Are Marine Protected Areas Just Paper Parks? The Shark Protection Problem

1
00:00:04,002 --> 00:00:12,288
Marine protected areas work well when they are truly protected and protection works when
it is real.

2
00:00:12,288 --> 00:00:16,340
This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekly ocean news update.

3
00:00:16,340 --> 00:00:24,066
If you care about staying informed on what's happening with the ocean every weekday, hit
that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's story.

4
00:00:24,066 --> 00:00:28,819
All right, let's talk about marine protected areas in this episode.

5
00:00:28,819 --> 00:00:33,898
Fully protected, well-enforced marine protected areas are often called

6
00:00:33,898 --> 00:00:35,860
no-take MPAs.

7
00:00:35,860 --> 00:00:46,479
Consistently, they show that rapid increases of fish biomass happen when it's fully
protected, recovery of large predators happen when it's fully protected, higher

8
00:00:46,479 --> 00:00:59,701
biodiversity happens when it's fully protected, greater ecosystem stability happens when
they're fully protected, and spillover benefits to nearby fisheries happen when it's truly

9
00:00:59,701 --> 00:01:00,842
protected.

10
00:01:01,154 --> 00:01:06,929
The difference between success and failure is enforcement and of course level of
protection.

11
00:01:06,929 --> 00:01:14,024
So the key question that we have to ask today, what separates real protection from paper
parks?

12
00:01:14,305 --> 00:01:16,867
So let's just kind of set this all up.

13
00:01:16,867 --> 00:01:30,558
An MPA, a Marine Protected Area, is a imaginary boundary in the ocean that protects us for
a specific reason, oftentimes fisheries or biodiversity.

14
00:01:30,890 --> 00:01:33,351
It just depends on what you're protecting.

15
00:01:33,351 --> 00:01:38,614
You can protect both in that, but one is really targeted just like you would niche down a
business.

16
00:01:38,614 --> 00:01:42,897
You know, they say that the riches are in the niches in the US.

17
00:01:42,897 --> 00:01:43,927
It's niche, by the way.

18
00:01:43,927 --> 00:01:45,358
You can't stand hearing niches.

19
00:01:45,358 --> 00:01:47,859
But regardless, it works on the rhyme.

20
00:01:47,859 --> 00:01:57,885
But when you specify what that purpose is for a marine protected area, you will find that
you'll get better protection.

21
00:01:57,885 --> 00:02:00,598
So you can protect for fisheries or biodiversity.

22
00:02:00,598 --> 00:02:03,076
Those are often the case.

23
00:02:06,380 --> 00:02:15,153
Now in the last episode, we discussed how some MPAs are failing top predators like sharks
due to weak enforcement and loopholes.

24
00:02:15,294 --> 00:02:18,135
Many of these protected areas allow industrial fishing.

25
00:02:18,135 --> 00:02:21,116
We saw that in the UK where they allowed bottom trawling.

26
00:02:21,116 --> 00:02:25,758
Now if you think about this, an MPA protects an area.

27
00:02:25,958 --> 00:02:35,650
It protects largely a habitat or multiple habitats that allow for a biodiverse or a
diverse area to be protected.

28
00:02:35,650 --> 00:02:45,238
That diverse area also supports diversity of fish, diversity of invertebrates, all these
different types of things that allow for food web to have its complexity and have multiple

29
00:02:45,238 --> 00:02:53,785
functional resources or functional uh species that will contribute to the ecosystem as a
whole and contribute to that stability.

30
00:02:53,886 --> 00:02:59,761
When you allow for industrial fishing to come through and bottom trawl, you get rid of
that habitat.

31
00:02:59,761 --> 00:03:00,812
It's gone.

32
00:03:00,812 --> 00:03:03,502
It'll take a while for it to recover.

33
00:03:03,502 --> 00:03:10,762
But if you go through the entire protected area or multiple times and you trawl and you
dig up the bottom like a trawler would.

34
00:03:10,762 --> 00:03:18,462
So a trawler is essentially it's a ship that has this net that has doors on its side that
opens up the net, right?

