What are Marine Reserves?

Marine reserves are oceanic areas which are cordoned off to all human activities which involve commercialization of the oceanic resources. Marine reserves are areas which seek to protect the oceanic ecosystem and life-forms because of the excessive commercialization of marine resources that has been happening in these past few years.

Concept of Marine Reserves

The concept of marine reserves is a fairly new one, gaining popularity and widespread awareness in the past two-three decades. As the contemporary world seeks to find, explore and subsequently exploit the rich and abundant marine resources, the marine life-forms, flora and fauna have been the ones bearing the brunt of the fast moving pace of development of human civilisation. Therefore, in order to protect and advance the existence and survival of the natural beings of the oceans and seas, marine reserves have been started and keeping in mind the core objective of their creation, marine reserves are indeed providing their optimum to safeguard the interests of the marine life-forms.

Location of Marine Reserves

There are a wide number of marine reserves scattered across the world in the areas around United States, near Africa, in the Great Barrier Reef and even a few in South America and Japan. The presence of such a large number of marine reserves is quite encouraging because the success of these marine reserves will inspire other nations to follow suit and set up their own marine reserves to protect the interests of the marine eco-system.

Benefits of Marine Reserves

When it comes to evaluating and measuring the importance and benefits offered by marine reserves, it has to be noted that the importance and benefits that are offered by marine reserves are, more often than not, inter-related and overlapping. By providing a safeguard to quite a few threatened life-forms in the oceanic areas, marine reserves offer the benefit of supporting the existence of such threatened creatures for a really long and extended period.

Additionally, by observing the migratory statistics of certain fishes and creatures, it becomes easy for the researchers and marine reserve experts to study and garner more knowledge not only about a particular species of creature or flora and fauna but also about the efficiency of a marine reserve. The efficiency aspect is very important when it comes to a marine reserve because, if a marine reserve is located in an area where predators are bound be in large numbers, it is quite possible that the life of the creatures who reside in the reserve will be threatened by the predators thus invalidating the very reason for the set-up of the marine reserve in that oceanic area. And since, the very objective of a marine reserve is to preserve and allow the marine life-forms to thrive, it would be very wrong if these issues are not monitored carefully by the experts and scientists.

Another benefit offered by marine reserves is that plants and creatures in a marine reserve zone would end up being an ocean biome with a difference. At no point of time, will the ecosystem in such a biome be affected because of human activities, thus allowing the plants and animals in the reserve to proliferate without anybody else interfering or disturbing them.

Conclusion

Every creature in this world has a right to live. Man, through his actions, either advertently or inadvertently has been responsible for causing undue harm to the marine ecosystem and environment. By creating a specific place for the creatures and plants to live and survive interruptedly in their natural habitat, it is only fitting that we give them back what we have taken from them, without any second thoughts about their wellness and survival.

If you liked this article, you may also like to read What is ” Ocean Biome”?.

Reference

Economist
Greenpeace
Eoearth

Image Credit

Bb-films

Teara

About Author

Raunek Kantharia is a marine engineer turned maritime writer and entrepreneur. After a brief stint at the sea, he founded Marine Insight in 2010. Apart from managing Marine Insight, he also writes for a number of maritime magazines and websites.

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