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Save £1400 Per Couple on Maldives Scuba Diving Holiday
Scuba travel specialist Dive Worldwide is offering fantastic savings on a trip to Filitheyo Island Resort on the unspoilt Maldives island of Faafu following the country’s addition to the UK’s travel corridor list. Divers will enjoy a laid-back atmosphere and the chance of large pelagic encounters
The Filitheyo Island Resort consists of 125 air-conditioned villas that are surrounded by lush tropical vegetation. Featuring air conditioning, televisions and en-suite bathrooms, each villa is traditionally decorated and designed to allow visitors to relax in comfort. The resort also includes an infinity pool, a spa and a selection of restaurants – each serving international specialities and exotic cocktails.
Located on the eastern side of the atoll, Faafu is home to a large number of fascinating diving locations and a vast array of marine life, including manta rays and whale sharks. Divers can visit a variety of sites including overhangs, shallow reefs and coral bommies, and another highlight also included is a trip to the famous Route 66 – where encounters with eagle rays, critters and shoals of snapper are common.
Special Offer Price: from £2,695 based on 2 sharing (saving £700pp), including return flights from the UK, transfers, 7 nights’ half-board accommodation at Filitheyo Island Resort, and 6 days unlimited shore diving with tanks, weights and Nitrox (for qualified divers). Book by 30 November 2020. Valid for travel between 1 December 2020 and 31 October 2021.
Full Terms and Conditions can be found at www.diveworldwide.com/accommodation/filitheyo-island-resort. For more information on booking, contact the team at www.diveworldwide.com/contact or give them a call on +44 (0)1962 302 087
10 Underwater Creatures That Don’t Need to Dress up for Halloween
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
There’s plenty of stuff underwater that – even if they’re perfectly harmless – most people wouldn’t want to meet, especially on a night-dive, when you’ve become separated from your buddy, and the battery in your flashlight is failing fast, and you start hearing the opening strains of The Twilight Zone underneath your hoodie. Remember: underwater, nobody can hear you scream.
Well, okay, if you shout loudly enough then yes, you can be quite easily heard underwater, actually. But it’s Hallowe’en, so here’s some underwater critters that might at the very least put you off your dinner, if they go bumping into you in the night…
DEEP SEA ANGLERFISH
Humpback blackdevil anglerfish, Melanocetus johnsonii. (Photo: Edith Widder / EOL)
The term ‘anglerfish’ covers a number of different species, all of whom have one thing in common: a bioluminescent lure that they can swing from the top of their heads to attract their prey, before sinking in a set of gnashers that would impress even Dracula. Definitely a case of having a face that ‘only a mother could love’, and well – it would have to be a mother, because mates are hard to find in the inky blackness of the deep sea, so females of some species form a very close bond with the males. So close, in fact, that the male’s head is fused into her body, effectively turning him into a portable sack of nuts. Who said romance was dead?
BLOBFISH
Whoever gave the blobfish its name was perhaps a little bit lazy, possibly a little bit mean, but definitely scientifically accurate. Psychrolutes marcidus lives between 600-1200m near the sea floor where, to be fair, they look a lot less blobby than they do up here.They never visit the surface (with a face like that, who would?) – but they are sometimes accidentally brought up as bycatch and their gelatinous bodies – like lots of other fish – can’t cope with gravity. Voted ‘World’s Ugliest Animal’ in 2013.
FRILLED SHARK
The frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) is one of the oldest surviving species of shark in the water – and therefore among the oldest animals to have ever inhabited the planet – with some estimates dating the species to around 150 million years. That’s twice as old as the last surviving dinosaur and 149.9 million years older than humans. The frilled shark is found from the poles to the equator in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and isn’t thought to be dangerous. Pretty scary looking, but not dangerous…
GIANT ISOPOD
One of the largest isopods, Bathynomus giganteus (Photo: Eric Kilby / Wikimedia Commons)
Looking for all the world like a giant woodlouse, but nastier, giant isopods are a group of crustaceans comprised of at least 20 individual species. Evil in appearance if not by nature, they thrive in cold, deep water, and range in size from 5cm and upwards. The largest model Bathynomus giganteus (pictured above) can reach up to 76cm in length and weighs in at close to 2kg. Just out of interest, woodlice are, in fact, crustaceans, not insects, and therefore B. giganticus is a distant relative, as are shrimp, crabs and other underwater shelled creatures. Now that you’ve seen it, an image of the giant isopod and his little pal the woodlouse will pop into your head every time you order prawns, or crack into a lobster. Forever.