35
00:03:18,462 --> 00:03:29,182
And then the net comes back and then you have this chain along the bottom that connects to
the doors and then that gets grinded against the bottom as the ship moves a little slower

36
00:03:29,182 --> 00:03:30,662
than it normally would.

37
00:03:31,010 --> 00:03:35,313
And then all the fish that are on the bottom, whatever's on the bottom, will go into the
net.

38
00:03:35,374 --> 00:03:39,036
Now you have mesh sizes that will allow larger fish to go out.

39
00:03:39,036 --> 00:03:45,783
Sometimes you'll have like sea turtle devices that allow sea turtles to go through the net
or get out of the net so they don't get caught.

40
00:03:45,783 --> 00:03:53,049
But a lot of times anything that's in that area could be bycatch like marine mammals or
sharks or anything like that.

41
00:03:53,049 --> 00:03:56,051
And as well as other fish and invertebrates and habitats.

42
00:03:56,272 --> 00:03:58,964
That all goes into the net and gets destroyed.

43
00:03:59,080 --> 00:03:59,690
They're gone.

44
00:03:59,690 --> 00:04:00,831
They get taken up.

45
00:04:00,831 --> 00:04:02,172
Some bycatch gets thrown over.

46
00:04:02,172 --> 00:04:03,243
If it's in time, it works.

47
00:04:03,243 --> 00:04:04,204
If not, it doesn't work.

48
00:04:04,204 --> 00:04:06,575
It's a very destructive fishing practice.

49
00:04:06,575 --> 00:04:09,737
But it works really well in capturing everything.

50
00:04:09,817 --> 00:04:18,183
And so if you're targeting for a specific species, will catch a lot of other things, but
it won't catch just what you want.

51
00:04:18,183 --> 00:04:20,585
But you can work it so it catches close to that.

52
00:04:20,585 --> 00:04:22,726
And it's used quite often.

53
00:04:22,726 --> 00:04:27,391
So in the UK, they use bottom trawlers in these marine protected areas.

54
00:04:27,391 --> 00:04:33,967
really making it not a marine protected area, it's just an area that they would protect
every once in a while except when bottom trawlers would come through.

55
00:04:33,967 --> 00:04:41,163
So of course if you have industrial fishing happening, if you have a lack of monitoring,
so you're not really monitoring what's happening and if you're seeing the success of these

56
00:04:41,163 --> 00:04:50,721
marine protected areas, which there are successes in these protected areas that are
actually enforced and have specific levels of uh non-activity let's just say, you will get

57
00:04:50,721 --> 00:04:52,042
a protected area.

58
00:04:52,042 --> 00:04:55,799
And of course if you don't have any compliance, if you don't have the buy-in from the
people, from the fishers,

59
00:04:55,799 --> 00:05:04,856
for the people who are using those marine protectors or will benefit from those marine
protectors but are using it nonetheless, then you will not have a marine protector.

60
00:05:04,856 --> 00:05:07,238
It's basically just a paper park, essentially.

61
00:05:07,238 --> 00:05:13,183
So that protected boundary on a map does not necessarily equal ecological protection.

62
00:05:13,384 --> 00:05:24,132
You'll see that there's a boundary, but without any kind of enforcement, without any kind
of levels of non-extractive activity that happens, uh or the banning of extractive

63
00:05:24,132 --> 00:05:25,237
activity that happens,

64
00:05:25,237 --> 00:05:27,838
you just have a paper park.

65
00:05:28,638 --> 00:05:40,101
So if you look at all of these areas where you allow industrial fishing, you don't monitor
and you don't have any compliance and you contrast that with an area that does have

66
00:05:40,101 --> 00:05:47,833
monitoring, it doesn't allow extractive fishing or industrial fishing and it does have
compliance, you get what we call protection.

67
00:05:47,833 --> 00:05:52,094
So like I said, when protection is real, ecosystems respond quickly.

68
00:05:52,094 --> 00:05:53,955
So let's look at the literature.

69
00:05:53,955 --> 00:05:54,700
So

70
00:05:54,700 --> 00:06:00,472
There are uh over 18,000 marine protected areas that exist globally.

71
00:06:00,472 --> 00:06:06,174
Coverage has expanded rapidly over the years, especially in the past decade.

