Paper Parks? Why Marine Protected Areas Are Failing Sharks

0:01 On this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, we're gonna talk about why submarine protected areas are failing sharks. A protected area without enforcement is really just a map. It's a paper park. And if you care about staying informed on the ocean every weekday, hit that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's story. So here's the situation, here's what we've discovered, here's what's happened. Shark populations are declining in some MPAs. There was a study that was done with silky sharks and it was tracking silky sharks around an MPA. It's a highly mobile predator and it demonstrates a serious gaps in MPA effectiveness.

0:42 So essentially these silky sharks were tracked by satellite tags and researchers found that they... spent significant time outside of marine protected areas, even if MPAs existed in their range. So while MPAs in the Galapagos Marine Reserves do offer some refuge, the sharks often travel beyond the safe zones into areas where intense industrial fishing happens, especially purse sains and long lines target tuna, where bycatch and fin trade risk remains high. So having you know, these sharks in a uh marine protected area either tells you one thing. These sharks go beyond the border, so the borders have to be bigger. And a lot of times when you're protecting sharks, you see these massively large MPAs happen, but they have to because they have to encapsulate the entire range of the shark.

1:29 Now we're just talking about silky sharks, we're not talking about any other types of sharks. We know great whites, we know thresher sharks, we know other, a lot of other sharks have, hammerheads, have very large migration ranges. And so certain MPAs have to be built for these types of sharks. Illegal and unregulated fishing persists within these marine protected areas and highly migratory species cross these MPA boundaries all of the time, not just sharks, but we have whales, sea turtles, all these different types of species that will actually do that. MPAs often fail to protect mobile predators. We just talked about that. Enforcement gaps are... reduces found in another study from nature communications and fishing pressure often concentrates along the borders which we've talked about in past episodes but i'll reaffirm this you know it in in argentina just off the coast of argentina there's a squid species that is highly uh...

2:25 fished or or or sustainably fished within argentinian the exclusive economic zone of argentina or arson of arch of of argentina my apologies But along the border of that exclusive economic zone, you often see fishing fleas that line up at certain times of the season when they know that the squid will come across that exclusive economic zone. And of course, you know, that border is imaginary. It's not a physical border. So these boats can come in like across that EEZ zone or EEZ line and then come back and then fish whatever they want. Enforcement has to be taken, but it's very difficult to do enforcement. when you have such a long area or such a large area to enforce as well as like these fishing fleets are relentless.

3:11 will go after these fish as soon as they cross that border. know, MPAs once they go once they're out of the exclusive economic zone or once these fish are out of that, it doesn't matter if there's an MPA around there. Once they're out of the easy for now, hopefully the high seas treaty will help with that. You get extensive fishing pressure along those borders. Now, Global Fishing Watch did a search and did a study and they found that many MPAs show detectable fishing activity. So satellite monitoring reveals and force inconsistencies and there are a lot of transparency gaps within this type of compliance. So if this is the kind of clear, so we're gonna break down this information, but if you want this information uh more and you find this helpful, make sure you hit that follow button for the show.

3:55 Trying to grow this show even bigger. I want more people listening to Ocean News. And the fact that you hit that follow button if you're listening to this each and every weekday, this helps uh grow and allow us to be in front of more and a bigger audience for people to get it. We release an episode every weekday morning, so it's really important. So I'm talking to you this stuff and I want to break it down. I want to talk to you why this stuff is so important. When we look at sharks, sharks regulate the food webs, right? They are great predators. They are apex predators in lot of places. and they will regulate the the the the way the food web works structurally the food web has a specific structure in every unique habitat by geographical habitat around the ocean you have sharks a lot of times at the top or close to the top those sharks will regulate the populations of their prey dope those prey will be predators to other prey it just goes down the food web and it can kind of branch out these two words could be very very complex you remove the top predators and the prey that they eat get huge and they'll start putting more pressure on prey below them that prey will that play will shrink that prey will shrink and then vice versa vice versa it just goes down and down and down the food web and that's what we talk about fishing down the food web is when you start to take all those predators away and you start the top predators in the food web and you fish down and down and down until you get down to what plankton is that what we're going to be eating soon it can collapse fisheries very very quickly and of course we don't want

5:25 So having sharks to regulate those food webs and having them as a healthy population will stabilize diversity, stabilize food webs, and stabilize the ocean. So having a declining of top predators will destabilize this area. A paper park creates sort of a false confidence in protection metrics. so having that enforcement, having that management plan, having a monitoring plan really helps, but it requires funding. put up MPA together, are we designated MPA? That's just the beginning. It is a tough process. If you've watched any of this episode before, if you've listened to any of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, from the beginning when I started this back in 2015, I've talked about how hard it is and how long it takes to designate a protected area.

