Israel rushing to save ravaged seas
Resurgent marine reserve serves as a blueprint for future
ROSH HANIKRA MARINE RESERVE, Israel — Between the cliffs and crags of Israel’s submerged prehistoric coastline, a Mediterranean ecosystem is surging back to life.
Giant groupers flourish, a psychedelic purple nudibranch sea slug clings to an outcrop, and rays skate along the sandy bottom.
Israel is blazing forward with a plan to protect sections of its 118-mile coastline, a measure experts say is crucial to maintain biodiversity and shield ecosystems from humanity. Rosh Hanikra, just south of the Lebanese border, is the centerpiece of this effort, providing what scientists believe can be a blueprint for rescuing seas ravaged in part by climate change.
Climate change, invasive species and human activity are threatening what remains of the eastern Mediterranean’s severely impacted ecosystems. Scientists warn that without protection, remaining marine ecosystems will be devastated.
But in recent years Israel has taken steps to better protect critical habitats along its Mediterranean coast, and researchers say key species have bounced back even after a few years of protection.
“If we won’t maintain the resilience and the functionality of the ocean, it will collapse,” said Ruth Yahel, a marine ecologist at Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority. Conservationists say the best way to do that is by creating zones where human impact is reduced.
Since 2019, Israel has increased these protected areas from roughly 0.3% of its coastal waters to around
4%. Roughly another 4.5% are earmarked for protection. While that falls short of the international target of 10% by 2020, and broader global efforts to protect sea life have faltered, it shows Israel is taking the issue more seriously.
Last year, Israel signed on to U.S. President Joe Biden’s 30 by 30 initiative of “conserving 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.” Around 24% of Israel’s land area is now designated as nature reserves, along with just over 2% of its total maritime territory, including its Exclusive Economic Zone stretching some 125 miles beyond its territorial waters. This summer the government declared a fishhook-shaped, 175-square-mile protected area that’s home to a deepsea ecosystem several dozen
miles off the coast of Tel Aviv outside its territorial waters.
Marine rangers patrol these protected areas along Israel’s Mediterranean coastline and “protect an ecosystem that is supposed to be less disturbed by humanity,” said Eyal Miller, one of the rangers.
But that ambitious target faces major obstacles due to Israel’s fast-growing population, limited available land, offshore gas exploitation, commercial fishing and shipping, and military use.
Tamar Zandberg, the country’s outgoing environmental protection minister, said a challenge is Israel’s lack of a government strategy over the Mediterranean.
“This is a very sensitive ecosystem that can very easily change from a solution to a problem if we don’t conserve it,” she
said, expressing worry that environmental issues have become politicized and that Israel’s incoming government may abandon them.
The Israeli government has faced criticism for its climate inaction. Dov Khenin, head of the Israel Climate Forum, recently summed up a 2021 state watchdog report on Israel’s climate policies as “setting low targets and not meeting them.” Just 8.2% of Israel’s energy was produced from renewables in 2021, with the bulk of production coming from newly exploited natural gas reserves off its Mediterranean coastline, the Electricity Authority said.
The Mideast is expected to be heavily affected as global temperatures rise. The eastern Mediterranean is warming faster than most other bodies of water
around the globe, putting its already heavily battered ecosystems at risk.
“We are like the canary in the coal mine for what might happen to the West and North as the climate keeps changing and water keeps warming,” said Gil Rilov, marine biologist at Israel’s Oceanographic and Limnological Research institute.
Israel’s coastal waters are home to dozens of invasive species, many of which originated in tropical waters and migrated to the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal.
“It’s a complexity of conditions that the marine reserve mitigates by giving extra protection from human activity,” said Yahel of the parks authority.
Yahel and her colleagues have conducted biomass surveys every other year since 2015 to gauge how effective the protected areas are. She says the zones have shown their effectiveness.
Algae, sponges and other invertebrates are all proliferating in the reserves, and commercial fish species have three times the biomass of those in unprotected waters. They’re bigger, there are more of them, and as predators near the top of the food chain it’s a sign of a healthy ecosystem, she said.
But not everyone is pleased by Israel’s growing maritime protected areas, especially its dwindling number of commercial fishermen. Israel severely tightened regulations on its fishing industry in 2016, including a fishing ban during the spring spawning season and on the use of bottom trawlers that destroy sea floor habitats.