By: Sabine Jessen, CPAWS National Ocean Program Director
June 8th is International Ocean Day, a chance to celebrate the importance of the ocean to our lives. Quite simply, the oxygen we breathe and the food we consume would not exist without its magic powers.
But we can’t take the ocean’s health for granted.
Thirty years ago, when I was raising young children in Vancouver, our nearby ferry crossings were frequented by calls of “killer whale sighting ahead!”. Today, only 76 southern resident killer whales of the Salish Sea remain, and ferry passengers rarely see them.
Overfishing, industrial pollution and off-shore oil and gas development have all taken their toll on the once rich array of marine wildlife off Canada’s coastlines – which together add up to more than any other country’s. We now know that if we don’t protect the areas where marine wildlife species forage, give birth to and raise their young, their populations will dwindle dramatically.
The good news is that ocean ecosystems can bounce back. For example, off Cabo Pulmo, Mexico, fish had nearly disappeared due to overharvesting. Once a well-regulated marine protected area was established there in 1995, a rich variety of marine species rebounded fully within 14 years — far more quickly than scientists predicted!
Canada is starting to catch up to other countries in efforts to conserve and restore marine species. As a report by my organization released this week shows, in the past three years our country has protected more of our ocean estate than ever before in our history.
In 2016, just over one percent of Canada’s ocean estate was listed as “protected”, and the regulations for these areas were generally too weak to safeguard wildlife within them from harmful human practices such as bottom trawling and oil and gas exploration and development, and mining.
By May of this year, the extent of Canada’s ocean territory designated for protection had risen to over eight percent. Equally important, this year the federal government adopted a strong policy for regulating new marine protected areas. This policy will provide far greater security for fish, whales and other wildlife in Canada’s marine protected areas than ever before.
Those of us who’ve been active in marine conservation over the past few decades are heartened by this recent progress. In 2015, CPAWS challenged the federal government to protect 10% of our ocean by 2020. It appears that Canada is on track and for this, we congratulate the federal government.
But there’s no time to rest on our laurels. Canada needs to do much more. We need to protect at least 30% of our ocean territory by 2030, and 50% by 2050, because science shows these levels are needed for long-term survival of ocean ecosystems.
Is this do-able? Absolutely. Most of the additional areas that would get us to 30% marine protection by 2030 have already been identified. They include important birthing and foraging areas for fish and marine mammals such as the St. Lawrence Estuary (Quebec), Shediac Valley (Nova Scotia), Southern Strait of Georgia (British Columbia) and the Arctic’s “Last Ice”.
Canada has also started planning networks of marine protected areas for five of our country’s 12 marine bioregions. If these, and other networks a for the remaining seven bioregions are established, we can certainly get to 30% protection by 2030. Public support and continued government action will be critical to achieving these goals.
In 2019, we need to make a choice. Do we want to be the last generation to see killer whales swimming off our shores, or do we want today’s children, including my four-year-old grandson, to be able to delight in their presence too? I hope your answer is the same as mine.
*CPAWS released the report “Dare to be Deeper: A call to protect 30% of Canada’s ocean by 2030” on June 3, 2019. Read more about the report here.