72
00:06:06,835 --> 00:06:17,399
are in the 2020s, but essentially we are in the decade of the ocean where there is a rule
by 2030, we will have 30 % of land and marine resources protected or marine area

73
00:06:17,399 --> 00:06:17,909
protected.

74
00:06:17,909 --> 00:06:19,360
That's called 30 by 30.

75
00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:21,879
That's what you'll probably hear that a lot.

76
00:06:21,879 --> 00:06:23,979
There's a lot of problems with 30 by 30.

77
00:06:23,979 --> 00:06:26,111
The idea is understandable.

78
00:06:26,111 --> 00:06:32,889
It's like let's protect 30 % of the ocean by 2030 and 30 % of the land by 2030, 30 by 30.

79
00:06:32,895 --> 00:06:34,816
Is that, are we on our way to that?

80
00:06:34,816 --> 00:06:35,887
No, not at all.

81
00:06:35,887 --> 00:06:40,209
And have things been protected more as a paper park than a real protection?

82
00:06:40,209 --> 00:06:41,130
Yes, absolutely.

83
00:06:41,130 --> 00:06:42,721
That has definitely happened.

84
00:06:42,721 --> 00:06:46,343
But we're working on it and hopefully we can get some, we can change that around.

85
00:06:46,343 --> 00:06:50,701
There's hope that we can change that around if the right people are in place.

86
00:06:50,701 --> 00:07:01,281
But when you would look at those 18,000 MPAs, only a fraction are actually fully protected
as in no take areas, meaning you can't take anything from there.

87
00:07:01,281 --> 00:07:05,461
There are even some no take areas that you can't even do research.

88
00:07:05,461 --> 00:07:06,940
Scientists can't even do research to monitor.

89
00:07:06,940 --> 00:07:08,601
They just say, no, we're not taking it.

90
00:07:08,601 --> 00:07:10,001
It's a sensitive area.

91
00:07:10,001 --> 00:07:19,509
Often these MPAs can be a specific habitat like a coral reef, a seagrass bed or seagrass
meadow or a mangrove or salt marsh or

92
00:07:19,509 --> 00:07:23,069
a mud flat or an important tidal area.

93
00:07:23,069 --> 00:07:25,301
There's a lot of different areas that it can be.

94
00:07:25,301 --> 00:07:28,812
It could be just an area where we know there's a specific assemblage of fish.

95
00:07:28,812 --> 00:07:30,873
And so we want to protect that assemblage of fish.

96
00:07:30,873 --> 00:07:33,343
And then other assemblages could be invertebrates as well.

97
00:07:33,343 --> 00:07:39,875
So it's a lot of different reasons why they can be a marine protector or what they're
actually protecting.

98
00:07:39,875 --> 00:07:43,917
uh So once they're fully protected,

99
00:07:45,420 --> 00:07:51,452
then they are predicted, but that only represents a small percentage of the ocean.

100
00:07:51,452 --> 00:07:55,272
So then the total coverage of ocean suggests.

101
00:07:55,713 --> 00:08:03,575
So 18,000 MPAs, only a fraction of that, like a small fraction, are actually no-take
areas.

102
00:08:03,575 --> 00:08:10,566
So when you have these no-take areas, you don't allow anything by, so scientists are not
allowed to do research.

103
00:08:10,566 --> 00:08:12,845
Some of they allow, but that's not extractive.

104
00:08:12,845 --> 00:08:15,805
No snorkeling, no scuba diving, no fishing.

105
00:08:15,805 --> 00:08:19,365
Like there's a lot of things that you cannot do in these areas.

106
00:08:19,365 --> 00:08:26,485
So coverage, just like the other day when we talked about like coral coverage, is not the
best thing for MPA.

107
00:08:26,485 --> 00:08:30,465
So coverage is not the same as protection quality.

108
00:08:30,505 --> 00:08:36,485
Just because you have coverage, just because you have a percentage covered, doesn't mean
that the quality of that area is going to be protected.

109
00:08:36,485 --> 00:08:42,507
Just like coral cover percentage didn't really mean what we thought it meant in terms of
the complexity

110
00:08:42,507 --> 00:08:57,539
in the rugosity, like the actual resiliency of a reef, if it's not 3D, if it's just a flat
reef, it's not as healthy in terms of quality as you would see in a 3D reef.

