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

Ocean Sanctuaries, Marine Reserves or Parks? 41
high seas in order that others will follow suit (de Fontaubert, 2001). Of course,
there is also the danger that certain states will take advantage of the conservation
measures of other states by exploiting the good fishing or whaling areas which
have been identified, but this should not preclude conservation moves.
Ensuring compliance and providing enforcement capability for MPAs on the
high seas will be exponentially more difficult than enforcing provisions for
existing coastal MPAs (MPA News, 2003c). It is not just a question of being
outside of national jurisdictions, but also of the sheer distance from land, in most
cases at least 200 nm plus (371 km). For this reason, Carl Gustav Lundin, head of
the IUCN Global Marine Programme, thinks that a combination of employing
the latest satellite technology, as well as harnessing the capability of the
underutilized national navies, could provide the necessary combination of good
monitoring and enforcement. To do this, Lundin envisions the mass deployment
of satellite transponders on the high-seas fishing fleet. Such transponders, already
in use in national waters, send a signal from boat to shore indicating the location
and general activity pattern of the vessel. Fishing boats entering closed areas
could be apprehended – on site by navies, or later back in port.
Of course, such a programme would require international agreements.
Kristina Gjerde, IUCN Global Marine Programme advisor, estimates that it
may take more than five years to negotiate high-seas compliance mechanisms
through UNCLOS and other agreements. Equally important, however, will be
the abolition of flags of convenience for fishing and other vessels which
opportunistically seek to dodge international agreements (MPA News, 2003c).
It is also recognized that the application of various diplomatic measures
and economic pressures will help to encourage compliance. Of course, this
depends on the political will and commitment of the participating states. But if
regions or groups of states have gone through the effort of agreeing to protect
an important high-seas area, they should be willing to take various means to
enforce it.
The whale conservationist or MPA practitioner should use all the
instruments available for conservation on the high seas (see Chapter 4). An
example of a good high-seas strategy is the United Nations General Assembly
Drift-net Resolution (1991), which has helped alleviate a serious problem that
could not have been solved or certainly solved as well through MPAs. After this
resolution took effect in 1992, more than 1000 vessels were withdrawn from
large-scale (2.5 km+) drift-net fishing with its large bycatch of marine mammals
(Reeves, 2002). In some cases, diplomatic wording regarding the conservation
of an area may achieve more than by giving it the high profile MPA name,
whether it goes by ‘marine protected area’, ‘sanctuary’, ‘biosphere reserve’ or
‘marine reserve’.
Since the 2001 Vilm, Germany, workshop on the high seas, there have been
additional workshops which have continued and enhanced the debate, notably
the 2003 Malaga Workshop on High Seas Marine Protected Areas (see
www.iucn.org/themes/marine/pdf/GjerdeBreideHSMPA.pdf).
At the V World Parks Congress in September 2003, a target was set for five
ecologically significant, high-seas MPAs to be created by 2008, as well as a