With our ocean becoming a less hospitable place every day, organizations have begun to set up areas in the ocean to protect marine life by keeping waste and humans out. As we begin to study the effects of these protected areas, it turns out they might be doing less good than we thought they were. Some of the factors leading to these protected areas being inefficient are the price to set the boundaries up as well as the dilemma regarding where to correctly place the boundaries.
The University of Queensland has been conducting research showing that the protected areas that we have set up have missed many unique. The Nature Conservancy assessed the efficiency of marine protected areas, which now cover 16 percent of national waters around the world. Much of this expansion comes with a potential risk of damaging fisheries potential earnings. This could have all been avoided with a more efficient placement of these boundaries.
The idea behind these protected areas is moving in the right direction, but we need to better study the ocean and sea to see how we can best utilize boundaries to prevent marine life from getting hurt. Our goal is to decrease the cost of these boundaries while also increasing the effectiveness of its coverage.
Originally published on ReduceImpact.org