that should be ree or us to exploit. Perhaps this is why we have been so
reluctant to protect the sea. On land, protected areas have proli erated as
human populatons have grown. Here, compared to the sea, we have made
greater headway in our struggle to maintain the richness and variety o wildli e
and landscape. Twelve percent o the world’s land is now contained in
protected areas, whereas the corresponding gure or the sea is but three- fhs
o one percent. Worse stll, most marine protected areas allow some
shing to
contnue. Areas of-limits to all exploitaton cover something like one ve-
thousandth o the total area o the world’s seas.
Today, we are belatedly coming to realise that ‘natural re uges’ rom shing
have played a critcal role in sustaining sheries, and maintaining healthy and
diverse marine ecosystems. This does not mean that marine reserves can
rebuild sheries on their own – other management measures are also required
or that. However, places that are of-limits to shing consttute the last and
most important part o our package o re orm or sheries management. They
underpin and enhance all our other eforts. There are limits to protecton
though.
Reserves cannot bring back what has died out. We can never resurrect globally
extnct species, and restoring locally extnct animals may require reintroductons
rom elsewhere, i natural dispersal rom remaining populatons is insufcient.
We are also seeing, in cases such as northern cod in Canada, that shing can
shif marine ecosystems into diferent states, where diferent mixes o
species
prevail. In many cases, these species are less desirable, since the prime shing
targets have gone or are much reduced in numbers, and changes may be
difcult to reverse, even with a complete moratorium on shing. The
Mediterranean sailed by Ulysses, the legendary king o ancient Greece,
supported abundant monk seals, loggerhead turtles and porpoises. Their
disappearance through huntng and over shing has totally restructured ood
webs, and recovery is likely to be much harder to achieve than their destructon
was. This means that the sooner we act to protect marine li e, the more certain
will be our success.
To some people, creatng marine reserves is an admission o ailure. According
to their logic, reserves should not be necessary i
we have done our work
properly in managing the uses we make o the sea. Many sheries managers are
stll wedded to the idea that one day their models will work, and politcians will
listen to their advice. Just give the approach tme, and success will be theirs.
How much tme have we got? This approach has been tried and re ned or the
last 50 years. There have been ew successes which to eather the managers’
caps, but a growing litany o ailure. The Common Fisheries Policy, the European
Union’s instrument or the management o
sheries and aquaculture,
exempli es the worst pitalls: fawed models, fawed advice, watered-down
recommendatons rom government bureaucrats and then the disregard o
much o this advice by politcians. When it all went wrong, as it inevitably had
to, Europe sent its boats to other countries in order to obtain sh or ar less
than they were actually worth.
We are squandering the wealth o oceans. I we don’t break out o this cycle o
ailure, humanity will lose a key source o protein, and much more besides.
Disruptng natural ecosystem processes, such as water puri caton, nutrient
cycling, and carbon storage, could have rami catons or human li e itsel . We
can go a long way to avoiding this catastrophic mistake with simple common-
sense management. Marine reserves lie at the heart o the re orm. But they will
not be sufcient i they are implemented only here and there to shore up the
crumbling edi ce o the ‘ratonal sheries management’ envisioned by scientsts
in the 1940s and 1950s. They have to be placed centre stage as a undamental
underpinning or everything we do in the oceans. Reserves are a
rst resort, not
a nal resort when all else ails.
Choose the correct leter,
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