GOBLIN SHARK
The Goblin shark was discovered near Yokohama, Japan, and takes its common name from the Japanese word tenguzame, a creature of Japanese mythology similar to the goblins of western mythology and – well – because it looks like a goblin. Mitsukurina owstoni is, like the frilled shark, one of the oldest living species of fish in the water, coming in at around 125 million years old. The elongated ‘nose’ gives it a fairly evil appearance, and at 3m long, it’s probably best not to encounter one while night diving, although as a deep-water shark that’s fairly unlikely. The jaws extend considerably when it feeds, adding to the nightmarish look.
THE THING
Eunice aphroditois, the Bobbit worm (Photo by Jenny / Wikimedia creative commons)
‘The Thing’ is an unknown species of polychaete worm that is occasionally sighted in the Caribbean islands of Curaçao, Bonaire and St Lucia, and is listed in fish ID books simply as ‘The Thing’. It is probably a relative of the creature pictured above which is the Australian version and known as the Bobbit worm. They say a picture tells a thousand words but what this one doesn’t tell is the story of the thousand legs. These giant worms look for all the world like giant centipedes but reaching over 2m in length and with infinitely more appendages. They are so rare that there aren’t many pictures on the internet, but you can find some close-up shots of The Thing in St Lucia in this article. Interestingly, the Bobbit worm’s scientific name is Eunice aphroditois. given that Aphrodite is the goddess of love, it seems likely that whoever named it was taking the mickey, or had been in the pub waaaaay too long.
DRAGONFISH
Deep-sea dragonfish (Photo: JesseKlaggett / Flickr)
If somebody was to ever re-boot a very popular TV show and call it The Swimming Dead, then this would be the face of every flesh-eating zombie wiped out by – or indeed wiping out – the heroes. Dragonfish are agressive deep-sea predators, and Sloane’s viperfish (Chauliodus sloani) is the current world-record holder for tooth-to-body size of any living fish known to science, so large that the fish is unable to properly close its mouth. It hunts by opening its jaws and rushing at its prey, impaling its dinner in much the same way as any decent horror movie hero impales the undead. Fortunately, it lives very deep in the ocean and only grows to around 30cm – but one bite is all it takes…
WOLF EEL
Wolf Eels (Anarrhichthys ocellatus) are actually quite lovely (Photo: Wikimedia Commons / D.P. Hershman)
Wolves look graceful, powerful, beautiful and majestic. Wolf eels do not. Growing to around 2.5m in length, Anarrhichthys ocellatus is mostly harmless to humans, although like the more common moray eels, if you poke around in its den, you’re going to lose whatever you’re poking with. Resident of the cooler waters of the North Pacific, wolf eels often mate for life, take up residence in a small cave and take turns guarding their eggs as the other adult goes foraging for crustaceans and shellfish. Rather a family-oriented sort of fish, really, and not at all scary. Just comes up a little short in the department of fairer features.
VAMPIRE SQUID
No round up of Hallowe’en-themed aquatic life would be complete without the vampire squid. Unlike other species that sound dangerous but have deceptively boring scientific names,Vampyroteuthis infernalis quite literally translates as ‘the vampire squid from hell’. The name might be a little undeserved, however, as it doesn’t have fangs, the spines on the underside of its tentacles are harmless and it doesn’t suck blood. Possibly whoever named it had been up a little late reading Bram Stoker novels with a tad too much absinthe.
