A new marine protected area has been designated in Puerto Rico to bring their total ocean protection up to 27%, 3% away from the 30 x 30 promise many countries have promised to meet. The US has a total of 26% of its ocean in marine protected areas.
In this episode of the "How to Protect the Ocean" podcast, host Andrew Lewin discusses establishing a new marine protected area (MPA) in Puerto Rico, which has increased the total protected area in their territorial waters to 27%. This new MPA, named Vega Baja and Manatee Underwater Gardens, spans 202 square kilometers (77 square miles) off the central north coast of Puerto Rico and encompasses vital ecosystems such as coral reefs, mangrove forests, and seagrass beds.
The designation of this MPA results from a 16-year effort led by local communities and NGOs, highlighting the importance of community involvement in conservation efforts. The local fishing community and ecotourism stakeholders played a crucial role in advocating for the protection of this area, recognizing its significance for sustainable fishing and tourism.
Lewin emphasizes that the success of the MPA relies on a co-management plan that balances human activities with ecological preservation. This approach involves local knowledge and traditional practices, ensuring that the management decisions reflect the needs and insights of those who rely on marine resources.
The episode underscores the importance of protecting these ecosystems not only for biodiversity but also for the economic well-being of the local community. By establishing this MPA, Puerto Rico is making strides toward the global goal of protecting 30% of land and water by 2030, showcasing a model for community-led conservation efforts. Lewin invites listeners, especially those from Puerto Rico, to share their thoughts and experiences regarding this significant development in marine conservation.
Link to article: https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/local-groups-drive-creation-of-new-puerto-rico-marine-protected-area/
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I am happy to say that a new marine protected area has been established in Puerto Rico that brings their total of protected area in their territorial waters to 27% and contributes to an MPa system that stretches from Puerto Rico to Cuba adding to more areas protection that means shallow coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves for sea turtles and manatees to play around with for a long, long time. This is a huge deal to establish more protected areas, not only because there is a plan to protect 30% of land and water by 2030, but it also goes to having more protection for our oceans and to be able to protect species, not only the manatees, not only sea turtles, but other fish and invertebrates that fall within those areas. It's not an easy thing to establish a marine protected area, it's actually really difficult to do so, so we're going to talk about the intricacies of this protected area, what's going to happen in the future because it's just the beginning and how we're going to go through with it and make sure that everything is protected. On this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast, let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Looney, and this is a podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And if this is your first time here or your second time here or it's been your 1600s time here, it doesn't matter because you have found a place for ocean news and ocean conservation science news and ocean conservation, conservation news, you can find everything you want, not only on this podcast, but also on our website, SpeakUpForBlue.com and get this. If you can't make it to our website all the time, I understand you can get information to your inbox by going to SpeakUpForBlue.com/newsletter, sign up with your email for free. I don't share your email with anybody, all I want to do is provide you with more information on the ocean, tell you how you can protect the ocean, potentially give you access to job ads that you may not see normally, all to your inbox, Monday to Friday at 8 a.m. Eastern. I just hope you sign up, it's such a fun time to be able to get to people there. And if you're on the newsletter already, reply to some of those news articles. I want to hear, and I want to hear from you about what you think of some of the news that's happening, some of the things are happening there around the ocean. If you have any questions around the ocean, please feel free to ask them just by replying to that newsletter. It's me that you're replying to and I'd be happy to respond or even do another podcast on your question. So SpeakUpForBlue.com/newsletter, let's get into the show because we are here to talk about some great news this Monday whenever you're listening to this, or if you're listening to this on Tuesday. This episode is all about good news, a new marine protected area in Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rico has established the Vega Baja and Manatee, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it properly, obviously it's in Spanish, underwater gardens, 202 square kilometer space, MPA off the central north coast, it's the 77 square mile for my American friends. The MPA encompasses coral reefs, mangrove forests, and seagrass beds providing a habitat for over a dozen threatened species including the greater Caribbean manatee and various sea turtles. This designation results from a 16 year effort by local communities and NGOs aiming to protect vital ecosystems while supporting small scale fishing and ecotourism. This is not an easy feat to be able to designate a marine protected area like this. It's 202 square kilometers, which is big for the island of Puerto Rico. It's a 16 year