“Proponents of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)s suggest that they are the obvious solution to the challenges that our oceans are facing” note Magnus Johnson in his article “Taking the P out of Marine Protected Area? However, in most areas around the UK the seabed is soft sediment habitat. There is little evidence that trawling impacts on these habitats or banning it improves fish stocks. In fact for some species such as Nephrops (scampi/langoustine), repeated trawling appears to improve stocks.
The effectiveness of public action of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) challenged
The senior lecturer of Marine Biology environment at the University of Hull (England) calls into question the effectiveness of MPA public action and denounces the difficulties to carry out reforms that could improve their management, the trend towards Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) “privatization” by external institutions and finally the market destabilization that threaten the future of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and local fishing communities.
In Scotland, a plan to double the areas of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) has been announced in its waters with plans including 11 new MPAs and 9 Special Areas of Conservation. If environmental NGOs are satisfied, fishermen are particularly affected by the exclusion of fishing areas they have occupied for generations, when they are already faced with a complex set of regulations requiring them what to to fish.
An abuse of the precautionary principle
According to Magnus Johnson, Australia where extensive Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is huge, recent studies show that the gain of fishermen productivity is well below that expected by the Conservatives. The Senior Lecturer sees an abuse of the precautionary principle. “If we protect our own seas too much we, likeAustralia, will export our environmental damage to countries with weaker enforcement and management, increase food miles and increase our dependency on foodstuffs such as farmed salmon and livestock where the production is potentially more damaging to the environment.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) privatization
Globally, the development of MPAs can sometimes have nothing or little to do with conservation. In the case of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is illegally used as a shield by the UK government to justify exclusion of Chagossians from their islands which are now host to an important US air and naval base (Dunne et al., 2014). The waters around Chagos were traditionally fished by Mauritians but now only rich yachties are able to ply the waters. Off the Californian coast Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been supported or opposed by big oil money ($266 million over 10 years) depending on the business advantage. Some MPAs developed in this region have infringed on indigenous folksâ rights to fish and gather food but permit industrial aquaculture, oil exploration/extraction, pollution and fracking. In the Seychelles externally funded MPAs have been developed that will exclude local fishermen from traditionaly exploited areas while at the same time foreign fleets can exploit tuna stocks through rights purchased by UE.