A NIGHTMARE ON YOUR STREET
Plastic is one of greatest threats to our oceans, not scary fish (Photo: Rich Carey / Shutterstock)
If there was one thing that human beings should fear most about our oceans today, it’s not toothy, bitey fish or ugly monsters, even though – seriously – after the isopod you’re never going to look at a prawn cocktail the same way again. No, if there’s one thing to be afraid of, it’s not the creatures that are living under the waves, it’s the monstrous creation that is killing them en masse. Plastic in our seas has become a nightmare of epic proportions, and the results of its presence would turn the stomachs of even the hardiest of bloodthirsty horror movie fanatics. Hallowe’en probably started out somewhere in our distant past as a ritual to appease the souls of the dead, drive out evil spirits and set the world to rights before winter set in. It would seem that’s as good a reason as any to start thinking more carefully about our use of plastic, and what we do with it afterwards. Enjoy the evening, don’t let the trick-or-treaters rob you blind (or egg your car), recycle the sweet wrappers and the costume packaging and then perhaps we can start to set the world to rights. Again.
Happy Hallowe’en!
Win $2000 and GoPro Hero9 Black in Conservation Competition
PADI and GoPro are launching #UnderwaterSelfieDay to raise awareness of ocean conservation (Photo: PADI/supplied)
PADI and GoPro are teaming up to get people around the world to make a statement for ocean conservation with the launch of Underwater Selfie Day on 7 November 2020.
According to a joint press release issued earlier this week, ‘By flooding social media with amazing underwater photos and videos for one day, divers, water lovers and action sports enthusiasts will put a spotlight on the human connection to the ocean – showing millions of people around the world just how incredible it really is and why it’s worth protecting.’
Divers, snorkelers and watersports enthusiasts who own a GoPro action camera can submit pictures or videos – which must be shot with a GoPro – to the competition by posting selfies with the hashtag #underwaterselfieday on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter on 7 November 2020. PADI and GoPro’s official accounts must also be tagged in the post.
Winners will be decided by a panel of judges based on performance and style, composition and framing, and overall creativity. The winning entry will earn the photographer $2,000, plus the winner and two runners-up will also receive one of the recently launched GoPro HERO9 Black action cameras, capable of delivering 5K video with a range of new features.
‘PADI is committed to growing its community of Torchbearers who explore and protect our ocean,’ said Kristin Valette-Wirth, Chief Brand and Membership Officer for PADI Worldwide. ‘We’re thrilled to partner with GoPro to inform, excite and empower people everywhere to seek adventure and save the ocean on Underwater Selfie Day and year-round.’
‘At GoPro, we often say that the company really took off when our founder, Nicholas Woodman, decided to turn the camera around and capture himself, so kicking off an international #UnderwaterSelfieDay, which also celebrates protecting the environment, is something we are thrilled to be a part of,’ sayid GoPro Vice President of Global Marketing Rick Loughery. ‘The HERO9 Black … is the first GoPro to be sold in plastic-free packaging – one more step we are taking to protect the environment.’
To learn more about the competition and how to submit your entries, visit www.padi.com/underwaterselfieday, and make sure you read the terms and conditions at www.padi.com/dive/gopro-selfieday-terms before entering. For more about the PADI Torchbearers initiative, head to www.padi.com/conservation.
New Recordings Show Remoras’ Secret Surfing Life Onboard Blue Whales
Still from study video showing a remora hitching a lift on a massive blue whale (Image: New Jersey Institute of Technology)
A new study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology has captured the first-ever continuous recording of remora behaviour while travelling with its host organism. The study into the ‘fluid environments’ of blue whales travelling off the coast of California used advanced biosensing tags with video recording capabilities to capture the remoras ‘hitchhiking’ on the whales.
Remoras – from the Echeneidae family of fish – are renowned for sticking themselves to the bodies of sharks, manta rays, turtles and other large marine life, including, occasionally, scuba divers. Powerful suction disks on their heads allow the ‘suckerfish’ to ride as passengers through the ocean, the constant movement of their hosts keeping water flowing across the remora’s gills without having to expend energy swimming. In return for the marine taxi service, the remoras remove parasites from the surface of their hosts, and are rewarded with a never-ending supply of faecal matter on which to feed.
