'Most remote island' creates massive marine protection zone
Excerpted...
LONDON (AP) — Tristan da Cunha, an island with 245 permanent residents, is creating a marine protection zone to safeguard endangered rockhopper penguins, yellow-nosed albatross and other wildlife in an area of the South Atlantic three times the size of the United Kingdom.
The government of the British overseas territory, which calls itself the most remote inhabited island on Earth, said Friday that fishing and other “extractive activities” will be banned from 627,247 square kilometers (242,181 square miles) of ocean around Tristan da Cunha and the archipelago’s three other major islands.
The sanctuary will be the biggest “no-take zone” in the Atlantic Ocean and the fourth biggest anywhere in the world, protecting fish that live in the waters and tens of millions of seabirds that feed on them, the territory said. The isolated area, roughly equidistant between South Africa and Argentina, supports 85% of the endangered northern rockhopper penguins, 11 species of whales and dolphins, and most of world’s sub-Antarctic fur seals, according to the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project.
Excerpted...
LONDON (AP) — Tristan da Cunha, an island with 245 permanent residents, is creating a marine protection zone to safeguard endangered rockhopper penguins, yellow-nosed albatross and other wildlife in an area of the South Atlantic three times the size of the United Kingdom.
The government of the British overseas territory, which calls itself the most remote inhabited island on Earth, said Friday that fishing and other “extractive activities” will be banned from 627,247 square kilometers (242,181 square miles) of ocean around Tristan da Cunha and the archipelago’s three other major islands.
The sanctuary will be the biggest “no-take zone” in the Atlantic Ocean and the fourth biggest anywhere in the world, protecting fish that live in the waters and tens of millions of seabirds that feed on them, the territory said. The isolated area, roughly equidistant between South Africa and Argentina, supports 85% of the endangered northern rockhopper penguins, 11 species of whales and dolphins, and most of world’s sub-Antarctic fur seals, according to the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project.
