marine reserve tagged posts

In a remote spot in the South Atlantic, roughly 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the coast of West Africa, lies Ascension Island, one of the U.K.’s Overseas Territories. In January 2016, the British government announced plans made by Ascension’s elected governing body to protect the island’s biodiverse waters with a marine reserve spanning 230,000 square kilometers (90,000 square miles), an area almost as big as the U.K. itself. Fishing is prohibited in half this area and closely regulated in the other half.

On March 14, however, the U.K...

This week, Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet signed a decree allowing the creation of the Network of National Parks of Patagonia and the protection of marine areas in different areas of the South American country, in a move to boost her legacy two weeks before leaving power.

The marine areas contemplate the areas of the Juan Fernández Archipelago, Diego Ramírez Islands, Rapa Nui, Seno Almirantazgo and Tortel, totaling eight marine parks and six coastal marine areas of multiple, reaching 42.4 percent.

In all, protections added during her four-year term cover some 1.3 million square kilometers (509,000 square miles) of ocean.

The Rapa Nui area alone accounts for some 720,000 square kilometers home to at least 142 species of marine life found nowhere else, of which 27 are threatened or ...