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The Seychelles government has introduced a new, protected marine area. The 210 000 square kilometre zone — an area equivalent to nearly half of the Black Sea — has been set aside to protect both the sea and the archipelago’s economy, which relies on fishing and tourism.
Environment Minister, Didier Dogley, said the initiative formed part of a paradigm shift about how the country manages and uses its coastal and ocean resources.
The conservation area is as the result of a deal, brokered in 2016 by American NGO, the Nature Conservancy. $21 million of government debt was swapped for conservation funding to protect the Seychelles against the effects of climate change, including warming, rising and acidifying seas.
Almost one-third of the new reserve will be off-limits to all fishing. The remaining area will allow small-scale, local fishing, but ban trawlers from the country’s $300 million fishing industry. The new protected areas include the remote Aldabra atolls, home to nesting seabirds, hawksbill turtles, giant tortoises and the dugong, or sea cow.
Dogley said that by 2020, close to a third of Seychelles waters would be protected by a new ‘spatial plan’ for ocean use to prevent unregulated and illegal fishing as well as oil and gas exploration, deep-sea mining and dredging.
The Nature Conservancy’s president, Mark Tercek, said the Seychelles would be a model for the rest of the world. “What you see today in Seychelles is what we expect to introduce in the Caribbean and other ocean regions facing the threats of climate change.”
Source: tourismupdate.co.za