process. Now I want to talk a little bit about what would go into that 16 year process. This is a process with the best part of this article which I found on manga bay news and I'll link to it in the show notes, is it's community led. That's a huge thing. So it's there for ecotourism. It's there for the artisanal fishers and the fishing community in there. This is where they came to the table at some point during the process. Hopefully at the beginning it doesn't give a lot of information on the article in terms of the history of it, but they were able to come together and say, "Hey, you know what? This is an important area. This 202 square kilometer area is an important area to protect because it provides a lot for our fishing. We depend on this resource fishing, tourism, and a number of other recreational features for that area to be able to come to the table and use this area sustainably for a number of years to come like 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years to come as long as this designation is in place." They realized, the community realized that this was an important habitat to protect and so they got together and over that process, over that 16 years, they punched out an MPA that we are going to see today and it's not just an MPA just where it's one whole MPA. Right now it's probably just one whole MPA. The goal in the future is to try and put in different management areas to manage different activities that happen within the MPA. That's a very important part of this because we realize that having one big MPA, like it's 202 square kilometers. This is a huge area to monitor and to make sure that everything is abided by. We don't want fishers coming in and overfishing within the area or fishing at all within the area if they're not allowed to. There might be some spots within the larger MPA. There might be some little spots that are absolutely necessary to protect so it means no fishing, nobody goes in there, not even scientists and we may see a management area that's just a reserve where you can't get in at all. There might be areas where it's just science that is able to conduct, scientists are able to conduct monitoring practices to make sure they can evaluate the success or even the detriment of the marine protected area depending on what happens in the future. There could be areas where you allow sea kayaking or scuba divers or snorkeling as a recreational area. There could be areas for artisanal fishers at certain points of time. Now, having any extractive activities that's within an MPA under the new definitions isn't necessarily an MPA. It'll be interesting to see how this is defined if they truly want it as an MPA that's internationally recognized as a marine protected area. MPA is a short for a marine protected area. The other important thing here is there's a co-management planning practice, so ongoing efforts to developing a co-management plan to balance human activities. That's what it's all about. It's not just the government up from the top saying you can't go in there. It's the local community that's coming together and saying, "Okay, here we have all these areas. This is what happens from our monitoring and our traditional knowledge that we have about this area. We know what goes on. They know best." The government officials may not be in the area. They may not be familiar with the areas as much as fishers, as much as surfers, as much as scuba divers or snorkelers. They will rely on the knowledge from the users to be able to inform them to make a better management decision, because when you have the buy-in from the community, that's when you start coming up with great MPAs and successful MPAs where you start to see a growth in the abundance and the size, like the biomass within a fishery species or within a habitat. You start seeing healthier ecosystems, so healthier habitats, seagrass habitats, mangrove forests, coral reefs that typify this area. When you see those are healthy because there's no fishing, there's no boating in there where it can get damaged by propellers or damaged by anchors. One of the big things with seagrass forests or seagrass meadows and seagrass beds is that when people go to either fish or do whatever they're doing within the water, they anchor down. What happens is they'll see a seagrass area and they'll say, "Oh, this can handle an anchor because it's just the bottom." They may not do it on a coral reef, but if they see a sandy bottom or even seaweed down there or seagrass, they might just anchor into there and that might get destroyed over time. You might see these anchor drags along the bottom and you'll see this space within the seagrass meadows. This is one of the things when I spoke to project seagrass was one of the major problems within, I believe it was the Mediterranean at the time, in other places we see around was anchoring boats. What they'll do is a lot of marine protected areas, what they'll do as a service is they'll create these buoy systems and the buoys are anchored somewhere else where it's not on the seagrass, but you can actually have boats above the seagrass to be able to anchor to this buoy and not actually damage the seagrass bed below because seagrasses are biodiversity hotspots. They are areas that have known to have more biodiversity than coral reefs, more biodiversity than mangrove forests. Just different assemblages of fish and invertebrates that are young and old and big and small and invertebrates as well and you just start to see them all come together. They have a lot of hiding spots within the seagrass meadows and it's a very important habitat for this area, for this complex, the coral reef seagrass meadow as well as mangrove forests. You need to protect those from any kind of physical damage as well as any kind of fishing