There are extremely many vulnerable species in the oceans, and these faces threats such as being bycatch, being illegally fished, or getting killed from boats and ships that pass by. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the international protection of 34 different migratory marine species. Efforts such as those are very helpful in protecting the species we don’t want to go extinct, but simply agreeing to protect them is not enough in most cases, and we need some actual work done to save them.
Just yesterday, the Mexican WWF announced that the government has created a huge marine national park around islands that are a marine life hotspot. The area is known as Revillagigedo Archipelago, and lies to the west of mainland Mexico.
A map of the location of the new national park. Image from Google Maps.
The islands themselves have many endemic species (species that are not found anywhere else in the world), and they are therefore often called “little Galápagos” or “Mexican Galápagos”.
The entire area is of high ecological importance due to the endemic species, and it has a unique ecology for the area because of volcanic activity. The area is located on top of the convergence of two ocean currents, and it is the breeding ground for important marine species such as humpback whales. There are pretty much a long list of reasons why this area should be protected, so it's great news that it has finally been made into a national park!
Now that the area has been made into a national park, we can expect that no one fishes (legally) in the area, which will help the fish and marine animal populations grow back to their original number. There will be rangers that are responsible to stopping illegal fishing and poaching, and hopefully they will receive enough founding to actually be functional. There are many examples of places that are supposed to be protected by rangers, but are not, so we can only hope that this is not the case for this new national park.
Why we need national parks in the ocean
Many people think of national parks are just beautiful places that you can visit, and to some extent this is the truth, but it is still very important to create national parks in remote places such as in large areas in the sea. This is to preserve the pristine state we have in these places, and stop fishermen and large shipping ships to destroy the local ecology of the area, which could easily happen if it goes unregulated. By creating national parks, the government has certain guidelines to follow in order to protect the area, so it’s a nice way to protect both the ocean as well as terrestrial areas.
There are very many vulnerable and threatened marine species that can actually get a decent protection from a national park such as this one. We must not forget that very many fish species are currently facing enormous pressure from fishermen that have obliterated many populations, so sanctuaries like this one is a big help, but it does of course not solve the entire problem.
Thanks for reading
If you want to learn more about this new marine national park in Mexico, then you can check out the announcement over at WWF Mexico. It is sadly only available in Spanish, but you could try to give it a spin on Google Translate. BBC also did an article about the national park, but there’s not a whole lot of information to get from that one. Anyway, tanks for reading!