Marine Protected Areas
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Australia's definition of a marine protected area is
an area of land and/or sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other effective means.
This definition was originally developed by the 1994 World Conservation Union's (IUCN) definition and has been adopted by Australian governments.
The key points of this definition are
In the case of public land, effective management means that the area is protected by an Act of Parliament, whereas in the case of privately owned or indigenous land, protection is ensured by a covenant or conservation agreement.
Within State, Territory and Commonwealth waters, marine protected areas can include:
Depending on where they are located, marine protected areas in Australian waters may be managed by State, Territory or Commonwealth (Australian) government agencies, or a combination of government agencies.
Australian government officers on duty at Ashmore Reef
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea establishes Australia's rights and responsibilities over a vast area of the ocean — some 16 million square kilometres. Most of this area is the sole responsibility of the Australian Government.
Unless otherwise determined by legislation the State and Northern Territory governments have primary responsibility for marine environments up to three nautical miles out from the territorial sea baseline. Along most of our coastline, the territorial sea baseline is the low water mark, but in some areas is up to 60 nautical miles offshore.
In general, the Commonwealth Government manages our oceans from the State or Territory limit to the edge of our marine jurisdiction at the limit of the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) some 200 nautical miles out to sea. One exception is the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which extends seaward from the low water mark.
As a result, the Commonwealth, States and Northern Territory governments exercise separate jurisdictions over the marine environment. Marine protected areas can be declared under Commonwealth, State or Northern Territory legislation in seas within each government's jurisdiction.
Each government uses its own policies and laws to establish and manage marine protected areas. In addition, marine protected areas may be managed through a combination of fisheries and parks management laws administered by separate government agencies.
All governments coordinate their efforts on national and cross-jurisdictional issues relevant to marine protected areas.
For example, through cooperative arrangements, a single marine protected area can combine adjacent State or Territory waters and Commonwealth waters. The Great Australian Bight Marine Park, Ningaloo Marine Park and the Solitary Islands Marine Reserve, which all include State and Commonwealth waters, are examples of successful cross-jurisdictional management.
A diver at Mermaid Reef, Australian Institute of Marine Sciences
The kinds of activities that are allowed in a marine protected area depend on the reasons for protecting that area.
The term "marine protected area" evokes a variety of expectations such as
Each marine protected area is different.
There may be no environmental reason for excluding activities that extract natural resources such as fish or minerals from some types of marine protected area. For example, if the primary aim of a marine protected area is to protect a representative sample of biodiversity there may be no need to prohibit an extractive activity that is well managed and where we are confident the activity will not adversely affect biodiversity. Conversely, for other types of marine protected area there may be a need to restrict or exclude activities that do not extract resources at industrial scales. For example, activities such as tourism and scientific research could harm the values of a marine protected area designed to protect a fragile ecosystem or an endangered species.
Terms that are commonly used to describe the extremes of the range of protection available are "no-take" and "multiple use".
Irrespective of what activities they allow or exclude, all marine protected areas managed by Australia's Commonwealth Marine Protected Areas Program share one primary objective — to protect biodiversity.
To ensure consistency in defining and managing marine protected areas, Australia has adopted the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) internationally recognised set of seven management categories. These categories have passed into Australian law in relation to Commonwealth reserves.
Proclamations declaring Commonwealth marine protected areas must assign the reserves, and any zones within them, to one of the seven IUCN Protected Area Management Categories.
| Type of area | IUCN | Explanation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Strict nature reserve | Ia | Managed primarily for scientific research or environmental monitoring. |
| 2 | Wilderness area | Ib | Protected and managed to preserve its unmodified condition. |
| 3 | National park | II | Protected and managed to preserve its natural condition. |
| 4 | Natural monument | III | Protected and managed to preserve its natural or cultural features |
| 5 | Habitat/species management area | IV | Managed primarily, including (if necessary) through active intervention, to ensure the maintenance of habitats or to meet the requirements of specific species. |
| 6 | Protected Landscape/seascape | V | Managed to safeguard the integrity of the traditional interactions between people and nature. |
| 7 | Managed resource protected area | VI | Managed to ensure long-term protection and maintenance of biological diversity with a sustainable flow of natural products and services to meet community needs. |
The IUCN management categories are not arranged in a hierarchy of levels of protection. They are simply a convenient way of describing the rationale behind the selection of an area for protection and the actions permissible in the area. For example, an IUCN Ia Strict Nature Reserve may, if necessary, prohibit exactly the same range of activities as an IUCN IV Habitat/Species Management Area. The difference in categories arises from the reason for establishing the reserve.
