The Kermadec and Las Desventuradas: MPAs on the Rise

Galápagos National Park -Among the first of the new wave of expansion of Marine Protected Areas.

The total surface of global marine protected area is on the rise with the creation of new marine sanctuaries by Chile and New Zealand. The increase of global protected ocean surface is an issue which has become priority in the past years. Countries through United Nations goals have agreed that a 10% of the global oceans must be protected by the year 2020. Diverse international treaties and action plans recommend establishing protected areas for 20 to 30% of the world's oceans.  To the day it is estimated that roughly less than 10% of the oceans are protected. 

National Geographic reported on October 5 that Chile created the largest marine reserve in the Americas. The waters around the Desventuradas Islands -part of the Rapa Nui culture known for homing the Easter Island were at the epicenter of the new protection map. “The newly protected waters around the Desventuradas Islands contain many marine species found nowhere else on Earth,” National Geographic reported. 

“The new area, called the Nazca-Desventuradas Marine Park, constitutes about eight percent of the ocean areas worldwide that have been declared off-limits to fishing and governed by no-take protections,” Russell Moffitt  conservation analyst with the Marine Conservation Institute in Seattle, Washington told National Geographic.

Marine ocean protected areas and Ocean Sanctuaries represent an opportunity for any government. Tourism and science usually flourishes under conservation and management. Environmental systems are enriched and purified and biodiversity studied as it blossoms. 

On September 29 international press reported on the creation of another massive Marine Protected Area created by New Zealand -The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary. The Kermadec is now one of the largest protected area of the World. In South Pacific rich waters The Kermadec spans over 620 thousand square kilometers. The main heart of the reserve is the Kermadec Islands which basin was already under protection and management and now has expanded...exponentially. 

The Kermadec biodiversity is considered among the richest in the globe. The presence of 25 species of Whales and Dolphins speak by itself of the complexity of the food webs and biological energy present in the basin. There are 150 known types of fish and three of the world’s seven sea turtle species in the Kermadec. The Kermadec also homes the world’s longest chain of submerged volcanoes and the second deepest ocean trench. From surface waters to a free fall of up to 10 kilometers in depths -deeper even than Mount Everest science in the Kermadec becomes a unique quest. 

Voices rising from New Zealand's own Kermadec Islands also recognized the importance of not being an isolated “conservation island” and applauded the need for more global ocean area to be listed and placed under conservation and management policies and Chile´s new Marine Protected Area Las Desventuradas. 

“What a week for the Ocean!! - First a Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary announcement, and now Chile has announced the creation of a marine park around Rapa Nui -Easter Island. This is fantastic news!,” Kermadec voices said. 

The Kermadec and the Desventuradas basins share many things in common. They are both considered to be culturally linked and both share global ocean systems. Water currents, environment, niches, migration pathways, ocean global ocean trench system, upwellings, ecology, nutrient and biological energy among other elements are shared and linked by both areas. 

The Desventuradas Marine Protected Area expands over 297 thousand square kilometers. “Together, they're known as the Desventuradas (or Unfortunate in Spanish) Islands, which are part of the underwater Nazca Ridge, which runs southwest from Peru to Easter Island,” National Geographic went technical on the issue. 

National Geographic Pristine Seas -project with active programs operating in diverse parts of the globe has had hands on experience in Las Desventuradas. Researchers of Pristine Seas have meticulously registered and described the biodiversity present in the area. In 2013 in an exploration diving expedition a team of Pristine Seas revealed that the life of Las Desventuradas is far from normal. When National Geographic's Pristine Seas expedition explored the waters of the Desventuradas Islands in 2013 they shed light on some beautifully bizarre creatures, including species unknown to mankind. 

“These islands had been subject to a modest amount of fishing, mainly for swordfish, before the creation of the new park,” Alan Friedlander chief scientist for National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas project stressed the importance of protecting waters.The swordfish catch around the Desventuradas Islands amounted to about 0.5 percent of Chile's total swordfish haul. The project partnered with Oceana to promote designation of the new MPA Marine Protected Area. 

Pristine Seas also voicing for the importance of the increase of marine protected areas explained that the Oceans sustains all life on Earth as we know it today. “It supplies more than half the oxygen we breathe and regulates the Earth’s climate. Its fisheries provide employment for 180 million people and food for billions worldwide, and it offers opportunities for recreation, education, and tourism,” Pristine Seas explained. 

“Today's announcement of Chile's huge new marine protected area -at the Summit Our Ocean 2015 hosted in Viña del Mar- is one sign of the great work being done worldwide to ensure the ocean remains wild and healthy,” Pristine Seas product posted on Facebook. 

Species which amazed divers in Las Desventuradas include massive sized lobsters, four seal species which were thought to be extinct, decorator crabs which takes objects from their surroundings including other animals and uses them as shell camouflage, anemones, nudibranchs -ocean butterflies. pyrosomes, deep water fish, frogfish, jellyfish and medusas, chimera species and other species, some awaiting to be discovered by human science. Life on Las Desventuradas is found nowhere else on Earth.

“Finding new species is what we live for as scientists," Alan Friedlander head scientist for National Geographic Society's Pristine Seas Project enthusiastic stated. "You have to be down there with a watchful eye, because even places you think you know will surprise you."

Friedlander detailed specie discovered belonging to the Chimeras "[It's a] very ancestral group of fishes that are found in extremely deep waters," says Friedlander. The new chimera was found 1,676 meters deep. 

2014 and 2015 have been good years for the increase of marine protected areas. In March the United Kingdom created a 830 thousand square kilometer Sanctuary in the remote Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific. At the time it was reported as the “Largest Single Marine reserve Created in the Pacific”. Thirty percent of the UK's waters around the world are protected -unfortunately other countries have less than 1% of the waters under conservation policies which leads to a drop in the global average. 

In September 2014 the President of the United States Barack Obama through the Pacific Remote Islands National Marine Monument created the largest marine protected area in the World. It spans 490 thousand square miles. The incredible environment includes the Johnston Atoll, Wake Atoll and Jarvis Island. 

“The world is on track to meet a 2020 target on the expansion of protected areas, but more work is needed to ensure areas of importance...are prioritized for protection...,” the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP ended it. 

Last year's report made public by the IUCN International Union for the Conservation of Nature IUCN revealed that only 4% of the global ocean were protected then.