29 November 2011. Australia has effectively made a new bid for the world’s largest MPA with the announcement of plans for the Coral Sea Commonwealth Marine Reserve, currently open for consultation until 24 February 2012.  The proposed size is 989,842 km2, nearly three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

Located off the Queensland coast of northeast Australia, the planned reserve starts offshore at the eastern boundary of the existing Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and extends to the limit of Australia’s exclusive economic zone.

The Coral Sea Commonwealth Marine Reserve would protect relatively undisturbed coral reefs, atolls, deep sea plains and canyons, and a full suite of tropical and migrating marine wildlife. It is an important breeding area for baleen whales including humpback whales, dwarf minke whales and blue whales. Various toothed whales and dolphins use the area mostly year-round: sperm whales, melon-headed whales, and striped, pantropical spotted, bottlenose and Risso’s dolphins. In all, some 28 cetacean species are found in the Coral Sea.

Declared as the Coral Sea Conservation Zone by the Australian Environment Ministry as an interim protection measure in 2009, the area was then considered as part of Australia’s marine bioregional planning process.

The newly proposed plan features a contentious 51 percent of the reserve in highly protected zones. Compared to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park with 33 percent highly protected, this seems like an improvement, but many researchers, MPA managers and NGOs feel the Great Barrier Reef fell somewhat short of its potential in terms of being able to protect one of the wonders of the world and that the Coral Sea designation should take a much bolder, far-reaching approach with much higher levels of protection approaching 100 percent. There is a strong precedent for this with the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and the other marine national monuments designated by the US in the Pacific, which total more than 830,000 km2, and are almost entirely highly protected.

Still, the Coral Sea designation makes an important contribution to Australia’s powerful nature protection brand. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was the first large and important MPA in the world. Now Australia has effectively awarded greater ecosystem protection to this region, making Queensland and its offshore protection stand out as a marine paradise. This plan offers the chance to extend comprehensive spatial management over a much larger area of the ocean. Within the consultation period, there is still the chance to argue for enhancement of this protection to something exceeding the current level of 51 percent high protection. Commercial fishing associations would like to weaken the reserve but coral reef scientists have pointed out that there is very little commercial fishing going on legally in the Coral Sea anyway, and in fact the highly protected zone needs to be extended to cover more of the important coral reefs and fish spawning grounds that would be in the mixed use areas.

Oil and gas exploration/extraction and other mining will be banned throughout the entire marine reserve but aquaculture will be allowed in the multiple use zone.

To read the government report on plans for the reserve, subject to public consultation, go to http://environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/coralsea/publications/pubs/coralsea-reserve-proposal.pdf

To make a comment on the consultation no later that 24 February 2012, go to this website: www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/coralsea

— © Erich Hoyt 2011