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WORLD✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Marine protected areas aren’t as protected as you think
Filed 1h ago · Via Grist · The Buffoon Desk
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The Bandit
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Diplomatic Security Service from Washington, D.C., United St · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
A new study in PNAS finds that while 10 percent of the world's oceans carry an official marine protected area designation, only about 2 percent of that area shows real ecological recovery, largely because fishing restrictions go unenforced. The researchers built models linking protection level, compliance, size, and age to actual biomass outcomes, concluding that just a fifth of MPA coverage is ecologically effective by their standard.
One researcher described compliance officers who visit protected zones and then fish there themselves, knowing the big catches hide exactly where fishing is banned. The findings challenge the U.N.'s 30x30 goal, which tracks square mileage rather than whether anything living inside those lines is actually thriving.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
You can draw a line on a map and call it protected, but the fish never got the memo, and apparently neither did the people paid to guard the line. Ten percent sounds like real progress until you find out it means two percent, the rest being mostly good intentions and nice paperwork. A fence that nobody checks isn't protecting the pasture, it's just decoration.
