species, such as the endangered southern river otter (Lontra provocax).

Sofia Heinonen, the director of Rewilding Argentina, said conservationists, scientists, policymakers and community members worked for about 30 years to establish the Mitre Peninsula as a protected area. The global movement to protect peatlands and other natural places in an effort to combat climate change likely spurred the government’s decision, she said.

“It’s incredible,” Heinonen told Mongabay. “It was really a party [when we found out]. We were all jumping.”

The protected area will comprise 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of land and the remaining part of ocean. The peatlands will likely be fully protected from human activities, while some forms of tourism will be allowed in other parts of Mitre Peninsula. And more than a quarter of the marine protected area will be a no-take zone, while other areas will be used for multiple purposes.

Across its moss-covered landscape, the Mitre Peninsula holds about 84% of Argentina’s peatlands, which are known to sequester about 315 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, roughly equivalent to three years of emissions in Argentina. The area’s many forests, mountain ranges, valleys and waterways provide habitat for many species, including the Andean condor (Vultur gryphus), steamer duck (Tachyeres spp.), guanaco (Lama guanicoe), red fox, and the southern river otter.

The surrounding seas, which include kelp forests and rocky reef ecosystems, also support a diversity of species, including penguins, sea lions and soft corals. Scientists believe the region harbors more than 30% of the country’s kelp forests.” -via Mongabay, 12/8/22

Yesterday National Scientist Dr. Angel C. Alcala passed away after living a life dedicated to conservation. From ridge to reef, from fish to… frogs!

Born on March 1, 1929 in Negros Occidental he eventually became a prominent marine researcher at Silliman University. There he helped establish community-led marine reserves in nearby Apo Island. It was then that he showed the world that effective marine conservation efforts can occur with long term partnerships between communities, local government, and NGOs.

He also worked with fellow researcher Walter Brown on co-authoring more than 70 publications including those about Philippine amphibians and reptiles. The Brown & Alcala’s Sierra Madre Frog was named after them: 𝘚𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘵𝘪𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘯, where the word tipanan refers to their partnership. Several reptile species have also been named after Dr. Alcala such as the recently discovered Alcala’s Reed Snake from Mindoro, Alcala’s Wolf Snake from Batanes, and Alcala’s Triangle-spotted Snake from Romblon.

Dr. Alcala has shown us the importance of our environment, from ridge to reef, and how working together is the best way to conserve it!

Has the U.S. really conserved a third of its waters? Here’s the math. (Washington Post)

Almost everyone loves the ocean. But not everyone agrees on what it means to protect it.

The United States is conserving approximately one-third of the country’s ocean areas, according to an early analysis released Friday by the Biden administration — suggesting the president is meeting a key environmental goal laid out at the beginning of his term.

But others say that’s not the case.

Some of those areas still allow for commercial fishing, advocates say, and fall short of protections needed to save marine ecosystems facing dire threats.

“It’s padding the numbers,” said Brad Sewell, oceans director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The disagreement comes as the White House on Friday outlined how much progress the country has made in achieving President Biden’s ambitious goal of conserving at least 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.

The White House’s Council on Environmental Quality said its preliminary count — outlined in a newly released atlas — shows that approximately “one-third of U.S. marine areas are currently conserved.”

“We are making bold progress to conserve our ocean,” Rick Spinrad, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a statement.

Yet precisely what areas on the map should count as protected has been a subject of considerable debate.

The White House said a majority of that ocean expanse — 26 percent of U.S. waters — is officially designated as “marine protected areas,” where human activity is typically restricted to protect wildlife.

But that one-third tally also includes parts of the ocean where only a type of fishing called bottom trawling is banned to protect coral and other bottom-dwelling creatures from nets that scrape the seafloor. Other types of commercial fishing in those areas, which include swaths of ocean off New England and the Mid-Atlantic, are still allowed.