Brazil creates four massive marine protected areas

Brazil will soon have four vast marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Atlantic Ocean, covering an area of more than 920,000 square kilometers (355,200 square miles). The new designation will increase the coverage of Brazilian MPAs from 1.5 percent to about 24.5 percent of the country’s waters, exceeding the international target of protecting at least 10 percent of marine areas by 2020. “This measure will help safeguard our rich biodiversity, and renew our commitment to a more sustainable world,” President Michel Temer said in a video address to the 2018 World Ocean Summit held in Mexico last week. Trindade and Martin Vaz is an archipelago located in the Southern Atlantic Ocean about 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) east of the coast of Espírito Santo, Brazil. Photo by Flavio Forner. All four MPAs, created far away from the Brazilian coast, will protect remote sets of islands. Two of the MPAs will cover waters around the archipelago of Trindade, Martin Vaz and Mount Columbia, located more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) east of the Brazilian mainland. One MPA, encompassing 402,377 square kilometers (155,359 square miles), will allow some sustainable use of fishing resources. The protected area management plan, which will define what activities will be restricted and regulated, is currently being developed by the Ministry of Environment, said Jenny Parker McCloskey, vice president of media at Conservation International (CI). The other MPA, covering 69,155 square kilometers (26,701 square miles) of the sea, will prohibit all human activity. The remaining two MPAs will be located around the São Pedro and…

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