Global ocean protection : present status and future possibilities

This publication provides a much needed and timely tool to assist in the collective effort to find new and better solutions to address the various threats to the marine biological diversity and productivity. It provides evidence-based recommendations on improving and accelerating actions on delivering ocean protection and management through marine protected areas and facilitates the sharing of experiences and lessons learned.

Correction: New Zealand Benthic Protected Areas

In 2007 New Zealand declared over 1 million square kilometers of Benthic Protection Areas in off-shelf waters. These sites were declared for biodiversity protection and while their focus is to prevent trawling on the benthos and overlying 100m there are also regulations on activities in the entire water column. These sites are in the World Database on Protected Areas and were included in the analysis, however a GIS processing error by staff at UNEP-WCMC led to the exclusion of one site and partial omission of another. The latter is in fact the world’s largest MPA, the Kermadec Benthic Protection Area, extending over some 617,000km2. Adding these corrections to our total the global total MPA statistic should have been 4.7 million sq km, or 1.31% of the global ocean surface (3.21% of potential marine jurisdictions/EEZ areas, and 1.06% of off-shelf areas).