111
00:08:57,539 --> 00:09:03,813
So just the fact that we look at an indicator as coral coverage doesn't necessarily mean
that you have a healthy coral.

112
00:09:05,293 --> 00:09:12,493
Now some of the data that's come out, we've seen articles in Science and Nature where
we've seen biomass increase.

113
00:09:12,493 --> 00:09:20,893
So no take MPAs show significantly higher total fish biomass compared to partially
protected areas or open areas.

114
00:09:20,893 --> 00:09:26,133
So the biomass of large predators such as sharks increases disproportionately.

115
00:09:26,133 --> 00:09:28,653
So that means it increases a huge amount.

116
00:09:28,853 --> 00:09:32,301
Recovery can occur within five to 10 years.

117
00:09:32,301 --> 00:09:35,161
Sometimes faster depending on the species that you're looking at.

118
00:09:35,161 --> 00:09:38,761
If it's a slow growing species like grouper, it might take a lot longer.

119
00:09:38,761 --> 00:09:42,221
If it's a fast growing species, it might be a lot shorter.

120
00:09:42,381 --> 00:09:46,381
So the recovery can happen whenever, right, depending on the species.

121
00:09:46,381 --> 00:09:49,001
And top predators are often the first indicators of real recovery.

122
00:09:49,001 --> 00:09:52,021
You start to see those predators increase in size.

123
00:09:52,021 --> 00:09:53,561
Like biomass is size.

124
00:09:53,561 --> 00:09:55,241
So how much do they weigh?

125
00:09:55,241 --> 00:10:01,952
That's a good indicator of healthy systems or systems starting to get healthier as you
start to see like bigger sharks.

126
00:10:01,952 --> 00:10:06,014
that are around, they're healthier, they're meatier, because they actually have food to
feed on.

127
00:10:06,234 --> 00:10:15,079
Now, of course, when we look at diversity, species richness, which is the measure of the
amount and number of species in fully protected areas.

128
00:10:15,079 --> 00:10:21,583
So if the number of species increases, that becomes a huge biodiversity gain.

129
00:10:21,583 --> 00:10:26,885
Functional diversity improves, meaning more ecological roles that are filled.

130
00:10:28,186 --> 00:10:31,718
Functional diversity is really interesting to me.

131
00:10:31,818 --> 00:10:39,371
Because when we talk about diversity, diversity to me means stability within an ecosystem,
like a habitat.

132
00:10:39,371 --> 00:10:41,332
Say, let's go back to the coral reef.

133
00:10:41,332 --> 00:10:49,475
When you have a coral reef with a number of different corals, so you have flat corals,
have boulder corals, you'll have branching corals, you have all these different types of

134
00:10:49,475 --> 00:10:50,395
corals.

135
00:10:50,456 --> 00:10:52,796
And then you have some soft corals as well.

136
00:10:53,037 --> 00:10:55,878
The hard corals are like the branching, flat, and so forth.

137
00:10:55,878 --> 00:10:59,880
When you have a number of those, then you have resiliency within the habitat.

138
00:10:59,880 --> 00:11:00,844
When you have...

139
00:11:00,844 --> 00:11:06,064
a number of different species of fish or invertebrates that do similar things.

140
00:11:06,224 --> 00:11:15,284
So, clean off algae off a coral or will attack predators that are coral eating.

141
00:11:15,284 --> 00:11:17,384
You know, keep away predators that are coral eating.

142
00:11:17,784 --> 00:11:25,624
The diversity of those, if you have a lot of species that do the same thing, so say algae
eaters, so herbivores, if you have a lot of herbivores on there, like a lot of different

143
00:11:25,624 --> 00:11:28,044
species that are herbivores, that's really great.

144
00:11:28,044 --> 00:11:30,591
It makes it lot more stable because

145
00:11:30,591 --> 00:11:40,558
If one fish species, that is the herbivore, disappears from the area, we call it
extirpated from the area of this reef, then there are still other species that do the same

146
00:11:40,558 --> 00:11:40,948
thing.

