Canada's Coasts Need MPAs!
Protection For Our Oceans!
| Marine Protected Areas are areas of ocean off-limits to major industry like mining, seismic testing and bottom trawling. With low impact from humans, MPAs support healthy ecosystems where biodiversity can flourish and fish stocks can replenish. |
Today, this network of MPAs remains far from being realized. Canada still protects less than one percent of its marine environment, despite having the longest coastline of any country in the world.
Instead of protecting our marine ecosystems, we continue to over-stress them at a fast and furious pace.
MPAs can help. These protected areas act like ocean parks, where human activities are balanced with the need for refuges for species. Left alone, these ocean ecosystems will flourish and thrive. They act as nurseries, restocking Canada's ocean ecosystems with sea life. More MPAs mean more fish, for humans and our endangered marine mammals. MPAs may actually help the fishing community, by creating more dependable and increased catches.
| Tidal Flats |
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B.C.'s marine ecosystems need help!
In British Columbia, just two Canada Oceans Act marine protected areas exist: Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents and Bowie Seamount. We have other legal tools, like the National Marine Conservation Areas Act and the Canada Wildlife Act, that could be used to protect other important sites.
We need a network of MPAs that protect the full range of diversity found on this coast. We need to protect British Columbia's precious glass sponge reefs, the foraging waters used by seabirds around the Scott Islands, the Southern Strait of Georgia marine ecosystem and the important ocean waters surrounding Gwaii Haanas.