damage too. You have the mangrove forests which are very coastal, like right along the coast, those need to be protected a lot from physical changes, so if there's an actual protection, like an actual marine protected area, it's easier from a coastal perspective to protect those areas because we can actually see it with our eyes. It's very difficult to see how a coral reef is doing or see how seagrass bed is doing because they're submerged under water. Now, a lot of times they're clear water and you can do a lot of survey assessments, but it's expensive to get a boat to go out there. It's not like having a land marine protected area, or a land protected area, not marine, a protected area on land and you can actually see the changes, you know, whether you fly a drone over it or you can see trees coming down or what have you, right, damages because of development or anything like that. It's easier to see a land protected area than it is to see what's happening under water. So then it's less expensive, of course. So it's good to have that coastal area, but that's another area for like it's a nursery ground. It could be a ground where, you know, there's like a rearing area where young fish and invertebrates are growing and they're eating specific foods before they go off to the seagrass metal or even coral reef. And then of course you have the coral reefs, which is sort of the eye candy of this complex and probably a lot of tropical areas. They have a lot of stuff that is happening to them from algal growth because of increased nutrients to climate change. So we need to take away the human effect, the direct human effect of this area, of this habitat that can disrupt this habitat, right? So you're looking at fishing or boating or controlling snorkeling and scuba diving sessions from damage from people touching and things like that. You want to make sure you take away all of those and allow fish to be around there. You have the herbivores who take care of the algae to make sure there's no overgrowth in algae. And then of course you have other fish around there that will be good for fisheries later on. They'll be good for the diversity of habitat. Coral reefs are a very diverse habitat. As you probably already know, if you've been listening to this podcast at any point in time, coral reefs are one of the most diverse habitats in the world. And they are great to look at. They're a great tourist attraction, but they are very, very sensitive to changes in water quality to changes in any kind of disruption, physical disruption or anything like that. So we need to make sure we protect our coral reefs. So all three habitats are very important to the complex of the ecosystem that's in Puerto Rico and having this protection really, truly helps from a biological standpoint as well as a social standpoint, right? We talk about how much money this resource provides the Puerto Rico, the local community in Puerto Rico to say, "Hey, we actually need this stuff. We fish off of this, we get money from tourism off of this." So it's a very important aspect of the coastal community and to make sure that's a healthy coastal community because managing one of the things that I've always heard and I've always liked this and Dr. Ed Hainozan, a good friend of mine that I've known through the podcast and through just a colleague of mine, he has said to me time and time again, to manage the ocean, you have to manage the people. So looking at society that uses the ocean or that may come into contact with the ocean indirectly or directly is really, really important. Marine protected areas offer that importance. It's a huge, huge part of conservation, it's a huge tool that we need to use and that's why there's a 30 by 30 sort of deadline by 2030, so 30% of marine protected areas and 30% of the land will be protected by 2030, hopefully. It looks like Puerto Rico has achieved that or close to achieve that because around their territory waters, they have 27% of their waters protected. That's a huge, huge accomplishment. Now, I don't know the rest of their marine protected areas and how well they're protected, but it'll be interesting to see if they follow the same type of formula that they did in this one to be able to apply and get a community-backed marine protected area. Not an easy thing to do. This took 16 years to do. Who knows how long the next 3% will take to get them up to that 30%. But I would love to hear from you, people who are in this audience who are from Puerto Rico. Is this big news for you? Do you hear about it a lot on your newspapers or anything like that, local radio? I would love to hear your thoughts on this and anybody else who has been to Puerto Rico, has a tied up Puerto Rico or just in love with the ocean and around those areas, I would love to hear from you as well to find out what you think of this story and do you think it's a great thing or not? Obviously, it's a good thing, but I'd love to know more about the intricacies of this marine protected area going in. So hit me up on Instagram @HowToProtectTheOcean and don't forget, if you're watching this on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell. We published three times a week, at least. And so if you don't want to miss any of the episodes, all you have to do is hit subscribe and hit that notification bell and you'll get a notification every time we publish. So that's it for today's episode. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of How To Protect The Ocean Podcasts, I'm your host, Andrew Loon, and this is a great day, knowing that there's a marine protected area in place. Again, I want to thank you so much for joining us. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and have a good conservation. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
