UK designates world’s largest marine reserve
Salomons Atoll, one of the many above water features of the Chagos Archipelago. Credit: Micaelalah
The Pew Environment Group has commended UK Foreign Minister David Miliband for designating the Chagos Islands, a group of 55 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, as the world’s largest marine reserve.
The islands and their surrounding waters cover 210,000 square miles (544,000 square kilometres), an area larger than California and more than 60 times the size of Yellowstone Park.
As a fully protected marine reserve, the rich diversity of marine life found in the Chagos will now be safeguarded from extractive activities, such as industrial fishing.
The Pew Environment Group assembled leading conservation and scientific organisations to advocate for the establishment of a large no-take marine reserve for the Chagos. Groups in support of the designation include the Chagos Conservation Trust, the Linnean Society of London, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Marine Conservation Society, the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
The Chagos Islands and their surrounding waters can serve as a global reference site for scientific research in crucial areas such as ocean acidification, coral reef resilience, sea level rise, fish stock decline, and climate change.
The Chagos Islands provide a safe haven for dwindling populations of sea turtles and more than 175,000 pairs of breeding sea birds, as well as an exceptional diversity of deep water habitats, such as trenches reaching nearly 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) in depth. The waters around the islands are some of the cleanest in the world, contain the world’s largest coral reef structure, and are home to 220 species of corals and more than 1,000 species of reef fish. At least 76 species listed on the IUCN’s Red List of Endangered Species live in these waters.
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