How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 097: 23 Marine Conservation Areas Declared in the UK
The UK has declared 23 Marine Conservation Areas around its borders in an effort to protect its environment and better manage its Oceans. This is a HUGE win for the Island nation to protect its Ocean biodiversity!
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http://www.speakupforblue.com/session97
Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, session 97. There were a number of Marine Conservation Zones announced for the UK. I almost feel like channeling my inner Oprah and be like, "You get a Marine Conservation Zone. You get a Marine Conservation Zone. You get a Marine Conservation Zone. Everybody in the UK gets a Marine Conservation Zone." We're going to talk about all that in this episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, he still puts his hands in the air, because he doesn't care. Andrew Lewin. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. Here's your voice for the ocean. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, founder, speakupforblue.com, Marine Ecologist, and self-proclaimed ocean printer. That's right, I'm an entrepreneur and everything I do in business is to protect the ocean. So happy Monday, I hope you had a great weekend. I'm actually recording this before the weekend, because I got a busy weekend coming up. But I just found out that there's some great news coming out of the UK. An article off the BBC from Ali Plummer of the Living Seas, or sorry, of the Wildlife Trusts. She's the Living Seas Officer announced today on the BBC that 23 new Marine Conservation Zones were announced to be implemented this, I believe it's this year. That is on top of the 27 zones that were designated back in 2013. So this is amazing. This is just huge. We are seeing a plethora of small Marine Conservation Zones being announced all around the UK. Now, the UK is kind of interesting when you think about the oceans. It is an island. It's a series of islands and it's very, very productive, and I'll tell you why a lot of times it's productive. It's because it's like the meeting of two major, well, I guess not two major, but it's a meeting of the Gulf Stream that ends up in that area up just north of the Gulf of Mexico. So it gets productive waters from there or the last of the productive waters from there. So it gets a little bit of a warm, salty kind of water up there. And then it also has the cold waters that come from the Black Sea and just from the Arctic. So it gets a lot of interesting animals up there that's interesting and I'll put the link in the show notes, which will be speakupforblue.com/session97, it's a link to the article. And you'll see a number of images from, I believe they're all from different people, but there's some cuttlefish in there. There's some mudflats at what they call honeycomb reef at Allenby Bay, Allenby Bay. There's, looks like a crab and sorry, squat lobster and it looks like a little goby there. There's a sunfish, mola mola, there's a brittle star bed, you know, jewel in them and these. It's stuff that you wouldn't expect to be there, to be underneath those cold waters of the UK, but they are. All these species are there and they need protection because we all know what's happening around the world is happening also in the UK. We have climate change impacts. We have pollution runoff. We have sediment runoff. We have overfishing going on. We have oil and gas industry and natural resource mining is a huge thing. So all these human factors and disturbances that are coming into our oceans are disrupting the natural way of the ocean. Now of course, there are disturbances. We call, you know, the disturbances happen all the time. There are storm surges that come in. There are different currents and wind shifts over time and there's evolution and there's natural disasters and so forth that really provide a disturbance in the ocean. However, they come once in a while and then the habitats tend to recoup or change based on those natural events and how significant they are. But when we're there, when humans are there and they're constantly pushing and pushing the boundaries of how much the ocean can take or how much the ocean can give us, then we have a problem and marine conservation zones, marine protected areas, whatever you want to call them, they help because they take away specific human actions that can affect the habitats and the species that are within those imaginary boundaries. Okay. Now they're not perfect, but they're better than what they were before where there was no, there was no restrictions whatsoever and there was no protection. So the fact that there's, you know, it's kind of interesting because you hear a lot about, oh, we, we designated the largest protected area in the world and it's covering millions of kilometers. That's great. That's awesome. The bigger the protected area, the better. But it doesn't, those big protected areas don't always protect everything in those areas. Okay. They don't always capture everything. In fact, there was a study that we covered on Ocean Talk Friday about a month ago that said within a lot of these protected areas, only 10% of the range of species that are supposed to be protected are protected. So it's not a lot. And if you only have one large one, then you have a problem. The UK is coming up with a really interesting way of taking this and it's actually mimics a bit of the Great Barrier Reef and a lot of other protected networks are protected areas that go into it. It's designate small, but significant areas along, along its borders or within its economic zone. Okay. Exclusive economic zone is the zone that actually the country, each country has exclusive economic zones. It usually is about 200 nautical miles from the shore. And that's where they have jurisdiction over their own waters. It's considered their water. So the UK would have 200 nautical miles from their, from their shores. I believe it's, it's uniform, 200 nautical miles around the, around the world. I'm not sure though, but don't quote me on that, but it's around that in Canada. That's what it is. In the States, that's what it is as well. But what they do, what happens is they designate these small areas, okay? And they're, they're, they're arranged in a specific way, okay? Now there's either distinctive areas, which are like special areas where they have spawning areas, areas where there's fish or marine mammals that aggregate, that aggregate to, to feed or something like that in an upwelling area. Maybe something that's, that's something special, a seam out area that's highly diverse, that attract, that attract a lot of animals. So the yet of those ones, and you have the representative areas, which is what you expect to find. Okay. This is kind of cool because I'm kind of going back to my master. So there's a big smile on my face right now. If you're on your phone, you can't see me, because you're listening to the auto. There's a big smile on my face because I'm going