© Greenpeace/Åslund Roadmap to Recovery: A global network of marine reserves Callum M. Roberts, Leanne Mason and Julie P. Hawkins Contributing authors: Elizabeth Masden, Gwilym Rowlands, Jenny Storey and Anna Swift Environment Department, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK Correspondence to: [email protected] 3 4 Roadmap to Recovery: A global network of marine reserves content 1. Summary 7 2. Introduction 9 3. Aims of this report 11 4. Life on the high seas 11 4.1 The pelagic realm 11 4.2 The deep sea 13 5. History of exploitation of the high seas 16 6. Present status and threats to life on the high seas 17 6.1 Fishing 17 6.2 Global warming 18 6.3 Disposal of CO2 18 6.4 Oil and mineral exploitation 18 6.5 Bioprospecting 20 6.6 Noise 20 7. Designing a global marine reserve network for the high seas 20 7.1 Marine reserves and why they are needed 20 7.2 Will marine reserves protect species on the high seas? 21 7.3 Identifying candidate sites for protection 23 7.4 The grid 25 8. Principles of marine reserve networking 25 8.1 Site selection 25 8.2 Networking and connectivity 26 8.3 Level of replication 26 8.4 Spacing of marine reserves 26 8.5 Size of marine reserves 26 8.6 Coverage of marine reserves 27 9. Procedure used for computer-assisted design of a network 28 of marine reserves 9.1 Features and targets used for Marxan analyses 29 Oceanographic Features 29 Physical features 29 Biological data 29 Expert consultation 31 10. Design of a network of high seas marine reserves 31 11. Features of selected areas identified for protection 33 12. Implementing the network 39 13. Literature cited 41 14. Acknowledgements 43 Appendix 1: Data layers used 43 Appendix 2: Respondents to the expert consultation on 51 high seas marine reserves. Appendix 3: Results of the expert consultation 54 5 © Greenpeace/Grace © Greenpeace/Davison 6 © Greenpeace/Davison 1. Summary The high seas lie beyond the 200 nautical of animals and plants. It also seeks to mile limits that define the extent of protect places that are particularly national sovereignty by countries of the threatened or vulnerable to present or world. They cover 64% of the area of the possible future human impacts, like fishing oceans, and nearly half the surface of the or seabed mining. Our overarching aim is planet. They are a global commons, under for a network that is representative of the the stewardship of the United Nations Law full variety of life in the sea. of the Sea for the benefit of all nations. But human pressures on the high seas are To achieve these aims, we brought together increasing fast, and urgent action is needed many different kinds of biological, physical to protect them from harm. Recent and oceanographic data. Data on research shows that industrial fishing has oceanographic features like water reduced populations of large, predatory temperature gradients and upwelling areas, fish, like tunas and billfish, by ninety together with fishery and tracking data on percent or more in the last fifty years. oceanic megafauna, enabled us to identify Some particularly vulnerable species, like places that are hotspots of activity on the sharks, have been reduced by factors of a high seas for large-bodied and vulnerable hundred, or even a thousand. In the process species. They included tunas and billfish, of capturing these fish, industrial fishing albatrosses, turtles, pinnipeds (seals and methods are killing untold numbers of other sea lions) and penguins, animal groups wildlife, endangering birds, turtles and whose ranges cover the seas from pole to marine mammals. In the deep sea, heavy pole. To this we added maps of cetacean bottom trawling gears are destroying diversity. To ensure that our network is seamount habitats that have taken representative, we used data on the thousands of years to develop and may be distribution of different biogeographic irreplaceable on human timescales. Much areas, depth zones, seabed sediment types of this activity is illegal, unregulated or and ocean trenches to represent the variety goes unreported. of habitats and their variation across the globe. We paid particular attention to In this report we present a design for a highly sensitive deepwater habitats, using global network of high seas marine maps of seamount distribution and reserves. Marine reserves are highly bathymetry to identify places vulnerable to protected areas that are off limits to all harm by bottom fishing. We also used extractive and destructive uses, including bathymetric data to calculate seabed fishing. They are the most powerful tool complexity, which helps in identifying available for the conservation of ocean biologically rich places in the deep sea. wildlife and may also benefit fisheries by All data were mapped using a geographic promoting recovery and reproduction of information system and gridded into 5o exploited species. The network we propose latitude by 5o longitude cells, the size of aims to protect places that are biologically the smallest marine reserves that we rich, supporting outstanding concentrations considered to be viable in the high seas. © Greenpeace/Grace © Greenpeace/Culley 7 An effective reserve network must be presented in this report includes large enough to sustain species and twenty-nine separate marine reserves that ecological processes in perpetuity. Research together encompass 40.8% of the area of indicates that protecting between twenty the world’s oceans. This network met all and fifty percent of the sea will maximise the targets set and is representative of benefits to fisheries. It will also enable the biodiversity on the high seas. All the creation of networks of reserves that marine reserves identified incorporate represent the full spectrum of life and places that are biologically important based replicate it in different reserves. Larger on available data. However, their figures in this range are warranted for boundaries may be refined as more data environments that support highly mobile become available. species and where habitats are particularly sensitive to damage. To be viable over the It is our view that this network of marine long term, populations protected by reserves is essential to safeguard life on the reserves must be large enough to be high seas for the sake of our own and self-sustaining or must interconnect with future generations. Implementing the others in the network. These factors argue network represent a challenge to the will for a high level of protection on the high and cooperative spirit of the world’s seas, and we set a target of protecting forty nations. But time is short as the scale and percent of the area of all habitats and severity of harm are growing day by day. In biogeographic zones. We also set a series of order to reverse the precipitous decline of subsidiary targets for inclusion of places the life in our oceans and fulfill the targets identified as important for different species set by the Convention on Biological groups. We used the computer program Diversity (CBD), we call on the United Marxan to help develop network designs Nations to take urgent action to establish that met these targets with the minimum and protect a global network of marine coverage of marine reserves. The design reserves on the high seas. 8 © Greenpeace/Newman 2. Introduction Our Earth is an ocean planet. The sea covers nearly three quarters of its surface. Long ago, before tribes wrestled control of patches of land from one another, and before tribes gave way to nations, people were free to roam the world, taking what they needed where they found it. The land was a commons for use by all. Today, the land has long since been privatised and fenced, and few places remain where such freedom applies. But on the oceans – beyond the 200 nautical mile limits of national waters – the seas are still a global commons. The high seas, as these regions are known, cover 64% of the area of the oceans, and nearly half of the planet’s surface. On the high seas, our freedom to exploit still takes precedence over our duty to protect. The high seas are the least regulated and least protected places in the world. Lying beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, they are governed by the United Nations Law of the Sea. This convention only came into force in 1994, and has yet to be signed by some of the most influential nations in the world. The Law of the Sea enshrines the right of access and use of the high seas for all. It allows for nations to fish, lay submarine cables and pipelines, or create other installations such as rigs and even artificial islands, for example. While signatory nations are obliged to conserve and manage the resources they exploit, including fish, in reality few exercise much control over their high seas fleets. Many do not monitor fishing operations, leaving their fleets to exploit high seas resources unhindered, to the detriment of all. High seas fisheries have grown rapidly in the last thirty years as a result of declining nearshore stocks and the escalating value of prime fish like tuna on world markets. Those fisheries have had dramatic impacts on populations of large, ocean-going fish like swordfish, tuna, marlin and sharks. Populations of these open water predators have plummeted, falling on average to one tenth of their abundance in the 1950s (Myers and Worm 2003). Some species, like the large oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus) could be a hundred to a thousand times less common than they were fifty years ago (Baum and Myers 2004). Fisheries have also moved into the deep sea.