Creation of New Caledonia marine park just first step

Transcript

An international marine group says the creation of a marine park in New Caledonia will protect the area's rich biodiversity but there is still a lot of work to be done.

Global Ocean Legacy, which is part of the Pew Charitable Trusts, works with communities and governments to establish large, highly-protected marine reserves around the world.

New Caledonia has set up the 1.3 million square kilometre park covering its entire exclusive economic zone.

The project manager of Global Ocean Legacy, Aline Schaffar, told Amelia Langford that if the area is not protected then its biodiversity will be lost.

ALINE SCHAFFAR: The marine biodiversity in New Caledonia is recognised as being very high. We have a few thousand different marine species, we have the second largest coral reef in the world so there is big potential in this area and this is exactly the reason why we aim to protect it.

AMELIA LANGFORD: Okay and what kind of species, for example, are there?

AS: Well, you have all the fish species, the coral species, but also and that is what big marine protected areas can help conserve is the migratory species so the species that range over quite a few different habitats. And so as we protect large protected areas we are going to protect the habitats of the species over their whole lives so that would be the sharks, the turtles, the whales, bird species as well, all these species are in the marine park.

AL: And how will it work? For example will there be limited fishing?

AS: We hope there will be in some areas but this still needs to be decided so the creation of the national park just sets the legal frame for future work and the future work will be over the next three years to work on the management plan and on marine planning to identify which areas are the most important to protect and from that decide on different levels of protection for different areas.

AL: Where to from here?

AS: The first step now is to put the management group together so in this management group there are going to be the institutions, environmental NGOs, and this is where we are going to work for Pew. There is going to be scientists, all the stakeholders really who are dealing with these waters and can provide some help on the zoning.  
 
AL: Is it envisioned that there would still be traditional fishing allowed?

AS: Yeah, in some areas there will be. The thing is in New Caledonia we have a very small fishing fleet. There is only about 20 boats that operate over the 1.3 million square kilometres so that's really not a lot and we really don't have any foreign licenses. It is only New Caledonian fishermen.

AL: And what about people who say 'why do we need this marine park'?

AS: If we don't protect it one day there will nothing to look at, there will be no more coral reef, no more fish, no more migratory species, that's what the richness of our ocean is today, so if we don't protect it we are going to lose it.