Marine protections
It’s a sad truth – as concluded in James Fair’s review of the State of Nature 2019 (The current state of nature, November 2019). The ocean has been neglected by conservation authorities in Britain, Ireland and most of the world. As stated by Jean-Luc Solandt (Truth or fiction? August 2019), there is only one Marine Conservation Zone in Britain (Lundy) that is a no-take zone.
A recent paper showed commercial fishing is common in most so-called Marine
Protected Areas (MPAs) elsewhere in Europe. Over threequarters of coastal countries have no marine reserves.
Too many countries call places MPAs, where they do not even intend for marine life to be ‘protected’ from legal killing; it’s the con in conservation. Overwhelming evidence shows that sport, artisanal and commercial fishing all selectively remove top predators and result in altered food-webs and ecosystems.
Mark Costello, New Zealand