Closeup of a remora’s head with its ‘suction disk’ on display (Photo: Shutterstock)
Travelling onboard a 30m-long blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) for any distance, however, is not quite as simple as sucking on to the host animal’s body. The movement of the whales through the water creates ‘intense hydrodynamics’ in the surrounding environment, meaning the remoras have to employ a ‘much more refined skillset’ in order to make the most of their ride.
The study shows how the remoras select the ‘most flow-optimal regions’ of the whales’ bodies on which to attach themselves, including behind the blowhole, where drag resistance is reduced by as much as 84 per cent. The recordings also show the remoras moving freely around their hosts’ bodies, using ‘previously unknown surfing and skimming behaviours along special low-drag travelling lanes that exist just off the surface of the whale’s body’.
‘Whales are like their own floating island, basically like their own little ecosystems, ‘ said Brooke Flammang, assistant professor of biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and lead author of the study. ‘Through lucky coincidence, our recordings captured how remoras interact in this environment and are able to use the distinct flow dynamics of these whales to their advantage. It is incredible because we’ve really known next to nothing about how remoras behave on their hosts in the wild over any prolonged period of time.’
Remora attachment locations on a 26m blue whale as observed during the study. Blue circles indicate at least one remora was observed; red/yellow circle indicates more than three remoras at a time (Image credit: NOAA Fisheries)
The footage recorded during the study captured a total of 27 remoras using 61 different locations on the whales. It turns out that the remoras could stick themselves anywhere they wanted to, but preferred to travel in the most ‘hydrodynamically beneficial’ spots on the whale’s surface – those places where the remoras would expend the least energy remaining in position – which included behind the blowhole, next to and behind the dorsal fins, and a region of the whale’s flank above and behind the pectoral fins.
‘We learned that the remora’s suction disk is so strong that they could stick anywhere, even the tail fluke where the drag was measured strongest, but they like to go for the easy ride,’ said Erik Anderson, co-author of the study and biofluid dynamics researcher at Grove City College. ‘This saves them energy and makes life less costly as they hitchhike on and skim over the whale surface like a NASA probe over an asteroid or some mini-world.’
In order to conserve energy while moving around the whale, the remoras ‘surf’ inside a thin layer of fluid – known as the boundary layer – around the whale’s body, where drag force is reduced by up to 72 per cent compared to the free stream just above. The fish repeatedly attached and released their suction disks to move and were seen ‘skimming’ over the whale’s body. The researchers suspect that the remoras’ ability to remain close to their hosts is aided by the Venturi effect – the same principle by which scuba regulators work – whereby moving fluid creates a lower pressure than the surrounding environment, meaning the remora are effectively pushed back against their host whale’s body when they move, instead of being completely pulled away from its surface.
Remoras stuck to the tail of a sperm whale show how powerful their suction discs can be (Alexander Machulskiy/Shutterstock)
‘The skimming and surfing behaviour is amazing for many reasons, especially because we think that [the remoras] are taking advantage of the Venturi effect and using suction forces to maintain their close proximity,’ said Flammang. ‘In this narrow space between the remora and whale, fluid moves at a higher velocity but has lower pressure, so it is not going to push the remora away but will actually suck it toward the host. They can swim up into the free stream to grab a bite of food and come back down into the boundary layer, but it takes a lot more energy to swim in the free stream flow.’
Along with uncovering new details of the remora’s hitchhiking prowess, the team says they will continue to explore both the flow environments around whales and the mechanisms by which specifically adapted organisms like remoras successfully attach to hosts in order to improve animal tag technologies and designs for extended periods of behavioural and ecological monitoring. The team is also using their new insights into the remora’s preferred low-drag attachment locations to better inform where they might tag whales in studies to come.
