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<DIV class=article-type><SPAN class=journal-title><FONT
size=3>Nature</FONT></DIV>
<DT class=volume>
<DIV>Volume: 480<SPAN>,</SPAN></SPAN><SPAN class=divider> Pages: 151–152</DT>
<DT class="published-online first">Published online 07 December 2011</DT>
<DT>doi:10.1038/480151b</DT>
<DT> </DT></DIV>
<DIV></SPAN>Editorial</DIV>
<DIV class=article-heading><FONT size=4>Troubled waters</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Protected areas are only the start of the road to reforming our
relationship with the seas.</DIV>
<DIV class="section first no-nav no-title first-no-nav">
<DIV class=content>
<DIV class="article-keywords cleared"> </DIV>
<DIV class="article-keywords cleared">The easiest way to create a nature reserve
from a car park is simply to declare it as such. The land is then designated as
protected, and counts towards the relevant government's targets to set aside a
certain amount of its territory from development. That is a ridiculous example,
of course, and would never happen on land — so why do we allow a similar
exercise to happen in the sea?</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV class="section second no-nav no-title">
<DIV class=content>
<P>No one should doubt that our seas need protection. Overfishing, pollution and
climate change are fundamentally changing some of the most important regions on
the planet. And the conservation response — marine protected areas (MPAs) —
should be a key tool to safeguard the world's maritime environment. By setting
aside areas in which human activity is tightly regulated, the thinking goes,
governments can ensure that key habitats and species are preserved.</P>
<P>Certainly, good MPAs such as those in Hawaii and around the Great Barrier
Reef can bring great benefits, from saving individual species from extinction to
preserving entire coral-reef or deep-sea ecosystems. And the number of these
areas is on the rise, as the world's governments crawl towards a target to
protect 10<SPAN class=mb>%</SPAN> of the oceans.</P>
<P>But to get the most from these areas, much greater efforts are needed. In the
sea, as on land, balancing the recommendations of scientists with commercial
needs and other interests is always tricky for politicians. Still, as
highlighted on <A href="http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/480166a">page
166</A>, and as shown by recent developments in Australia (see <A
href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/480014a"><I>Nature</I> <B>480</B>, <SPAN
class=start-page>14</SPAN>–<SPAN class=end-page>15</SPAN>; <SPAN
class=year>2011</SPAN></A>), there are growing concerns about the poor science
base of many of the existing and proposed MPAs.</P>
<P>As Australia divides up its waters into a patchwork of protected,
recreational, commercial and multipurpose areas, researchers say that the
country is ignoring evidence that would make this zoning stronger. These
concerns, which surfaced over proposals for the southwest region, again in the
northwest region and then most recently in the plan for a huge reserve in the
Coral Sea, centre on whether enough sea has been given the highest level of
protection and whether the areas that are highly protected include a
representative selection of all necessary habitats. The second question in
particular is one on which the voices of researchers must be heard by
government, and acted on.</P>
<P>And even when reserves are established on the basis of sound science,
governments must ensure that they can protect the areas properly. It is telling
that even the prosperous United States may be failing in this. Jane Lubchenco,
the head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says: “We
don't have the resources that we need to actually monitor, enforce and
understand these areas.” If the United States is having trouble, what hope is
there for the less-developed nations?</P>
<P>In the sea, as on land, declarations of protection are worthless without
actions and, crucially, without money.</P>
<P>Equally, governments must not fall into the trap of thinking that designating
and protecting a certain percentage of our seas will solve all maritime
conservation problems. Larger efforts to reform our approach to the oceans, from
fisheries to extraction, are long overdue. Efforts in New England waters have
demonstrated that it might be possible to manage local fisheries sustainably
(see <A href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/465540a"><I>Nature</I> <B>465</B>, <SPAN
class=start-page>540</SPAN>–<SPAN class=end-page>542</SPAN>; <SPAN
class=year>2010</SPAN></A>), and international agreements — such as those that
have safeguarded Antarctica — show that countries can pull together under the
right circumstances. For too long what has been out of sight has also been out
of mind. The rise of MPAs should be a starting point for a reformation, not a
tool to hit a target so that we say 'job done' and move on to other
issues.</P></DIV></DIV></FONT><BR>
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