A new Great Scope Study helps to identify where whales, sharks, turtles and other ocean giants They need more protection and where the current efforts are insufficient.
Thanks to the United Nations support, research data of research has synthesized 12,000 satellite gerajected animals of more than 100 species. It reveals how marine megafauna moves worldwide and how his migration, food and reproductive behavior crosses with human threats such as fish, maritime transport and pollution.
Megamove is a huge collaboration of nearly 400 scientists from more than 50 countries. The organic data used that were collected via satellite labels to base a new ocean protection plan.
What is Megamove?
Eleven million geolocation of 15,845 copies of 121 species They have made it possible to generate the first major planetary map where the large maritime animals migrate and live, the SO -Called Megafauna, revealing that 60 % of these spaces have no retention objectives.
Protected marine areas hardly cover 8 % of the total surface of the oceans. The Hoogzee treaty and the conservation objectives agreed by countries within the United Nations, according to an extension of it to 30 %. A Study recently collected in the magazine Science It provides the scientific basis that is needed to evaluate whether the aforementioned conservation objectives really reach to protect the marine megafauna.
To do this, a team of around 400 scientists of 50 nationalities under the command of the Spanish physicist Jorge Rodríguez, currently at the State Meteorology Agency (AEMET) and Ana Sequeira, a researcher at the National University of Australia, they have one Global evaluation of the use of the oceanic space made by the Megafauna based on that 11 million geolocation.
The data of Monitoring has 71.1 % of the marine surface of the planet: “As soon as we had our data set, we wanted to know what the behavior of marine animals is. To achieve this, we design two algorithms: one to identify residence zones and another for migration routes,” says Rodríguez.
Migrating corridors in marine areas
Loose Researchers have seen that 66 % of all the space used by marine animals It is associated with this critical behavior: the places of residence (where they feed, rest or reproduce) occupy 45 % of the ocean and the migrating corridors that unite those stop areas represent half of the marine surface. Those runners are vital, while large marine species spend 80 % of their time with migrating.
Under the Geolocialized animal groups for the study There are all the large marine species, including birds, cetaceans, sharks and other types of fish, penguins, seals, polar bears, turtles or sea cows. More than a third of the species in a row in the study threatens to die out.
These species are Typical SuperDors who play a crucial role in marine trophic networksBut those growing threats are due to the impact of human activities, such as the increase in temperature due to climate change, overfishing, plastic pollution or maritime traffic.
What are the implications?
“To choose which areas we should protect, the We order prioritizing with the most important behavior for the largest number of species. Yet protecting only 30 % of the ocean would leave more than 60 % of the critical areas exposed to threats, “says Rodríguez.
Scientists claim that The current goal of protecting 30 % of the marine surface would only imply the preservation of 40 % of the critical habitats in this study. Maps show the movement patterns of each taxon, which can help identify important areas for the preservation and management of these species, they influence them.
The objectives of the Hoogzee Convention (signed by 115 countries, but still awaiting ratification) “are a step in the right direction, but are insufficient to cover all critical areas used by the megafauna, so that extra mitigation measures are needed,” the authors indicate. He Megamove project from which this study has been studying Fauna’s movements in the ocean for 30 years. EFE / ECOTICIA.COM