Oceana: Marine species at risk due to flawed EU network

TINNews |

Oceana conducted an analysis on 16 EU Member States’ plans, revealing a widespread lack of ambition to effectively use networks of marine protected areas (MPAs), to contribute to the EU’s objective of achieving healthy, clean and productive seas by 2020, as required under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).

Key facts

The European network of MPAs covers 5.9% of EU waters
Only Germany has an apparent coherent network of MPAs without major gaps
11 Member States are lagging behind well below the UN target of 10% coverage of MPAs, including 4 Member States with less than 3% (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Cyprus)
No indication that any Member States will designate new MPAs, other than marine Natura 2000
Only 6 Member State committed to regulating fisheries inside their Natura 2000 sites
End of 2016, 11 EU Member States had not reported their national Programmes of Measures (PoMs) to the European Commission, despite the legal deadline being March 2016.

As Oceana reports, the current EU network of MPAs is “severely flawed”, because the protection of deep-sea ecosystems is scarce and there is no fisheries management in many of the sites. The network of marine protected areas is far from reaching the target to protect 10% of marine and coastal ecosystems by 2020, at the latest.

The majority of EU countries do not intend to address these gaps when implementing the directive.

“We can catch almost 60% more fish in European waters in less than 10 years, but only if we protect important habitats. It is, therefore, a great disappointment to learn that fisheries restrictions in MPAs are mostly left out from the list of protective measures. It is also unacceptable that member states have no intention to protect dozens of other threatened communities protected by international conventions of new MPAs, including many fishes, sharks and rays, whales and crustaceans,” commented Lasse Gustavsson, Executive Director of Oceana in Europe.

Two-thirds of European MPAs are designated to protect just eighteen marine species and five habitats through the EU Natura 2000 network. Oceana’s survey found that these threatened species are ignored by EU Member States in their MSFD Program of Measures for MPAs.

Oceana urges the European Commission to ensure that EU Member States implement adequate MSFD measures contributing to the establishment of an ecologically coherent and well-managed network of MPAs. The following steps should particularly be taken into account to effectively halt the loss of marine biodiversity in Europe:

Creation of no-take zones within existing MPAs;
Protection of Essential Fish Habitats (E.g. seasonal or real-time closures);
Restrictions of commercial and recreational fisheries inside MPAs;
Active restoration measures in degraded parts of MPAs (e.g. artificial reefs).

European network of Marine Protected Areas (2015 data) / Credit: Oceana

Further information may be found by reading the full report: