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

Ocean Sanctuaries, Marine Reserves or Parks? 23
very large area which gives cetaceans protection from whaling but without
either active multiple-use management or highly protected core areas. In
practice, sanctuaries function mainly as national or international statements of
good intention. They may forbid hunting, but for the most part there was no
hunting of cetaceans in the recent histories of these sanctuaries anyway. And
even as a sanctuary against hunting, there are various loopholes, such as
‘scientific whaling’, indigenous whaling, small cetacean hunting, and incidental
kills associated with various fishing activities.
A number of papers and reports have focused on the meaning and rationale
behind international whale sanctuaries (eg Holt, 2000; Leaper and Papastavrou,
2001; Phillips, 1996). Carlson (unpublished) listed 52 whale sanctuaries of all
sizes, drawing on the more restricted definition of a cetacean sanctuary adopted
by the IUCN/UNEP/WWF Workshop on Cetacean Sanctuaries, held in
México in February 1979. This workshop defined a cetacean sanctuary as a
place where:
• no cetacean may be killed, taken alive or harassed;
• the environmental qualities necessary for the biological functions that
cetaceans perform there (such as breeding, calving, nursing, migrating,
feeding) are not impaired by human activities;
• benign scientific research and observation by the public may be conducted
under appropriate control; and
• public awareness of the significance of cetaceans in the natural
environment can be enhanced (IUCN/UNEP/WWF, 1979).
Yet even this definition of sanctuary, making it into more of an MPA, is not
enough to ensure true comprehensive protection for cetaceans, or for anything
else, when the area to be covered is large, such as an entire ocean basin – most
or all of which is on the high seas outside national waters. But the UN
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD), the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of
Wild Animals (CMS) and various other fisheries agreements and conventions,
all of which have come into force since this workshop, hold great promise in
terms of creating effective large-scale MPAs for cetaceans. The Pelagos
Sanctuary for Mediterranean Marine Mammals with its comprehensive list of
conservation measures – and to a lesser extent the Indian Ocean Sanctuary and
the more recent Southern Ocean Sanctuary – may provide the building blocks.
But first let’s look at the most effective and adaptable architecture for an MPA
of any size: the biosphere reserve.