‘It’s an extremely arduous process to study whales, with permitting, research regulations and the game of chance of finding animals, all for the tags to usually fall off within 48 hours,’ said Flammang. ‘If we can come up with a better way to collect longer-term data through better tag placement or better technologies, it could really advance our learning of the species, and many other animals that remoras attach to.’
The complete study ‘Remoras pick where they stick’ by Brooke E. Flammang et al can be found at www.jeb.biologists.org/content/223/20/jeb226654
If you’ve been thinking about getting into technical diving, you’ve probably looked at open circuit options like twinsets and sidemount configurations, as well as closed-circuit rebreather (CCR) diving. With so many choices it’s hard to know which way to best begin technical diving. Should you start with open circuit or rebreather? Here we’ll take a look at some of the key differences between the two.
Let’s first clarify the terminology: open circuit means nothing more than traditional scuba, where a tank delivers the gas and you inhale via a regulator. Your outward breath exhales the into the surrounding water, creating bubbles. It’s a fairly simple system. Closed circuit diving (CCR) means recycling some or all of your gas and re-breathing it, hence the name “rebreather.” There are no bubbles with this system. While simple in principle, the actual equipment setup tends to be more complicated when it comes to CCR diving.
Easier transition
Divers typically learn to dive on single tank open-circuit scuba. Therefore, one argument for starting to tech dive in open-circuit configurations is to create an easier transition to decompression diving and mixed gases. New tech divers can change single tanks to doubles and add stage/deco tanks, but the principal components of equipment — cylinders, buoyancy compensators and regulators — remain the same. With that in mind, student tech divers may find it easier to concentrate on learning new protocols and diving techniques.
Where will diving take you?
Another consideration is where you see your diving in five years’ time. Some tech students are simply curious about what lies beyond no-stop limits and are looking to discover ‘the dark side’ step by step. Others have a clear goal in mind — perhaps expedition diving, wreck exploration or mapping caves. These students already know they will be looking for greater depths, longer dives — and a lot of helium for their trimix. If you fall into the latter category, starting your tech diving journey on CCR might be a better option.
Added complexity
While the idea of recycling your gas supply seems beautifully simple, using an actual rebreather is more complex. For starters, there are two tanks involved. The first one contains oxygen to replenish the oxygen you have metabolized on the dive, and the second contains diluent to ensure you can keep oxygen partial pressures at a safe level, as well as being able to inflate your counter-lungs enough to take a full breath. Another key component is the CO2 scrubber, which removes carbon dioxide from the diver’s exhaled breath via a chemical reaction.
Consequently, setting up your rebreather takes longer than setting up a single tank. The same is true for cleaning equipment post-dive, although, with practice, divers develop a routine and become more efficient.
This added complexity does extend to the dive itself. While electronic CCRs do a lot of work for the diver, manual CCRs require the diver to be more active during the dive. Both types require divers to become very familiar and highly practiced when it comes to dealing with emergencies. Arguably, this also applies to open-circuit diving, but closed-circuit diving beyond the initial certification level does pose a higher degree of complexity.
Extended time underwater
One of the biggest benefits of rebreather diving is additional time underwater. On open circuit, tech divers tightly calculate their gas. One of their main concerns is whether or not they have something to breathe. On closed-circuit systems, however, the concern changes to ‘am I breathing something safe?’ Rebreather divers learn to check that they are maintaining a safe partial pressure of oxygen at all times to avoid hypoxia as well as oxygen toxicity.
With that in mind, the scrubber duration becomes a major limiting factor. This will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and depend on scrubber size and design, but three or more hours is not unusual.
Marine life encounters
Diving without bubbles means diving almost silently and simply fitting better into the underwater world. Fish are calmer and tend to get closer to the diver to inspect this strange creature more closely. This is amazing for underwater photography and videography, and it can actually be a bit unnerving to new CCR divers. Divers may also find that their marine life encounters become longer as they are not standing out in the underwater environment as much as open-circuit divers do.
What’s your budget?
