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2.3.4 Current status of protection in the Mediterranean High Seas

Echoing the plan of implementation adopted in 2002 by the world’s nations at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development (WSSD)5, the World Parks Congress in Durban 2003 recommended that
“networks [of protected areas] should be extensive and include strictly protected areas that amount
to at least 20-30% of each habitat.” Currently, fully marine protected areas of all kinds – whether
coastal and pelagic - cover less than one percent of the Mediterranean Sea - a far cry from the
WPC recommendation (Greenpeace 2004, Abdulla et al. 2008b). The situation is significantly
worse concerning the Mediterranean High Seas, where only the Pelagos Sanctuary for
Mediterranean Marine Mammals and the areas off-limits to bottom trawling designated by the
GFCM enjoy formal protection. Whether these few areas also benefit from real protection,
however, is a question open to debate. In the Pelagos Sanctuary, actual management and
conservation actions are severely limited by the evident reluctance by the Agreement’s Contracting
Parties to mandate such actions to an adequately empowered management body6. In the deep
trawling-banned areas designated by the GFCM, actual enforcement is unknown, but probably
non-existent, and preliminary evidence indicates that permanent damage to some of these delicate
biocenoses might have already occurred (X. Pastor, Oceana, pers. comm.).

2.3.5 Distribution of human threats

While a detailed analysis of the threats affecting biodiversity in the Mediterranean High Seas is
beyond the remit of this report, as it will be addressed in full in a more advanced stage of this
project, a brief overview of such threats will help to place the current effort in perspective.

No marine area is unaffected by human influence and a large fraction (41%) is strongly affected by
multiple drivers (Halpern et al. 2008). The marine biodiversity in the Mediterranean is particularly
at risk, due to the limited volume of this marine body of water compared to the growing intensity of
human pressures that are exerted on it (European Environment Agency 1999). Severe and
mounting demographic pressures along the Mediterranean coastal zone are impacting on the
marine environment in several ways: overfishing and illegal fishing, pollution, disturbance, noise,
invasions by alien species, climate changes are among the main impacting factors affecting the
Mediterranean biodiversity (for a recent review see Greenpeace 2004).

The Mediterranean fish fauna is diverse but fisheries are generally declining. Of the 900 or so
known fish species, approximately 100 are commercially exploited. Unsustainable catch rates of
rays (including the disappearance of certain taxa from commercial catches) and other demersal
species are of special concern (Tudela 2004); in recent years, the Mediterranean populations of
bluefin tunas raise the highest concerns due to overfishing (WWF 2007, MacKenzie et al. 2009).
Fisheries impacts extend beyond elasmobranchs, finfish, or other target species: longline fishing is

5 “Develop and facilitate the use of diverse approaches and tools, including ... the establishment of marine protected areas
consistent with international law and based on scientific information, including representative networks by 2012”.
6 Annex I, D. 6. to the SPA Protocol to the Barcelona Convention states that “To be included in the SPAMI List, a protected
area must have a management body, endowed with sufficient powers as well as means and human resources to prevent
and/or control activities likely to be contrary to the aims of the protected area.” This is clearly not the case of the Pelagos
Sanctuary.