According to the Protected Planet Report 2024, around 17% of land and inland waters globally are protected today. When it comes to the ocean and coastal waters, we’d expect this percentage to be higher as the ocean covers 70% of the Earth. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Only 8.4% of our blue planet is protected. This percentage is already small and, within this, 2.8% is effectively safeguarded, according to a study released in October 2024.
Image by ratucette from Pixabay
Furthermore, established Marine Protected Areas are under threat across the world, with the latest one being US President Donald Trump’s recent decision of allowing commercial fishing in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument. Why are we still failing to take ocean protection seriously?
There are many levels of protection granted to natural spaces. Protected areas in the ocean are referred to as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), which can be compared to national parks on land. MPAs play, in theory, a vital role in ensuring the conservation and protection of marine ecosystems and wildlife.
Safeguarding the ocean has never been more important as we face unprecedented biodiversity and climate crises, with around 37% of fish stocks overfished, a decline in shark and ray species of 71% since the 1970s, and a 50% loss in coral reef numbers since 1870. According to the State of the Ocean Report 2024 over half of all, and 72% of threatened, species have been reported in MPAs, underlining their huge importance.
MPA is a generic umbrella term, and there are many types. Some MPAs are designed to protect biodiversity and specific marine habitats, while others focus on historical and cultural features. Some examples are Special Protection Areas (SPAs) with marine components to protect birds; Marine Nature Reserves (MNRs) that conserve marine flora, fauna and geological features while providing research and study opportunities; No Take Zones (NTZs), where all extractive activities are prohibited, such as fishing and drilling; to name a few.
Image by Jutta Wilms from Unsplash
In the UK, there are also Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs). Launched in 2023, these allow the protection and recovery of marine ecosystems by prohibiting extractive and destructive activities, such as commercial and recreational fishing, dredging, construction and anchoring. There are three pilot sites in English waters: Allonby Bay, North East of Farnes Deep, and Dolphin Head. Along with No Take Zones, these offer the highest level of protection for marine areas. Sadly, despite the UK having 207 MPAs, this effective protection is only granted to five of them.
The same pattern unfolds worldwide with 5.6% of global MPAs offering little to no protection – they’re so loosely regulated that harmful practices are still allowed within their boundaries. While 5.6% might not seem like a substantial number, it’s important to remember that it represents well-over half of the area designated as protected (8.4%) in oceanic and coastal waters.
Recent reports analysed 90% of the global marine protected areas and found that a quarter of these are unregulated and unmanaged. Effective management and regulation of MPAs should be the minimum expectation for a “protected area”, ensuring harmful human activities are prohibited, enforcement is upheld, and monitoring prevents them from becoming mere paper parks.
Over a third of MPAs allow industrial activities such as large-scale commercial fishing
The real issue with MPAs lies in a glaring contradiction: over a third of them worldwide allow industrial activities like large-scale commercial fishing, which is one of the leading drivers of ocean biodiversity loss. This directly undermines marine conservation efforts and contradicts IUCN’s guidance that any industrial activity and infrastructural developments aren’t compatible with MPAs and should be excluded from such areas. Moreover, it should come as no surprise that bottom trawling is allowed in many protected areas. Bottom trawling is the most destructive type of commercial fishing, in which heavy nets are dragged along the seabed, destroying fragile habitats and indiscriminately catching marine life, both target and untargeted species.
Image by Fer-nando from Unsplash
A Greenpeace report from 2022 found that vessels with bottom towed gear spent over 47,000 hours fishing in UK offshore MPAs in 2021. This number has decreased in 2023, but is still a shocking and significant figure: more than 33,000 hours of suspected bottom trawling, according to Oceana UK. The same Oceana report showed that over 100,000 hours of industrial fishing took place within offshore MPAs in the UK in 2023, with only 10 fishing vessels responsible for over a quarter of the suspected bottom trawling activity. The Labour government has been rightly criticised for delaying its promise to ban bottom trawling from UK’s MPAs.
Unfortunately, it gets worse. A more recent Greenpeace investigation published earlier in March 2025 found that in the past five years (from January 2020 to January 2025) 26 supertrawlers spent 37,000 hours fishing in 44 UK offshore MPAs. These giant factory ships are usually over 100 metres in length and can catch tonnes of fish and marine life with their kilometre-long nets.
This could have been prevented. Since Brexit, the British government had the opportunity to enforce stronger ocean protections but lacked the political will to act.
The wider European picture doesn’t look much better. A report conducted by The Marine Conservation Society found that 4.4 million hours of bottom towed fishing took place in MPAs between 2015 and 2023 in Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. France is also being widely criticised by environmental NGOs for extremely serious reasons.
The country, which is the world’s second largest maritime territory after the United States, effectively protects less than 0.1% of its metropolitan waters. Most French MPAs are located in remote areas where there’s little human activity, such as the Southern Ocean, instead of coastal areas which are severely threatened by pollution, industrial fishing and habitat loss. Moreover, destructive fishing practices continue to happen in French MPAs – in 2021, 47,2% of industrial fishing activities took place in MPAs.