Diving is not a cheap hobby, nor should it be. It requires specialized life-support equipment that needs to be well maintained and often involves reasonably complex logistics. Technical diving takes all of that up a notch as divers add redundant equipment, some of which needs to be oxygen-clean, and may also look to dive specific, more expensive gases. Longer tech dives also mean that mixed boats with recreational and technical divers don’t always work well, so you may require a separate boat.
Once you exceed certain depths, you’ll need helium to dive safely and avoid issues such as gas density, narcosis, and oxygen toxicity. In most parts of the world, helium is expensive — and this is where the ability to recycle your gas may help you save money if you are diving closed circuit.
On the other side of this argument is the cost of getting started. Just like recreational training, you’ll learn both open-circuit and closed-circuit technical diving in stages, meaning you’ll need several courses to reach your goals. Then there is the cost of the rebreather itself. Many shops will offer rental units to students, but if you’re planning on sticking with CCR diving, investing in a unit of your own will become inevitable.
Having the ability to recycle your gas, however, will go some way toward offsetting the cost of helium along the way.
So, what should you do?
For many people the answer to that question is a bit of both. Laying open-circuit tech diving foundations, understanding decompression dive planning and gas calculations, and running dives will help a diver’s transition into CCR diving.
In addition, you must back up any CCR dive with a bailout plan, which you’ll calculate using largely the same principles open-circuit tech divers would apply to their contingency planning.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer here but consider how much time and budget you can dedicate to technical diving. How sure you are that this is the way your diving will go will help you decide whether to start with open-circuit training or jump straight into a CCR. And, if you can’t decide, there’s nothing wrong with doing both.
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Terry the Grumpy Turtle Wins 2020 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards
Terry the green turtle gained worldwide notoriety for being a bit tetchy in the presence of photographers (Photo: Mark Fitzpatrick/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2020)
Terry the grumpy turtle has won the 2020 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, beating a photobombing giraffe, singing ground squirrel and a comedy parrotfish to top spot.
The picture of a green turtle ‘flipping the bird’ was captured by Mark Fitzpatrick while he was swimming off Lady Elliot Island in Queensland, Australia. Fitzpatrick’s image emerged as a clear favourite of the judges from the 7,000 entries that were submitted to this year’s competition.
‘I’m stoked and honoured to be awarded the Comedy Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2020,’ said Fitzpatrick. ‘It’s been amazing to see the reaction to my photo of Terry the turtle flipping the bird, with Terry giving people a laugh in what has been a difficult year for many.’
Fitzpatrick’s first place picture has won him a safari from Alex Walker’s Serian in Kenya’s Masai Mara, a unique handmade trophy from the Wonder Workshop in Tanzania, a photography bag from Think Tank, and a brand new Nikon camera. Fitzpatrick also hopes that his winning entry will help to spread an important conservation message.
This picture of ‘Smiley’ the parrotfish was recognised as Highly Commended by the judges. (Photo: Arturo Telle Thiemann/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2020)
‘Hopefully Terry the turtle can encourage more people to take a moment and think about how much our incredible wildlife depends on us and what we can do to help them,’ said Fitzpatrick. ‘Flippers crossed that this award puts Terry in a better mood the next time I see him at Lady Elliot Island!’
Terry is the first underwater picture to win the Comedy Wildlife Photographer of the Year award in the competition’s history. A second underwater picture of a comedy parrotfish by Arturo Telle Thiemann was recognised as Highly Commended.
The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, founded by professional photographers and conservationists Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam, is a global, online and free-to-enter photography competition showcasing humorous images of the earth’s wildlife. In addition to providing some light-hearted relief, the competition aims to ‘highlight the extremely important message of wildlife conservation in an engaging and positive way’, and is partnered with global conservation charity The Born Free Foundation.
For more information and to view the complete list of winners, or to order prints of winning competition entries, head to www.comedywildlifephoto.com
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Expanding MPAs by 5% Could Boost Fish Yields by 20%
Sweetlips shoal in the Raja Ampat marine protected area, Indonesia. SergeUWPhoto/Shutterstock
Marine protected areas, or MPAs as they’re more commonly called, are very simple. Areas of the sea are set aside where certain activities – usually fishing – are banned or restricted. Ideally, these MPAs might be placed around particularly vibrant habitats that support lots of different species, like seagrass beds or coral reefs. By preventing fishing gear such as towed seabed trawls from sweeping through these environments, the hope is that marine life will be allowed to recover.