through my masters. But anyway, these are the two's like sort of types of marine protectors that you would see, but they're all configured in a specific way and a lot of modeling and a lot of, a lot of stakeholder engagement, a lot of people get, have a safe where these areas actually go. But there's one significant thing that happens with these areas, these small areas. They're connected. Now they're physically connected by a string or anything like that, but they're biologically connected. In other words, they feed one protected area, feeds one or more protected areas. And that allows that light. So if you think about a fish that has a life history, so it has specific stages in this life, just like we have stages in our lives, we have baby, kid, teen adulthood, right? We need different things at different times to allow ourselves to grow. Okay. Our education system is based on that. Sorry, our, just our bodies are based on that and so forth. We need different types of food. We need maybe more food, all that kind of stuff as we grow older. And then as we grow the oldest, we probably don't need as much food because the energy consumption is not as much. Well, the same thing happens, maybe not as complex, but the same thing happens in a lot of animals, ocean animals. They need specific areas to allow them to grow bigger, allow them to grow to maturity so that they can reproduce. So those areas aren't always in the same, same spot. So by being biologically connected, where you find out where those say fish go or inverter bridge land or larvae will, how the currents will take them and where they will take them is essential to figuring out the configuration of those marine protected areas. And that's what the UK is, I think, is what they're doing here by designates so many zones, right? I mean, you're looking at 50 zones right now and they're all going to be biologically connected. Okay? So that what happens is each one replenishes the other, not necessarily all replenished on everything, but will replenish the specific set one or more protected areas. So this is a huge, huge thing for the UK and for the world to see. You know, the Great Barrier Reef is predicated on this kind of stuff too. And I know, for the fact, in Canada, on the east coast, the Scotian shelf, Newfoundland, all that Atlantic coast, there is a design or they're working on a design to do the same thing. And the software that they use is Marksand, it's pretty complex software, but it's pretty cool as well. It configures the network of marine protected areas. And then after you get those configurations, you can figure out the biological connectivity in which it gives you a slew of them, it gives you thousands if you want, and you figure out which one actually hits. So this is just a little bit of education on how marine protected areas are designed. So when you hear a protected area being designated, and it's really, really big, figure out what it's actually protecting. It may be protecting a lot, it may not be protecting a lot, but ask a lot of questions, right? Don't just say, "Oh great, we've protected it in another marine protected area," because sometimes governments will come out and be like, "Oh, we're protecting this area that has a ship, that sunk, that was very important," and that's great because we want to preserve cultural aspects of each country, right? But it's not necessarily protecting the habitat, okay? It's not necessarily saying that you can't fish there, or it's not necessarily saying that you can't scuba dive there, right? It's protected, they're protecting the ship, but they're not necessarily protecting the organisms around it. So make sure when you hear about a marine protected area being designated, that they're connected, that there's more than one, and that they're connected. That makes more sense scientifically, and from a conservation aspect, okay? So that, especially when you're looking at, for those of you who like big iconic species like marine mammals, sea turtles, sharks, those are highly migratory species, they are going to be spending time in specific areas, and those areas are there for a reason, and those areas for a reason, and those areas need to be protected to protect the species efficiently. Okay? And we even covered it last Thursday with the Manirase, where the Manirase, Manta Alfredi, where they actually had specific areas where they aggregate, but then they had to worry about how to protect them in between those areas and figure out where they go in between those areas. But they actually had spaces, they actually had spaces along their migration route where they knew they aggregated because those were special areas, and they wanted to protect those Manta rays. So, that's your quick Monday lesson on marine protected areas, but if you go to the link that we're going to put on the show notes, speakupforblue.com/session97, go on to that link. Put a comment and say congratulations on all the work that's done for the UK, the Wildlife Trust, and everybody, I'm sure Ali Plummer, I don't know her, but I'm sure she'd appreciate the comments, and they're doing it a good way. They're doing it scientifically, they're doing it properly, and hopefully the enforcement will be there, and they will be able to continue enjoying their coasts that are nice and protected. Maybe even down the road, there'll be more marine protected areas designated, so marine conservation zones, sorry, designated. So, that's a, you know, it's just a great story to come out on a Monday, I love starting off with a positive story. So that's it for us today. If you want to support us on Patreon, you can go to our crowdfunding campaign, you can go to speakupforblue.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. We are doing this out of our own pockets, but we're doing it for a reason because the communication of ocean conservation is extremely important for people to understand the effect and impacts they have on the ocean and what they can do to minimize, reduce, and eliminate this type of impact. So this is what we're doing. We are trying to do a service to the ocean, and we would love your support. If you agree with what we're doing, go to speakupforblue.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N, and you can put in a level of, a suggested level of donation or of support, and remember, it's monthly support, so just keep that in mind when you do that. If you have any questions, you can always contact me through our website, speakupforblue.com. And to thank the supporters today, I'd like to thank Ron and Judy, Dr. Judith Weiss, Chris and Claire Jeffert. I really appreciate your support, and thank you, and I will see you on the Patreon page. I'm going to start posting just for our supporters, just a little bit extra. But thank you very much. Have a great Monday. You've been listening to Speakup for Blue Podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. Happy Monday. Happy conservation. Thank you. Happy conservation. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]