Protecting the world's oceans will cost governments far less than the amount they spend on subsidies for fishing fleets and will lead to bigger catches in the long run, says a study by the conservation group WWF International and Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They estimate that a network of marine protected areas covering 30 per cent of the oceans would cost as much as $20 billion annually - about as much as humans spend on ocean cruises.
It says this falls far short of the more than $40 billion already spent each year on subsidies to commercial fisheries. The study was published on Monday in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers say that the world's oceans are in trouble: global fish catches are in decline, populations of whales, dolphins, sea otters and other marine mammals have collapsed and habitats - reefs, estuaries and other submarine landscapes vital for breeding - have been damaged or destroyed. Coastal states pledged at a world summit in 2002 to create national networks of marine parks, and a congress in Durban last year recommended that at least 20 per cent to 30 per cent of every marine habitat should be protected from fishing. This would mean closing parts of traditional fishing grounds.
"If you put areas off limits to fishing, there is no more effective way of allowing things to live longer, grow larger and produce more offspring," said Callum Roberts, one of the study's authors.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/15/1087244919921.html