147
00:11:40,948 --> 00:11:46,631
So the corals don't become vulnerable to algal growth, right?

148
00:11:46,631 --> 00:11:48,093
That's a benefit.

149
00:11:48,093 --> 00:11:57,340
That's stability because you know that just because one species is extirpated, the other
species are around to do the same kind of functional role as in eating algae.

150
00:11:57,340 --> 00:11:59,201
So the corals won't get overgrown.

151
00:11:59,201 --> 00:12:02,213
the coral system will stay most likely intact.

152
00:12:02,213 --> 00:12:05,174
There might be a little bit of a dip, but overall it'll be intact.

153
00:12:05,174 --> 00:12:12,718
And another species that the herbivore might come in or reintroduce that species and
they'll become even more stable.

154
00:12:12,718 --> 00:12:18,766
So having that functional diversity, the greater number of species that do the same
function is gonna be really stable.

155
00:12:18,766 --> 00:12:24,314
It's gonna act as a stability metric for the reef or for the habitat.

156
00:12:24,314 --> 00:12:27,338
And then of course food webs become more complex and stable.

157
00:12:27,338 --> 00:12:29,132
There's gonna be a lot more layers

158
00:12:29,132 --> 00:12:38,172
especially of different functional roles and then those layers become a lot of food was
comes a lot more complex if you think about just like a genealogy tree like if you go to

159
00:12:38,172 --> 00:12:47,732
23 me or whatever I know what I've heard is a ripoff maybe not I don't know but you go to
those you get like a genealogy tree a genealogy tree and you look at how complex it could

160
00:12:47,732 --> 00:12:56,200
be when you have so many different people coming in and you have so many layers and so
many branches and so forth it's exactly the same when you think of a biodiversity tree

161
00:12:56,200 --> 00:13:02,305
It's not just more fish, it's more of a complete ecosystem when we talk about biodiversity
gains.

162
00:13:02,305 --> 00:13:12,113
And of course, going back to continuing on with the ecosystem stability, protected reefs
and coastal systems show greater resilience to climate stress.

163
00:13:12,113 --> 00:13:20,179
If you have a healthier reef or you have a healthier seagrass metal or salt marsh or any
kind of coastal zone, you have a healthier coastline.

164
00:13:20,260 --> 00:13:22,602
Climate change won't rear its ugly head.

165
00:13:22,602 --> 00:13:25,524
It might be able to affect a couple of species.

166
00:13:25,696 --> 00:13:38,187
But if you have that diversity of that functional role and you have that complexity within
the ecosystem, that system is going to be very resilient to change, even climate change.

167
00:13:38,187 --> 00:13:39,749
And so that's going to be really helpful.

168
00:13:39,749 --> 00:13:49,688
have that structural complexity will be maintained, whether it be within a food web or
whether it be that physical structural complexity we talked about on Tuesday, like two

169
00:13:49,688 --> 00:13:52,213
episodes ago, when we looked at how

170
00:13:52,213 --> 00:13:57,858
resilient a system can be when you have a complex and 3D reef, right?

171
00:13:57,858 --> 00:14:06,905
And then recovery after any kind of disturbance, even if it makes damage, will be faster
in marine protected areas because they're clean from anything.

172
00:14:06,905 --> 00:14:08,847
There's no lack of fish.

173
00:14:08,847 --> 00:14:13,771
There's no degraded habitat from a trawl going through or fishing hooks or anything like
that.

174
00:14:13,771 --> 00:14:15,212
You have a healthy reef.

175
00:14:15,212 --> 00:14:20,138
So MPAs do not stop climate change, but intact ecosystems

176
00:14:20,138 --> 00:14:22,770
are better able to withstand it.

177
00:14:23,871 --> 00:14:26,884
Now what separates real MPAs from paper parks?

178
00:14:26,884 --> 00:14:28,596
We kinda talked about it a little bit.

179
00:14:28,596 --> 00:14:31,098
Well, let's talk a little bit, let's go into more detail.

180
00:14:31,098 --> 00:14:39,025
So real protection includes no extractive activities, especially industrial fishing, clear
boundaries, adequate funding.

181
00:14:39,025 --> 00:14:43,409
You need to fund the people to help monitor this MPA.

