Marine protected areas for whales, dolphins, and porpoises: a world ...

Introduction 5
and dolphins. At that time, whales and dolphins were not really on the habitat
conservation agenda of countries, agencies or MPA practitioners. This was due
in part to the move away from the idea of protecting species – even so-called
charismatic megafauna – and a determination to follow ecological criteria. It
was also because the relatively recent knowledge about cetaceans and cetacean
habitat was just beginning to filter through to MPA workers. The expertise on
MPAs, through IUCN (the World Conservation Union) and other international
agencies, drew heavily on the personnel and experience from the Great Barrier
Reef Marine Park, one of the first large MPAs and the best studied and
managed. The problems of protecting shallow-water coral reef habitat for
species fixed to the sea floor differ from the demands of trying to protect
cetacean habitat for species that sometimes cross ocean basins. This publication
is aimed at filling the gaps; it is the result of my own determination and that of
WDCS, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, to ensure that cetaceans
receive the full benefits from MPA conservation.
By the time I started researching this book in the late 1990s, things had
started to improve a little for cetacean habitat protection. Australia, New
Zealand, Canada and the US have all gone through extended national debates
on MPAs, and part of the result has been the identification and naming of a
number of MPAs that feature or include cetaceans. The World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF) Arctic Programme has fostered a circumpolar MPA network
that is showing results. The European Community, through its Habitats and
Species Directive and the growing Natura 2000 network, has stimulated interest
and work on small cetacean reserves in Europe. And the tremendous worldwide
growth of whale watching (the number of whale watchers more than doubled
between 1991 and 1998 from approximately 4 million to 9 million) has led to a
number of MPA proposals with built-in socioeconomic rationales (Hoyt, 2001).
In April 1999, in Peter GH Evans and Erika Urquiola Pascual’s presentation on
‘Protected Areas for Cetaceans’ at the 13th Annual Meeting of the European
Cetacean Society, held in Valencia, Spain, they reported that less than 3 per cent
of all the 1300 MPAs around the world had been established with cetaceans
primarily in mind, and that half of all ‘cetacean MPAs’ had been set up in the
previous ten years (Evans and Urquiola, 2001). This works out to no more than
39 MPAs with cetaceans. In the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals, Reeves (2002)
prepared a list of ‘protected or managed areas intended, at least in part, to
benefit marine mammals’; nearly 50 areas specifically feature cetacean habitat.
Using wider criteria than Evans, Urquiola and Reeves, and newer research, this
book reveals that there are now many more existing and proposed MPAs that
include cetacean habitat – more than 500 in all (see tables in Chapter 5,
pp104–447, and the Epilogue, p449). Still, we remain at the dawn of habitat
protection for cetaceans. The challenge will be to obtain high-quality habitat
protection for cetaceans, improving on and extending the protection in existing
MPAs, and building on various cetacean conservation initiatives.
To date, most MPAs have taken their lead from land-based protected areas
(PAs) in terms of size, boundaries and management strategies. With few
exceptions, MPAs tend to be of similar size to PAs. Yet the world ocean