Conservation scientists are proposing new approaches to protect offshore marine reserves from the dangers of illegal fishing.
Researchers have found a way to predict illegal fishing activities to help authorities better-protect marine reserves, which are the most common strategy to conserve marine ecosystems across the globe, the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies reported.
"Having a patrol record database, and a systematic and periodic analysis of these records is very important because it increases our enforcement efficiency and maximises our limited resources," Fernando Quirós, the Director of the Cocos Island Marine Conservation Area told Headlines and Global News in an email.
The International Convention of Biological Diversity hopes to have 10 percent of the world's marine areas protected by 2020; recently the United States created the world's largest reserve, which spans a staggering 1.27 million square kilometers in the central Pacific Ocean.
Despite these improvements, researchers are concerned a number of countries will not have the means to enforce the laws that keep these crucial marine preserves protected. The scientists demonstrated reserves that are far from shore are the most difficult to protect.
"The distances to these areas can be very large. They are a long way from prying eyes and quite often the regulations are such that you have to actually catch people illegally fishing to prosecute them," Professor Joshua Cinner from Coral CoE said in a news release.
In order to tackle this problem the researchers looked at five years' worth of data taken from the World Heritage-listed Cocos Island National Park, which is a protected marine area in the Pacific Ocean. Through this research the team was able to identify illegal fishing patterns and predict where it was most likely to happen and at what times. The pinpointed a number of "hotspots" and followed monthly lunar patterns. These findings could help authorities determine when and where to patrol, instead of doing it at randomly.
"So far, the responses have been very positive. I think many people in Costa Rica and around the world are getting fed up with this illegal fishing. The national newspaper In Costa Rica just ran a story showing how the illegal fishers at Cocos island are actually getting [subsidized] diesel fuel for their boats. People are not happy about this and want to see solutions like what we have proposed to reduce the illegal fishing," Cinner said in an email to HNGN.
The findings will be a major focus at Sydney's IUCN World Parks Congress open. The findings were published recently in the Cambridge Journals.