The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) requires that each reserve or zone should be managed in accordance with the Australian IUCN Reserve Management Principles and that these management principles are reflected in the management plan. The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Regulations 2000 set out the Australian IUCN Reserve Management Categories and Principles, which describe how each IUCN category reserve is to be managed.
The numbering system for the IUCN system is different to that applied by the EPBC Act but the categories are essentially the same.
Coral
As a developed nation with a maritime area larger than the continent itself, Australia has a special responsibility for the conservation and management of its marine and coastal environments and their resources. Society expects that natural areas will be protected.
Our vast ocean area contains one of the greatest arrays of marine biodiversity on earth. Australia's marine environments contain more than 4,000 fish varieties and tens of thousands of species of invertebrates, plants and micro-organisms. From the spectacular coral reefs of Australia's tropical north to the majestic kelp forests of the temperate south, the number of newly discovered species tends to increase with each survey. Currently scientists estimate about 80% of our southern marine species occur nowhere else in the world.
Australia's unique marine environments contain
However these environments are under increasing pressure from threats such as
These threats can contribute to impacts such as decreased abundance of target organisms, habitat loss, ecosystem degradation and a sense of aesthetic and spiritual loss of wilderness value.
Marine protected areas are not the solution for every threat to the marine environment. Individually, they cannot reduce the impact of threats like climate change. Often when a specific, manageable threat can be identified there is an alternative, more focused way to respond.
However most marine protected areas are not established in order to respond to a specific threat, but to protect and preserve representative samples of marine biodiversity for the benefit of future generations. Individual marine protected areas are highly effective where there is a need to manage multiple, ongoing pressures on the ecology of a defined area. In addition, the establishment of representative systems of protected areas is widely regarded, both nationally and internationally, as one of the most efficient mechanisms for protecting biodiversity and ensuring the use of natural resources is sustainable.
Sea snake at Ashmore Reef
The living marine environment is like a chain with many links — if one is broken, an entire species may disappear. Every species plays an important role in maintaining healthy ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity weakens the entire natural system.
Many marine species migrate and use different habitats at different stages in their life cycle. A species may be spawned in seagrass, spend its larval stage drifting far out in the ocean, and then return to the rocky coastal shores as an adult. Sand, gravel, mud and reefs provide homes for complex biological communities and feeding grounds or corridors for species moving between inshore nursery areas and offshore reefs. Ecological functions and processes, such as upwellings, are also important to protect for their role in distributing nutrients through marine systems. Each of these locations may act as a biodiversity hotspot for a species or community.
Setting aside some areas that contain different types of plants, animals and habitats means that we protect the immense variety of life, the biodiversity, that makes these areas so special. And when the establishment of these protected areas is coordinated to form a network, it ensures the maintenance of ecosystems across many levels: locally, regionally and globally.
We must protect not only biodiversity — the range of species and communities living in an area — but also the genetic diversity of each species. In order to survive and adapt with the environment, every species need a breeding population with a diverse genetic pool. The greater the genetic variation of a population, the greater the resilience to threats such as disease, climate change and introduced pests.
Marine protected areas help preserve genetic diversity, especially in heavily exploited populations. They provide a refuge where individuals can mature and populations evolve unaffected by harvesting and other human impacts.
"The potential of no-take marine reserves to protect genetic quality is great considering the fact that fishing can remove most of the population; and that densities of individuals, ages and sizes can be much greater in no-take marine reserves than in fishing grounds. Exact benefits to individual species will depend on the species, the levels of fishing mortality, and the proportion of the populations eventually protected by no-take marine reserves."
From: Jim Bohnsack's 1999 article in MPA News Vol. 1, No. 2
It is important to recognise that the rationale for marine protected areas is slightly different from that for terrestrial protected areas. It is less about preventing immediate threats or looming extinction and more about precaution and the benefits to industry of preserving types of habitat.
