Campaigners push for world's largest marine reserve

Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter, writes... An initiative to create the largest marine reserve in the world to offer rare sharks and other large fish sanctuary and to protect wrecks from a key wartime battle has been launched.
Environmental groups, scientists and former navy officers joined forced to urge the Australia government to form a 400,000 square mile (1 million square kilometres) protected zone.
Fishing would be banned within the zone off Australia's north east coast and the site of the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942 would be preserved.
The pivotal sea battle halted the southward march of the Japanese towards Australia and prevented them from taking Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea.
Retired Vice Admiral David Shackleton, a former chief of Australia’s navy, was part of the coalition of campaigners demanding protection for the Coral Sea.
He described it as an "ocean monument" for the Australians and Americans who fought to hold off the Japanese advance in the first sea battle in which the fleets remained out of sight and fought each other by launching attacks by planes.
“A large no-take Coral Sea reserve would be a clear demonstration of Australia’s leadership in protection our global maritime heritage,” he said.
During the intense battle the United States aircraft carrier USS Lexington was sunk and several other Allied vessels and aircraft were lost or damaged but the Japanese advance in the region was stopped.
"Its environmental significance and its historic importance as the site of the battle that turned the tide of World War II in our region make the Coral Sea a treasure
worth protecting for future generations,” said Imogen Zethoven, director of the Coral Sea Campaign.
"It is one of the last remaining places on earth where their numbers haven't been severely depleted. This will be a real safe haven refuge from Korean, Japanese and Chinese fishing boats."
The imposition of  "no-take" rule banning fishing would provide a range of marine animals, notably sharks, tuna, swordfish and turtles with a haven.
The Coral Sea, with coral reefs, remote islands, towering underwater mountains and deep-sea canyons, is one of the few areas of the world's oceans that is rich in wildlife yet suffers little from overfishing.
Sharks are under especial pressure from Asia's taste for shark fin soup and the creatures have suffered a 90 per cent slump in the last 50 years.
Hammerheads, grey reef, white and silver tips, makos and great white sharks are among the species that would benefit from the protection zone.
Broadbill swordfish, manta rays, and bigeye tuna are among the large fish found in the zone which by offering protection would allow species an opportunity to increase numbers which would be able to repopulate neighbouring areas.
Humpbacks and minkes are among the 25 species of whales that use the Coral Sea alongside hawkbill and green turtles.
Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group which is playing a lead role in the scheme, was confident the reserve would make an ideal model for Britain and other countries.
"Protecting the Coral Sea would preserve one of the planet's richest and most diverse ocean environments and would serve as an invaluable conservation model," he said.
"It will take bold initiatives like this one - protecting large, contiguous regions of the sea and involving a broad and diverse group of stakeholders - to begin allowing many of the world's fisheries and ocean ecosystems to recover."

Comments

[Brien Comerford]

It is a planetary imperative to vigilantly conserve vast marine and terrestrial ecosystems as a means to safeguard myriad wildlife species and the earths's biodiversity.