Ocean Conservation

14 countries worldwide have committed themselves to the sustainable management of their national waters. The "Ocean Panel" is a body for sustainable marine management. A goal is it to place until 2030 a third of the seas under protection.

Involved are countries like Australia, Canada, Ghana, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Norway and Portugal. Together they have a marine area that is about the size of Africa.

97 pilot whales and 3 bottlenose dolphins have died as a result of a mass stranding on the remote Chatham Islands, located 800 kilometers off New Zealand's east coast. New Zealand's Department of Conservation was notified of the incident on Sunday, however rescue efforts were thwarted by the remote location and rough sea conditions.

The British South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha has created the world's fourth-largest marine reserve and has banned deep-sea mining and fishing with beam trawls over an area of 627,000 km². This created the largest protected area in the Atlantic Ocean and the fourth largest in the world.

The protected area is part of the so-called blue belt, a protection program for British overseas territories, which the British government is funding with 27 million pounds (approx. 30 million euros). So far, a total of 11.1 million square kilometers have been protected - that is one percent of the world's ocean area.