182
00:14:43,429 --> 00:14:46,752
Active enforcement, again, you need the funding for the enforcement.

183
00:14:46,752 --> 00:14:54,696
The enforcement allows for make sure that people are not doing anything illegal and not
doing anything that goes against the success of an MPA.

184
00:14:54,696 --> 00:15:00,960
And the monitoring and compliance systems, making sure that everything is being watched,
everything is being observed to make sure that things are going right.

185
00:15:00,960 --> 00:15:02,661
And then local community involvement.

186
00:15:02,661 --> 00:15:14,487
You need the buy-in of the local community because they are the ones who need to use that
coastline for either, you know, security systems or for food or for pleasure, whatever

187
00:15:14,487 --> 00:15:16,408
that might be, they can use it.

188
00:15:16,628 --> 00:15:27,907
Paper parks are often have like, they allow commercial fishing, they have minimal patrols,
so no enforcement, political designation without implementation.

189
00:15:27,907 --> 00:15:31,980
So they say, hey, you know what, this is an MPA, but we're not really gonna implement it.

190
00:15:31,980 --> 00:15:33,741
We're not gonna put anything in it.

191
00:15:33,741 --> 00:15:35,772
And then no penalties for violations.

192
00:15:35,772 --> 00:15:39,308
So the enforcement's like, even if you do enforce, you don't get penalties.

193
00:15:39,308 --> 00:15:44,068
Well, that's not really gonna do anything because now people know they can do anything
they want and not have to worry about

194
00:15:44,502 --> 00:15:53,555
So protection level and enforcement intensity are the key variables to a healthy marine
protected area, even a system.

195
00:15:54,096 --> 00:15:57,017
Let's talk about some of the benefits of MPAs.

196
00:15:57,017 --> 00:16:07,131
When you have an increased fish biomass inside the no-take MPAs, that leads to that
spillover effect into the adjacent fishing ground.

197
00:16:07,131 --> 00:16:11,813
So if you have this boundary, this imaginary boundary in this area,

198
00:16:12,181 --> 00:16:16,713
and you have all these species that are protected for fishing within the boundary.

199
00:16:16,734 --> 00:16:21,736
Those species eventually are gonna get too big and too numerous to all be in one area.

200
00:16:21,736 --> 00:16:24,218
They're gonna have to go outside the boundaries.

201
00:16:24,218 --> 00:16:27,439
Once they go outside the boundaries, they're fair game to be fished.

202
00:16:27,439 --> 00:16:40,787
Now obviously fishing has to be controlled to a certain amount, but that spillover effect,
like spilling over the boundaries becomes a lot better when you have high biomass and high

203
00:16:40,787 --> 00:16:41,641
numbers.

204
00:16:41,641 --> 00:16:43,413
right, and diversity of fish.

205
00:16:43,413 --> 00:16:49,137
So now the fishermen are, the fishing communities are going to be happy because they are
able to fish responsibly, of course.

206
00:16:49,377 --> 00:16:52,210
And you're happy because you see the Spillow Effect happen all the time.

207
00:16:52,210 --> 00:16:54,726
There's going be more production within that MPA.

208
00:16:54,726 --> 00:17:00,807
It's just going to be a source of biological diversity and biomass, which will be
wonderful.

209
00:17:00,807 --> 00:17:03,889
One thing we haven't touched upon is larval export.

210
00:17:03,889 --> 00:17:11,175
And so that, so when you have these larvae, which is like fish species, invertebrates,
whatever that might be, even corals, right, which is an

211
00:17:12,413 --> 00:17:21,696
When they're born or they reproduce, whether it's asexual or sexual, they produce larvae a
lot of the times.

212
00:17:21,696 --> 00:17:25,487
That larvae is brought by currents to other areas.

213
00:17:25,487 --> 00:17:27,217
So again, we talk about spillover effects.

214
00:17:27,217 --> 00:17:29,428
This time it's larval spillover effect.

215
00:17:29,428 --> 00:17:34,889
That larvae will follow the current because it can't really go against the current until
it settles somewhere else.

