By Nneka Nwogwugwu
Environmental experts in Peru has announced the establishment of a new marine protected area, Nazca Ridge National Reserve that allows large-scale fishing.
This will help to capture deep-sea cod that will damage the biodiversity inside the reserve.
Nazca Ridge National Reserve is the first fully marine protected area in Peru, covering 62,392 square kilometers (24,089 square miles) of the ocean.
Its establishment in June increased the proportion of the country’s territorial waters under some sort of protection from less than 1% to nearly 8%.
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Nazca Ridge National Reserve covers the two seamounts of Nazca Ridge and Salas y Gómez Ridge. The two ridges form part of a 2,900-kilometer (1,800-mile) submarine mountain range running off the coasts of Peru and Chile, where scientists have recorded 1,116 marine species, 30 of them globally threatened.
These include the biggest animal that has ever lived, the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), and the world’s largest turtle, the leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea), Mongabay reports.
Forty-one percent of the fish species and 46% of the invertebrates here are found nowhere else on Earth. The reserve also sits along the migration route of species like the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), making this series of 93 seamounts an obvious focus of protection.
“Its main purpose is to protect an underwater mountain range that rises from 1,800 to 4,000 meters [5,900 to 13,100 feet] deep,” said Gabriel Quijandría, Peru’s environment minister.
Prior to this, only 0.48% of Peru’s marine waters fell under some kind of protection. Indeed, Peru lagged behind every other country in the region in complying with the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, whose goals include the protection of at least 10% of signatories’ coastal and marine areas by 2020.
