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

8 Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises
these so-called ‘EEZs’ can be leased or given away as part of oil or mineral rights,
and the fish and other resources in the water itself can be exploited. The countries
themselves are responsible for management. Some countries have disputed EEZ
claims, have conflicts with neighbouring countries or territories, or have not for
one reason or other staked a claim. Others are now in the process of claiming the
extra area between 200 nm (371 km) and 350 nm (649 km), based on the latest
mapping, with all claims due by 2009 (Figure I.1). With continental shelf
extension claims for as many as 60 countries amounting to 5 per cent of the total
ocean sea floor, or 5.8 million square miles (15 million sq km), this marine and
sea-bed grab will redefine national territories and the high seas in the next decade
(Malakoff, 2002). Yet the situation for the rest of this decade is that roughly half
the surface area of the world ocean remains in international waters. This is the
so-called high seas. The culture of the high seas – with its long history of open
access and its role as shipping highway and hunting ground (fish, seals, whales) –
has been slow to come under national or international management. However,
international laws, treaties and conventions are beginning to address the means
for managing, or jointly managing, the high seas. It is hoped that concern over
protecting critical cetacean habitat, and application of the precautionary approach
(Box I.3) to allow for the large gaps in our knowledge, will lead researchers,
conservation organizations and governments to ensure that important high-seas
habitats are protected too, devising new strategies as needed.
Some scientists and conservationists involved with cetaceans have
dismissed marine protected areas as being unsuitable and ineffective for
protecting cetacean habitat. They have multiple objections:
• The size or scale required to protect cetaceans is not covered by
conventional protected area models.
• Cetacean habitat needs are too fluid or difficult to define in terms of
providing specific, defined habitat protection areas.
• Cetacean MPAs do little more than allow governments the chance to say
that they are doing something for conservation when clearly they are not.
Yet, more than anything, a marine protected area for cetaceans becomes what
stakeholders make of it. Better design and planning in the early stages helps –
using ecosystem-based management and ensuring that critical habitats are
protected. Of course, there will be limitations of size, legal recourse, and the
need to share marine resources. Still, increasingly, MPAs are seen as ‘works in
progress’ that have the capacity to improve and change. It is clear that MPAs
require the support and leadership of all stakeholders – including scientists and
conservationists – to make them work.
A declared MPA signifies a positive intention towards a piece of habitat. It
is never an end point. In most cases, real protection requires more than the
declaration or the declarer (government agency) ever imagined or intended.
That is how it must be – if protection is ever to endure, adapt and function for
the desired purpose. There are now, and will be in the future, many other uses
for and competing interests in the sea.