The greatest danger, however, comes from its classification of protection levels – 11 in total – which don’t comply with scientific advice and IUCN’s framework of six categories. So many levels but, sadly, not one of those prohibits industrial fishing. Another extremely concerning point is its case-by-case protection approach, which sends different and arbitrary messages – none of which puts the ocean in first place. Not only that, but France is now campaigning for other countries to follow its lead and adopt this failed approach that only protects industrial fishing companies.
However, there’s hope. The 2023 EU marine action plan recommended member states phase out bottom trawling in MPAs by 2030. Also, Greece became the first European country to ban bottom trawling in all its national marine parks and protected areas in April 2024, with Sweden following suit a few months later and becoming the second one.
Elsewhere, Australian MPAs also suffer from a lack of real protection. Although they cover 52% of their waters, harmful activities such as mining and commercial fishing are allowed in 30% of the nation’s waters. The announcement of plans to expand the protection of the marine park around the Heard and McDonald Islands while still allowing commercial fishing in these same waters was met with understandable scepticism by conservationists.
On the other side of the globe, US President Trump, who’s been cutting back on the country’s environmental promises, projects and organisations, recently issued an executive order to open a vast marine protected area to commercial exploitation, as we mentioned previously. The area in question, the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, was first established in 2009 and is home to protected and endangered species and pristine coral reefs. Taking it a step further, Trump called for a review of all other marine national monuments to assess if they should also be opened to commercial fishing, undermining scientific advice and efforts to protect marine ecosystems.
Image by Christian Paul Stobbe from UnSplash
Fully protected areas have 30% more fish
Partially protected areas fall short, failing to deliver the biodiversity, climate resilience, and economic benefits of fully protected zones. An 2021 Australian study found that partially protected areas had no more fish, invertebrates or algae and were no more of an attraction to visitors than unprotected areas. On the other hand, fully protected areas had 30% more fish and saw twice as many divers and more than three times as many snorkelers compared to unprotected areas.
The percentage of protected areas both on land and at sea are key metrics to assess the 30×30 target. The 30×30 target was agreed at the COP15 UN Biodiversity Conference in 2022, aiming to have 30% of land and seas protected by 2030, with more than 100 countries signing up to the commitment. Unsurprisingly, little has changed in the past couple of years: there’s been an increase of only 0.5% of global marine areas under protection.
The 2024 report On track or off course? Assessing progress toward the 30×30 target in the ocean revealed that only 14 countries have designated more than 30% of their waters as protected areas, the UK being one of those with 68% of its waters protected. From this percentage, 39% are considered effectively protected. This successful example, however, is largely due to 90% of UK’s MPAs being in overseas territories, such as the Pitcairn Islands, Tristan da Cunha, and South Georgia. These have greater levels of protection than domestic waters.
The same is true for American fully and highly protected areas with 99% located in distant waters. This practice safeguards important marine habitats and has the advantage of protecting large remote areas rich in biodiversity where extractive activities haven’t heavily impacted ecosystems yet. However, it misses the opportunity to focus on coastal areas which are constantly and severely affected by human activities, waters which coastal communities’ livelihoods depend on. Coastal MPAs that allow low-impact activities such as diving, snorkelling, and subsistence fishing can provide biodiversity and economic benefits, and are vital for reaching global conservation targets.
Ocean protection has consistently been an out of sight, out of mind issue, but this is slowly changing. A 2024 poll commissioned by Oceana and Seas At Risk found that 86% of citizens expect their political leaders to prioritise the protection of marine biodiversity. It also revealed that 90% of people believe that marine protected areas are a necessary tool to protect marine biodiversity, and 73% of citizens would support banning bottom trawling in EU MPAs. It’s past-time that governments and policy-makers act on the wishes of their people and allow for governance that protects rather than destroys biodiversity.
What should be done?
We need more and better managed marine protected areas that follow the IUCN’s guidance on banning all extractive and destructive practices within their boundaries, allowing these areas to fully recover. Not only that, but we need to ensure a range of ecosystems are protected, from coastal areas to the deep sea, providing marine corridors that act as safe havens for migratory species. To better understand the impact of these protected areas, it’s vital to closely monitor, standardise and share data collection to better inform policies and practices globally.
Local communities and Indigenous Peoples must have a seat at this table. While they’re the first ones to be impacted by land and ocean governance policies, they’re usually the last ones to be heard – if they’re heard at all. Their needs, perspectives and knowledge should be considered. They have nurtured a healthy and sustainable relationship with nature for millennia, we need to learn from them.
A healthy ocean is vital for nature and the planet, but equally to us and our livelihoods. Ocean protection affects us all and therefore, should be a common goal, regardless of the sway of powerful extractive industries. Conservation policies and fisheries management are intrinsically linked and should be worked and looked at as inseparable. A depleted, barren marine ecosystem doesn’t provide any profits or economic benefits, let alone a life support system for our failing ecosystems.
Effective and sustainable ocean governance is no easy task. The desire for ever-bigger profits, conflicting interests and legislation, lack of political leadership and resources are some of the many issues contributing to the current state of the marine environment. On the other hand, there’s no lack of great scientific advice and desire to turn the tide by conservationists and NGOs, and this is how we’ll effect change. We must remember that ultimately, we don’t have another option therefore the urge to extract from the ocean must be outweighed by a commitment to protect it.
