«MARINE PROTECTED NATURAL AREAS»

UNIQUE SCIENTIFIC REFERENCE AREAS ON THE HIGH SEAS
Hjalmar Thiel, University of Hamburg

Manuscript prepared for the symposium on “Aktuele Probleme der Meeresumwelt” held by the Bundesamt fuer Seeschifffahrt und Hydrography, in Hamburg, Germany, on June 6—7, 2001

Arguments for the protection of selected areas are generally based on endangered species, reduced biodiversity or disturbed communities. The contributions presented during this workshop on fish (Fonteneau, Gordon), deep-water corals (Grehan), birds (Johnston), mammals (Donovan), seamount communities (Koslow) and hydrothermal vent communities (Juniper) all fall into these categories. It is important to note that various high seas fisheries are the essential disturbing agents except for the vent communities.

However, additional arguments exist for the creating protected areas. Those areas may be termed collectively "monitoring and science areas". Their common purpose is their availability for long-term research activities.

The concept of Stable Reference Areas (SRA) was first suggested during an IUCN conference in Ashkhabad in 1978, and it was further discussed by the Ocean Policy Board of the National Research Council of the US National Academy of Sciences (NRC, 1984). These discussions were prompted by the development of polymetallic nodule deep sea mining; it was concluded that two categories of SARs should be established:

• the Preservational Reference Area (PRA) to serve as a reference area for the natural community development in undisturbed regions, and
• the Impact Reference Area (IRA) to monitor community development after severe disturbance by polymetallic nodule mining.

Both areas must be of sufficient size for a monitoring program lasting about two decades. Ecologically they must be similar to mining areas in the wider vicinity; this pertains to physical, sedimentological and topographical characteristics, and also to the seafloor dwelling community. The PRA should be undisturbed by all mining activities, and this is the same for the IRA following the primary disturbance by mining.

For the last two decades the SRAs have been rather dormant since industrial nations have stopped developing deep-sea mining. They have not been forgotten, however, and now and then they re-appear in discussions. The concept of SRAs and the need to establish them are known to the International Seabed Authority. But the development of the mining code was restricted in its first phase to exploration activities of polymetallic nodule mining; the code for commercial mining will be considered only in the future. This must include discussions on PRAs and IRAs, where they should decide to what extent the scientific and monitoring activities are to be conducted by the mining contractors. The number of SRAs is still in ongoing debate. One PRA and IRA each should be established in or close to the Indian and the German mining claims in the central Indian Ocean and in the Peru Basin in the Southeast Pacific Ocean. In the North Pacific Ocean, where most of the claims are lined up in the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone, four PRAs and four IRAs would likely be sufficient.

SRAs can and will be established through regulations by the International Seabed Authority, having the responsibilities for environmental protection of the Area in relation to seabed mining. The establishment of preservational areas outside the mining claims needs special regulations to result in internationally accepted protection measures.

Unique Science Priority Areas (USPAs)

Effective and potential uses of the deep sea, particularly in the Area, have been developed during the second half of the last century. Dumping of low level radioactive wastes, sewage sludge and redundant munitions occurred, and final storage of waste products (e. g. carbon dioxide) have been discussed. No ethical argument can be brought forward for land storage versus deep-sea disposal, and a weighted ecological evaluation may argue for using the resource deep-sea space one day, although regulations like the London (Dumping) Convention exist (comp. Thiel et al., 1998).

A decision for an area where ocean disposal should be conducted, would be based on ecological arguments and the transport of dissolved waste products with the predominant currents. Economic considerations will be of importance in such decisions to limit the costs of these actions. Some regions of the Area are certainly not suitable for waste disposal, and these are the localities of hydrothermal vents, seamounts and e. g. fish spawning grounds.

However, I would like to introduce arguments for reserved regions independent from species, habitat or community safeguarding: the reservation of deep-sea science priority areas. Deep-sea research has made great strides in the last 50 years; it has progressed from descriptive to process and modeling studies. Earlier investigations concentrated on the near-continent and mostly continental slope and rise regions, but in the last 20 years central oceanic habitats have been include and, more importantly, long-term studies have been conducted to understand the natural processes of production and its variability within and between years. Researchers from Great Britain have studied repeatedly the occurrence of organisms and the sedimentation of food resources in the region of the Porcupine Seabight (Rice et al., 1991), a wide indentation of the continental shelf in southwest Ireland, and another long-term program was conducted in the area of the Rockall Trough to the west of Ireland and Scotland (Mauchline, 1986). The research done by scientists from various European nations at a deep position in the Porcupine Abyssal Plain was funded by the European Community through several subsequent contracts (see Thiel and Rice, 1995).

During the 1980s and the 1990s German activities concentrated some 500 nautical miles southwest of Ireland around a central position of 47°N and 20°W. Physical and sedimentological investigations were related to the questions of radioactive waste disposal (Mittelstaedt, 1986), and ecological studies concentrated on the abundance and distribution of organisms, on seasonally pulsed organic matter and energy income and dissipation, on turnover and production processes (Thiel et al., 1989, Pfannkuche et al., 1995). The German Ministry of Education and Research and also the German Research Council funded together 25 cruises or cruise legs with various research ships to this field. When the international Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) developed in the late 80s, the 47°N, 20°W position became the central locality for many international studies, to supplement existing knowledge with ecological results elaborated in the water column above the seafloor regions of the area of the former activities.

These various deep-sea research projects by European scientists – others exist, e. g. By French colleagues in the Golf de Gascogne (Laubier and Monniot, 1985) and in the Pacific Ocean – have created a broad knowledge and understanding of deep-sea ecological processes. These studies must be continued whenever new questions arise or global change monitoring becomes an important issue. The complementary scientific results from these regions should be get high marks from the public. It’s not only that a lot of money has been invested in this research, but a valuable data base, important for later comparative studies, has been created. If waste products were to be disposed of in one or more of these scientific high intensity areas, the loss for later comparisons of data would be tremendous. Such long-term reference stations might be never re-established. In the interest of society we must do everything to protect these long-term study areas for research by future generations.

The central positions of various long-term research programs in the Northeast Atlantic are presented in Figure 1. Three of them constitute a rather straight line, earlier called the European Deep-sea Transect. These three areas should come under protection, and a buffer zone of 100 nautical miles (nm) around their central position should mark them. However, it would be more convenient to define their borders in the form of a rectangle. Therefore, I propose straight lines in parallel to the central transect at a distance of 100 nm to both sides. This is a proposal and it needs to be discussed from various points of view. I am do giving any coordinates for the corners of this rectangular field, because they need to be decided by negotiations, and because the two corners to the Northeast fall into an Irish or European Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). A concerted action would be necessary to establish such a scientific priority area, or the Northeast border would fall together with an EEZ border. The total area would amount to 120 000 nm² or 400 000 km², corresponding to the size of Germany. This may sound unrealistic, but why not ban potential uses of the deep sea, except for scientific activities, from this region?

Figure 1. Location and boundaries of the scientific reserve "European deep-water transect". Numbers indicate long-term stations: "Deep-water Porcupine bay"; "Porcupine abyss valley and a European Union long-term station"; ''BIOTRANS" program station; "Roccall Bank". The firm line shows the suggested reserve boundary, the dotted line shows the transect in Roccall depression.

This European Deep-sea Transect USPA is one example for those areas in which scientific investigations were concentrated over the last two decades. Other such areas exist in the North Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, and it is hoped that legal and organizational conditions will be developed to establish USPAs in the near future.

References

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