A guide for planners and managers - IUCN

32 MARINE AND COASTAL
PROTECTED AREAS
Field trips to marine protected areas and research stations by school and
university students exemplify their use for formal training. Natural areas can serve
as “outdoor laboratories,” providing living examples of ecological principles taught
in class (Figure I-18).
FIGURE I-18.
A group of U.S. and Mexican college students listen to a teacher during a boat trip in the Gulf of California. The
students spent a semester studying marine mammals and visiting protected areas near La Paz, Mexico.
Marine protected areas offer opportunities for academic research (e.g., on specific
behavioral or physiological subjects), applied research (on resource management needs
and the biomedical applications of reef biocompounds), and monitoring of specific events
(e.g., coral bleaching, crown-of-thorns outbreaks) or long term trends (such as the impact
of silt linked to land fill and dredging on corals of the Ste. Anne Marine National Park
in Seychelles), or the recovery of corals following control of blast fishing as in
Komodo National Park, Indonesia. The particular advantage of protected areas for
research is that they enable long-term continuing studies of the same group of
organisms or of the same plot of habitat without the disturbance of inquisitive
visitors, poachers, or vandals. The need to protect research areas is recognized by the
exclusive research zones created at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and the USA’s
Florida Keys Sanctuary.
1.10 Protection from Natural Hazards
An important, and often underestimated, function of habitats along wave-swept
shores is coastal protection against natural hazards. This protection is particularly
Photo by Erkki Siirila.