Evaluating ecological benefits of oceanic protected areas.

Oceans beyond the continental shelf represent the largest yet least protected environments. The new agreement to increase protection targets to 30% by 2030 and the recent United Nations (UN) High Seas Treaty try to address this gap, and an increase in the declaration of oceanic Marine Protected Areas (oMPAs) in waters beyond 200 m in depth is likely. Here we find that there is contradictory evidence concerning the benefits of oMPAs in terms of protecting pelagic habitats, providing refuge for highly mobile species, and potential fisheries benefits. We discover a mismatch between oMPA management objectives focusing on protection of pelagic habitats and biodiversity, and scientific research focusing on fisheries benefits. We suggest that the solution is to harness emerging technologies to monitor inside and outside oMPAs.

• Publication year

  2023

• Venue

  Trends in Ecology & Evolution

• Publication date

  2023-09-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.tree.2023.09.003PMID 37778906
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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