FOUR NEW MARINE PROTECTED AREAS IN BRAZIL

Brazil will soon have four vast marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Atlantic Ocean, covering an area of more than 920,000 square kilometres. This will increase the coverage of Brazilian MPAs from

1.5 percent to 24.5 percent of the country’s waters, exceeding the international target of 10 percent by 2020.

All four MPAs, created hundreds of kilometres from the Brazilian coast, will protect remote sets of islands. Two will cover the archipelago of Trindade, Martin Vaz and Mount Columbia, with one allowing some sustainable use of fishing resources and the other prohibiting all human activity. The remaining two will be located around the São Pedro and São Paulo archipelagos, with one allowing some human activity and the other remaining closed off to human use.

The remote archipelagos are home to a range of threatened and endemic species, including the critically endangered Atlantic goliath grouper

(Epinephelus itajara) and the endangered scalloped hammerhead shark (Sphyrna lewini). The waters off the islands also hold a rich diversity of algae, corals, fish, sharks, rays, octopuses, whales, dolphins and turtles.

Protecting the archipelagos will be key to maintaining and recovering fish stocks. However, some marine biologists worry that these large, remote MPAs may do little to safeguard biodiversity. “They are placed in the most remote regions of the Brazilian EEZ [exclusive economic zone],” said Natalie Ban, a marine biologist at the University of Victoria, Canada. “They cover the most remote seamounts, yet fishing is still allowed in the most sensitive areas around the islands or rocks.”

The designation is also unlikely to protect against deep-sea mining, Ban said. Whether these remote MPAs succeed will depend largely on enforcement, conservationists say.

ABOVE Fernando de Noronha Marine National Park, an existing MPA in Brazil