"In the sea, habitats are rarely precisely or critically restricted. Survival of a species cannot usually be linked to a specific site. Many free-swimming species have huge ranges. Water currents carry the genetic material of sedentary or territorial species over large distances, often hundreds of kilometres. The same genetic community is likely to occur throughout a large geographic range, occurring wherever substrate and water quality are suitable. As a result endemism is rare and is usually confined to species which brood or care for their young rather than have them dispersed by currents. There are virtually no authenticated records of recent extinctions of completely marine species with planktonic larvae (molluscs, crustaceans and many fish). The concept of a critical habitat for an endangered species is only applicable with marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds and the occasional endemic species. Therefore, in general the ecological case for protection of an area of sea is based less on concepts of critical habitat of endangered species or of extinction threat, and more on the need to protect critical or important habitat of species that are of value for commerce, recreation or for other reasons, or as a particularly good example of a habitat type with the genetic diversity of its communities."
From: IUCN Guidelines for Marine Protected Areas
Red rock cod, Malua Bay, Andrew Green
While many rare or threatened species are protected from direct harm by legislation, it is vitally important to also protect their habitats. Species and communities of species need secure areas to forage and breed if they are to survive in the long term.
Marine protected areas are especially important if the species concerned are intensely exploited or rare elsewhere, or if like seagrass, they provide habitat for other species.
Marine protected areas are ideal tools for protecting habitat that is more or less fixed, like areas of the seabed. Protecting habitat helps to protect the threatened communities that depend on it. Marine protected areas are especially important where the habitat is critical to some stage of the species' life cycle. Areas set aside to protect habitat may allow a range of activities that do not damage the habitat being protected. For example, Fish Habitat Areas in Queensland allow recreational fishing but do not allow activities that disturb mangroves and other aspects of the habitat important to juvenile fish.
Species such as whales, marine turtles, coral, seagrass and sharks can all benefit from marine protected areas, for example:
Giant kelp forest, Andrew Green
The oceans and the biodiversity they contain provide the raw materials new sources of food, textiles, medicines and energy.
Each day new discoveries are being made about the marine environment that contribute to the world's scientific and industrial knowledge. The potential of thousands of yet-to-be discovered marine products to provide lifesaving drugs is virtually untapped but expanding every year. Exactly which species will become scientifically important in the future is not known but it is certain that some will and therefore we must maximize our marine biodiversity.
Marine protected areas can contribute to our understanding of the environment and help gauge human impacts. They allow the possibility of establishing a network of sites for monitoring the health of the marine environment. A near-pristine area can:
Where certain types of activity are excluded or controlled, the marine protected area provides a reference that contributes to understanding whether exclusion and other control measures make a discernible difference to the marine environment. For example fisheries scientists can compare the mortality caused by fishing outside a marine protected area with natural mortality of the same species within the marine protected area. This can inform precautionary approaches to managing other areas. The lack of knowledge about the effects of fishing on population genetics has been linked to the lack of "no-take" marine protected areas that would otherwise provide reference sites (see Jim Bohnsack's 1999 article in MPA News Vol. 1, No. 2). However the usefulness of marine protected areas as reference sites is limited when illegal activities continue undetected, or external influences such as pollution or climate change affect the environment within the marine protected area.
Marine protected areas can protect sites that have cultural significance, such as historic shipwrecks, lighthouses, archaeological sites and sacred places. In Australia, sacred sites include sites of significance to Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders.
Like biological diversity, cultural diversity is under threat. Generally, the emergence of a global culture is at the expense of localised, indigenous cultures. Areas of cultural significance can be overtaken by development or be forgotten by the wider community and be allowed to deteriorate.
Marine protected areas can provide a broad level of protection for the context within which important sites and structures occur. They can augment the site-specific protection afforded under laws specifically designed to protect cultural heritage.
Marine protected areas can protect and manage valuable geological, archaeological, historic and cultural sites for present and future generations. They provide unspoiled sites in which children and adults can be introduced to the wonders of the natural world. They provide focal points for the training of research workers and natural resource managers.
Marine protected areas provide opportunities to broaden our understanding of marine ecosystems and increase our capacity to ensure their protection.
Marine protected areas help preserve habitat and natural population levels. The diversity and abundance of marine life attracts tourists, generating business opportunities and sustaining coastal communities. At the same time, marine protected areas provide a tool for regulating the impacts of tourism on the marine environment and ensuring equitable access rights. This ensures that the benefits of the area continue to be available to all, including the tourism industry.
Tourism can benefit greatly from the establishment of no-take areas. As many no-take areas contain special and unique natural features, they often become popular for tourism and recreational activities such as snorkeling and diving (mainly at reefs or around islands). The fact that they are highly protected can become a distinct marketing advantage in attracting visitors to an area.