Marine Reserves and Protected Areas

A Marine Protected Area, or MPA, is defined by the NOAA as “an area of the marine or coastal environment that is afforded some degree of legal protection for natural and/or cultural resources”. It is the overarching term that refers to numerous types of areas with different levels of protection. Types of protection vary by human access, species, time of year, location and size, and even by cultural resources like the preservation of old battle sights.  The National Marine Protected Areas Center has established a classification system that allows some ability to distinguish between the areas using six criteria encompassing Primary Conservation Focus, Level of protection, Permanence of Protection, Constancy of and Ecological Scale of Protection and Restrictions on Extraction.  Although this system is a definitive step in the right direction, the United States must recognize the need to offer complete protection to more of its biologically unique ecosystems in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and continue to protect other areas and their sustainable production. National Marine Protected Areas Center website “Marine Protected Areas of the United States”   http://www.mpa.gov/what_is_an_mpa/what_is_mpa.html, 2005

Aleutian Islands Reserve

In 2002, NOAA scientists made a significant discovery of deep-sea coral reefs off the coast of the Aleutian Islands. This discovery helped spur a movement toward conservation of this and other unique deep-sea coral reefs. On June 26, 2006 NOAA closed an area of 370,000 sq. miles of ocean surrounding the Aleutian Islands to bottom trawlers.  This area combined with another protected area in the Gulf of Alaska is the largest protected area in the United States and the third largest in the world. Bottom trawling is a common fishing practice where huge ships drag large nets across the bottom of the ocean to catch as many fish as possible. It destroys ocean floors and wipes out ocean sea life, like the deep-sea corals.  This closure could mark a change in fisheries management policy and finally provide ocean ecosystems with much needed relief.  If this type of conservation policy spreads, there is more hope for a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.

Sitka Pinnacles Marine Reserve

This small area off the coast of Cape Edgecombe in Southeastern Alaska sets a welcome precedent as the first no take reserve in Alaska.  Established in 1999, the Sitka Pinnacles Marine Reserve covers barely three square miles and includes two important volcanic pinnacles, one measuring 40 meters and the other 70 meters.  The pinnacles provide groundfish like rockfish and lingcod, as well as other marine life, with essential habitats at varying depths.  It was large concentrations of lingcod feeding at the top of the pinnacles that first attracted fisherman. But, by the 1990’s, longline fishing was destroying the groundfish population in the area.  Conservation orders were put in place to reduce longline fishing in the area, but groundfish populations continued to decline as charter boats and other sport fishing increased. Eventually, the movement to protect this unique ecosystem grew and, with the support of the community and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the NPFMC created the reserve.


The Sitka Reserve is one of many Marine Protected Areas in the United States but it is unique because of its complete protection for bottomfish and halibut fishing.  Actual no-take Marine Reserves that offer full protection to fragile ecosystems are not very common in the United States and even more rare internationally. The United States has begun taking the steps to create a national network of reserves, after President Clinton signed Presidential Executive Order 1315, directing the development of a national network (http://www.mpa.gov/national_system/).  Yet, because there are so many varying types of protected areas, each with their own regulations and different systems of authority, there are many rules to negotiate and management options to coordinate. To protect the world’s oceans, Greenpeace is campaigning for the creation of a global network of marine reserves, covering 40% of our oceans, which would preserve important ecosystems around the world, by prohibiting all extractive and destructive uses, including fishing.  The proposed reserve locations, many of which have yet to be explored or researched, are all biologically rich and represent a full spectrum of the life in our oceans, promising sustainability.