6:13 The larger the area, the harder it is to designate. But that is just the beginning of the journey, right? Unfortunately, it takes a long time to do. You know, I often use the analogy of starting a podcast. When I create a podcast, when I record, I do the research, I do the recording, it's a lot of work. I come in, I record this episode, I try and keep it within an entertaining way, and I try and keep it within a good timeline so that everybody can listen to it, and then I have to advertise it. And a lot of times, once I publish it, I'm like, oh, my work here is done. It's not done. then i have to market it i have to advertise after put in front of different people so that they have a chance to listen to it if they want to listen to it i have to do the work at the continued to the work over and over and over again after refine my process to find new audiences and to get if i want to grow my show if i want my show to be effective in making sure that people are aware of what's happening in the ocean and how they can live for a better ocean but if i just stop at the publication part if mpa stop at the designation part of managers don't go through with it then you are going to feel this false sense of protection and have a paper park.

7:22 And all those protection metrics are gone if you don't enforce them and you don't regulate them. So, the big key question, when protection exists on paper only, does it count? In a way, it does, in a way, it doesn't. The overall is no, it doesn't. But when you first start to designate an area because it's so difficult to designate, sometimes that first process being a paper park could help. However, it doesn't mean it should stay like that forever. It should be as quickly as possible. Managers should work to make sure that those areas are enforced. We get funding and stuff. So to prevent the paper parks, when you designate, make sure that there is a constant thing of funding.

8:03 People are doing, countries are doing some really creative ways of funding protected areas. The island of Newey in the South Pacific, they have done a very good campaign of getting people to invest in those protections by like I could pay for a square kilometer to help manage a square kilometer for 20 years if I pay like 200 bucks US. That's a great, great commodity for me. I don't own any of that, but I know that that area is protected and I had a piece in protecting that. I had a part of it. I don't own any of it, but I know people are gonna be protected. That area is gonna be protected and more people that pay for it gets protected as well. What I love about the Island of Nui, they kept a number of different acreage for their own people.

8:46 to invest in to protect because that it can feel like they're part of it, right? I don't, I've never been to the island of Newey. I don't know anybody in the island of Newey. I know a few people actually, cause I've interviewed them before, but that create, that campaign has really helped in ensuring that there's funding to monitor and manage that marine protected area for 20 years down the road. I'm not saying that this will work for everybody, but this could work. And I'll be honest, I am on a push for people to invest more in local conservation as well as conservation abroad, instead of getting a bracelet back or something else back, you know that you've actually protected this area or you've helped protect this area, you helped to contribute to protect that area.

9:29 All of these things encapsulate that. what my goal is is to bring light and cover and accelerate the amount of information that's coming out of those local areas that people get to uh donate to and get to contribute to. So it's a lot of fun that can happen, but Marine Protect Areas need funding. They need management protections. They need people dedicated to enforce. They need to make sure that these areas are protected fully. Not just having lack of transparency, not having people go in, turn off their GPS if they're fisheries and they start fishing in there. That just doesn't work. You need to make sure that that works. There's a lot of work that goes into an MPA. It's different than a land protected area because it's harder to cover.

10:10 It's a lot of times it's in isolated places and it costs a lot to protect. Protection must not be measurable, but it must be symbolic. So if you care to stay informed on any of these ocean news updates, you can do so every weekday and hit that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's story. We're going to have an interview talking about how Canada has upheld their regulation and their law to protect plastics and that plastic is toxic to everybody. We're going to talk about that on tomorrow's story. So don't forget to hit that follow button so you don't miss out. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.