216
00:17:34,889 --> 00:17:41,652
And that somewhere else could be part of a network of marine protected areas like the
Great Barrier Reef, or it could be just on its own and that

217
00:17:41,652 --> 00:17:52,137
all that spillover effect going, it might be just 10 feet, it might be 10 meters, it might
be 100 feet or 100 meters away, depending on how far that current will go before the

218
00:17:52,137 --> 00:18:00,201
larval, the larvae will actually metamorphosize into a fish or anything or an invertebrate
and look what its adult form will look like.

219
00:18:00,201 --> 00:18:03,363
And it'll settle down on the bottom, whether it's a coral or anything like that.

220
00:18:03,363 --> 00:18:08,916
That could help build up all the uh habitats around it as long as it's safe.

221
00:18:08,916 --> 00:18:11,445
So a lot of the times when you have marine protected areas,

222
00:18:11,445 --> 00:18:20,838
You'll have a bunch of little ones in a network and that biological connectivity, which is
what I was supposed to do for my PhD at one point, when it like 25 years ago, that

223
00:18:20,838 --> 00:18:32,701
biological connectivity will connect with the other uh other MPAs and that will become a
like a sink where animals just sink in and they settle and they build more habitats and

224
00:18:32,701 --> 00:18:33,552
healthier habitats.

225
00:18:33,552 --> 00:18:35,002
So that's a pretty good thing.

226
00:18:35,002 --> 00:18:37,909
It creates long term fishing, fishing yields.

227
00:18:37,909 --> 00:18:44,712
that can help improve near and well, that can improve near and well-designed reserves.

228
00:18:44,712 --> 00:18:46,143
That'll be really helpful.

229
00:18:46,143 --> 00:18:48,564
So it's not just conservation versus fisheries.

230
00:18:48,564 --> 00:18:52,005
This is short-term extraction versus long-term stability.

231
00:18:52,005 --> 00:18:53,726
It's really what it comes down to.

232
00:18:53,726 --> 00:19:00,869
When you're talking about short-term extraction, you're talking about fishing coming out
for that payday, that quick payday.

233
00:19:00,869 --> 00:19:04,715
We're at long-term stability as you're creating an area.

234
00:19:04,715 --> 00:19:10,075
that will have that spillover effect, that will have that connectivity with larvae, which
will be really great.

235
00:19:10,415 --> 00:19:17,755
Now, of course, I mentioned that the country's racing towards 30 % protection by 2030, the
30 by 30.

236
00:19:17,855 --> 00:19:21,875
The risk is counting areas instead of quality, right?

237
00:19:21,875 --> 00:19:33,544
So if we have, if a government decides, hey, you know what, I don't wanna be embarrassed
by every other country who's meeting the 2020, 30, or the 30 by 30, reach that, that,

238
00:19:33,544 --> 00:19:43,528
index or that number, that 30%, that goal, what they're going to do is they're just going
to, you know, we'll just designate a bunch of parks and they'll be paper parks, but we'll

239
00:19:43,528 --> 00:19:45,318
just designate them so that we actually fit there.

240
00:19:45,318 --> 00:19:52,771
I don't want to, you know, I don't want my country embarrassed by other countries saying
prime ministers and ministers and so forth, or presidents and stuff like that.

241
00:19:52,771 --> 00:19:57,793
So the risk is you're just counting area instead of high quality areas, right?

242
00:19:57,793 --> 00:20:03,025
And then high coverage with low protection may look, you know, politically great.

243
00:20:03,455 --> 00:20:07,016
but it'll ecologically fail and we don't want that.

244
00:20:07,037 --> 00:20:10,426
So 30 % of nothing is still 30%.

245
00:20:10,426 --> 00:20:16,070
So if you don't protect it, if you just put it as a paper park and you just designate the
area, you're not gonna get anything of it.

246
00:20:16,070 --> 00:20:19,952
So quality first, then we go quantity, right?

247
00:20:19,952 --> 00:20:21,642
That's the biggest thing.

248
00:20:21,783 --> 00:20:28,925
So I wanna talk about an example, just to kind of refer an example, Cabo Palmo National
Park.

249
00:20:29,306 --> 00:20:32,861
This area, fishing ended in the mid 1990s.