When used well, they can be very effective. MPAs have been shown to increase the diversity of species and habitats, and even produce bigger fish within their bounds. A new study argues that by expanding the world’s MPAs by just 5 per cent, we could boost future fish catches by at least 20 per cent. This could generate an extra nine to 12 million tonnes of seafood per year, worth between USD$15-19 billion. It would also significantly increase how much nutritious fish protein is available for a growing human population to eat.
So what’s the catch?
Spillover versus blowback
The scientific rationale is sound. We already know that MPAs can increase the numbers of fish living inside them, which grow to be bigger and lay more eggs. The larvae that hatch can help seed fish populations in the wider ocean as they drift outside the MPA, leading to bigger catches in the areas where fishing is still permitted. We know fish can swim large distances as adults too. While some find protection and breed inside MPAs, others will move into less crowded waters outside where they can then be caught. Together, these effects are known as the spillover benefits of MPAs.
The study is the first to predict, through mathematical modelling, that a modest increase in the size of the world’s MPAs could swell global seafood yields as a result of this spillover. But while the predictions sound good, we have to understand what pulling this off would entail.
The study maintains that the new MPAs would need to be carefully located to protect areas that are particularly productive. Locating MPAs in remote areas offshore, which are hard to access and typically unproductive, would have much smaller benefits for marine life than smaller, inshore MPAs that local fishing vessels can reach. Just 20 large sites in the remote open ocean account for the majority of the world’s MPAs. As the low hanging fruit of marine conservation, these MPAs are often placed where little fishing has occurred.
A minority of the world’s MPAs are strict no-take zones. Marine Conservation Institute/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA
The MPAs themselves would also need to be highly protected, meaning no fishing. Only 2.4 per cent of the world’s ocean area has this status. Increasing this by a further 5 per cent would mean roughly trebling the coverage of highly protected MPAs, and that’s likely to provoke a great deal of resistance. Many fishers are sceptical that spillover can boost catches enough to compensate for losing the right to fish within MPAs and tend to oppose proposals to designate more of them.
People in the UK are often surprised to learn that fishing is allowed in most of the country’s MPAs. While 36 per cent of the waters around the UK are covered by them, only 0.0024 per cent ban fishing outright. Increasing the number and size of highly protected MPAs from just these four small sites to 5 per cent of the UK’s sea area would represent more than a 2,000-fold increase. This would be strongly resisted by the fishing industry, snatching the wind from the sails of any political effort ambitious enough to attempt it.
Keeping fishers on board
Gaining the support of local fishers is crucial for ensuring fishing restrictions are successful. That support depends on fishers being able to influence decisions about MPAs, including where they’ll be located and what the degree of protection will be. Assuming that designing highly protected MPA networks is mostly a matter of modelling is a mistake, and implies that fishers currently operating in an area would have little say in whether their fishing grounds will close.
Ensuring fishers buy into a new MPA is crucial for its success. Sutipond Somnam/Shutterstock
But this study is valuable. It provides further evidence for how MPAs can serve as important tools to conserve marine habitats, manage fisheries sustainably and make food supplies more secure. It’s important to stress the political challenges of implementing them, but most scientists agree that more MPAs are needed. Some scientists are pushing to protect 30 per cent of the ocean by 2030.
As evidence of the benefits of MPAs continues to emerge, the people and organisations governing them at local, national and international scales need to learn and evolve. If we can start implementing some highly protected MPAs, we can gather more evidence of their spillover benefits. This could convince more fishers of their vital role in boosting catches, as well as keeping people fed and restoring ocean ecosystems.
Peter JS Jones, Reader in Environmental Governance, UCL and Rick Stafford, Professor of Marine Biology and Conservation, Bournemouth University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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