The recent Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets ambitious goals to protect, conserve, and manage at least 30% of the world's oceans in an effort to halt the loss of important marine biodiversity. In particular, close to a third of large marine vertebrates are now threatened with extinction, with many iconic species such as the hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata), the shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus), or the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) showing precipitous declines in abundance. Reversing these declines requires an understanding of how the spatial distributions of animals overlap with human activities.

BioSS researcher Ana Couto worked with a team of international scientists who tracked over 100 marine species of large vertebrates to identify the most critical locations for conservation in the global ocean. The team assembled a dataset unparallel in size and scope (11 million geo-positions from 15,845 tracked individuals across 121 species) to provide a global assessment of space use of highly mobile marine megafauna.

The research found that the targets of the United Nations High Seas Treaty – which seeks to expand current marine protection areas from 8% of the world’s oceans to 30% – is a step in the right direction and will be key to assist conservation but is insufficient to cover all critical areas used by threatened marine megafauna, suggesting that additional threat mitigation strategies (e.g., fishing regulation, wildlife-traffic separation) are also needed.

The study forms part of the MegaMove project endorsed by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science and has been published in Science.

[Case study thumbnail: Closeup view of a satellite tag attached to a shark fin in March 2017. Photo Credit: OCEARCH]