250
00:20:32,917 --> 00:20:38,429
biomass increased more than 400 % for over a decade.

251
00:20:38,870 --> 00:20:41,930
That's a huge increase over a decade.

252
00:20:42,051 --> 00:20:53,606
The reef predators returned and essentially, local enforcement and community buy-in was
critical and they got that buy-in and they were able to get all of these great things to

253
00:20:53,606 --> 00:20:54,536
happen.

254
00:20:54,536 --> 00:21:02,399
like biomass increased by 400%, the number increased and the biodiversity increased, all
of a sudden you have this great source of

255
00:21:02,429 --> 00:21:08,383
fish biomass in number and diversity, and then you have the fishery that comes back again.

256
00:21:08,383 --> 00:21:11,996
And it's a national park that gets funded and it's enforced, right?

257
00:21:11,996 --> 00:21:14,847
And then you have the community buy-in, which is critical.

258
00:21:15,288 --> 00:21:19,971
So like stories like this are what we talk about on this podcast.

259
00:21:19,971 --> 00:21:28,397
And if you want real ocean protection stories backed by science, follow this show right
now so you don't miss out on tomorrow's episode.

260
00:21:28,397 --> 00:21:31,255
I wanna thank you so much because you know what?

261
00:21:31,255 --> 00:21:33,776
talking about MPAs, MPAs work.

262
00:21:33,777 --> 00:21:42,701
Not all MPAs are equal, but they work when they work well, when they're implemented
properly, they're enforced properly, and they have the right level of protections.

263
00:21:42,902 --> 00:21:45,963
And enforcement is really the dividing line.

264
00:21:45,963 --> 00:21:50,826
And fully protected areas consistently outperform partially protected areas.

265
00:21:50,826 --> 00:21:58,890
So even if your government's like, yeah, we're gonna protect this area, but we're gonna
allow resource extraction like fisheries or oil and gas, that's not a marine protected

266
00:21:58,890 --> 00:21:59,491
area.

267
00:21:59,491 --> 00:22:00,771
That's a fake one.

268
00:22:00,863 --> 00:22:03,264
That's like fake news, right?

269
00:22:03,265 --> 00:22:07,243
So it's really important that we know that protection works when it is real.

270
00:22:07,243 --> 00:22:15,443
And it's important for you as a citizen of wherever you live to understand that when
governments come out and say, hey, we're going to protect this area, you have to start

271
00:22:15,443 --> 00:22:17,594
looking at how they're going to protect it.

272
00:22:17,594 --> 00:22:25,300
What are they going to institute and follow along to make sure that they're putting out
the right reports and to make sure that they actually see gains and actually seen levels

273
00:22:25,300 --> 00:22:30,383
of protection that are really good and making sure that extractive activities that

274
00:22:30,483 --> 00:22:33,805
are supposed to happen in those do not happen in those.

275
00:22:33,805 --> 00:22:38,067
So I want to thank you so much for listening to this episode of the How to Protect the
Ocean podcast.

276
00:22:38,067 --> 00:22:47,741
If you want more real ocean stories like these, backed by science, backed by conservation
and successful stories indeed, follow the show right now.

277
00:22:47,741 --> 00:22:56,361
Hit that follow button so you don't miss tomorrow's episode, which will be an interview
with Anthony Morente who's a campaigner.

278
00:22:56,361 --> 00:23:07,855
a senior campaigner from Oceana talking about a new ruling that was upheld in appeals
court in Canada about the single use plastics ban as well as how Canada uses the statement

279
00:23:07,855 --> 00:23:09,975
that all plastics are toxic.

280
00:23:09,975 --> 00:23:18,858
We're going to talk about what that court order meant or how that court order was upheld
and we are going to talk about the regulations and the future of single use plastics in

281
00:23:18,858 --> 00:23:21,515
Canada and around the world and what you can do.

282
00:23:21,515 --> 00:23:22,375
to help it.

283
00:23:22,375 --> 00:23:23,835
tune in to tomorrow's episode.

284
00:23:23,835 --> 00:23:27,495
I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the
Ocean podcast.

285
00:23:27,495 --> 00:23:28,055
Have a great day.

286
00:23:28,055 --> 00:23:30,595
We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.