Ross Sea tagged posts

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters lauded on Thursday the set-up of Ross Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Southern Ocean.

The Ross Sea region MPA, which comes into effect on Dec. 1, is the result of a joint New Zealand-United States initiative, and will protect an area of the Southern Ocean that is teeming with life, Peters said.

“The Southern Ocean is one of the world’s most pristine marine environments. It has an unbroken food-chain and still has a full suite of top-level predators such as whales, seals and penguins,” Peters said, adding that the Ross Sea region MPA is 1.55 million square km, or six times the size of New Zealand.

“Getting unanimous agreement to create this marine protected area is a significant achievement,” he said.

New Zealand will continue to work with ...

The winding back of plans for a huge Antarctic marine sanctuary is a “significant blow” and “baffling,” conservation groups say. A joint New Zealand-US proposal to create the world’s biggest marine reserve in the Ross Sea was scaled back by 40 per cent ahead of negotiations in Australia next month.

Officials believe it will be easier to get the support of the 25 nations of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) for a smaller sanctuary.

The Antarctic Ocean Alliance, an umbrella group of 30 conservation organisations, says it is “baffling” that the two governments have weakened their proposal. The environmentalists believe it was a “tactical mistake” to scale back the plan without first securing support from other nations.

This is likely to be a bl...