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INTRODUCTION
Covering more than 61% of the ocean’s surface and 95% of its volume, marine areas known as the high seas represent one of the last science, conservation, and resource management frontiers on Earth. The laws of any one country are insufficient to protect the high seas because they lie beyond all national jurisdictions. These vast ocean expanses include the majority of the total inhabitable space for life on Earth. As such, they provide critical habitat to millions of species, the vast majority of which remain to be discovered. The high seas are crucial for sustaining life on Earth, because they produce nearly half of the oxygen we breathe, capture more than 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, and contain nearly 90% of all life in the ocean by mass.
Although most people give little if any thought to these remote areas, the high seas have played a pivotal role in many seafaring cultures, which for millennia have navigated these areas to sustain themselves physically and spiritually. Even today, close to 90% of the world trade is carried out through international shipping on the high seas, and nearly 10 million tons of fish are caught there each year. Unfortunately, many of these activities are not well regulated. For example, some estimate that close to 90% of global fish stocks are either depleted or fully exploited, with much of this poorly regulated fishing taking place on the high seas. Various intergovernmental organizations, each with their own legal mandate, are responsible for regulating fishing, shipping, seabed mining, and other activities in these areas. The lack of a coordinated approach to conservation on the high seas makes resource management less effective.
The Salas y Gómez and Nazca Ridges are anchored on the west side by the islands of Salas y Gómez and Rapa Nui, which have extraordinary significance in Rapa Nui culture and include one of the most renowned archaeological sites on Earth.
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Recognizing this critical gap, the United Nations in 2015 committed to develop a legally binding treaty to conserve and sustainably use marine biodiversity on the high seas. Plans for further negotiations offer hope that a legal mechanism will soon establish marine protected areas on the high seas. Currently, less than 8% of our ocean has any protection measures, far less than the 30% minimum that many scientific assessments conclude is necessary to limit the widespread impacts of climate change and arrest global declines in biodiversity. The high seas are by far the largest and least protected portion of our planet, and therefore our best opportunity for reaching the global target of protecting 30% of our oceans by 2030. However, scientific information is disproportionately scarce on the high seas, thereby complicating resource management and conservation planning.
This chapter presents a case study to show how various global datasets and GIS analyses supported the identification of one of the most promising places to establish a marine protected area on the high seas—the Salas y Gómez and Nazca Ridges. Numerous studies identified this region as one of the top protection priorities on the high seas because of its unique collection of natural and cultural resources. Fishing and other commercial activities are still minimal in this region, thus providing a narrow window of opportunity to proactively protect its natural and cultural resources without impacting industries. This chapter also is designed to serve as a foundation for guiding large-scale ocean conservation efforts elsewhere.
Situated 250 nautical miles from its nearest neighbor, Easter Island, incredibly remote Salas y Gómez Island, Chile, is one of the few spots along the Salas y Gómez and Nazca Ridges that rise above sea level.