Canada Fails its Marine Protected Areas" Progress Report Card
Less than 0.5 per cent of Canada's ocean area is protected. Our oceans, and their productivity, are a key component to the overall health of the planet, our economy, and ourselves.
Marine protected areas (MPAs) protect sensitive and vulnerable marine ecosystems and the creatures that live within their boundaries. There is strong scientific consensus that MPAs with strict conservation regulations are a highly effective yet under-utilized tool to alleviate the global decline in marine ecosystem health.
I put together this report card for the Living Oceans Society, the David Suzuki Foundation and Sierra Club BC to illustrate Canada's poor performance on protecting ocean environments.
Check it out - it's something Canadian's should know. And, it's short and has lots of graphics.
To view the flash version of the report: http://naturechallenge.org/ReportCard/
To download the PDF: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/files/reports/MPAReportCard.pdf
Check it out - it's something Canadian's should know. And, it's short and has lots of graphics.
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Publications/Marine_Protected_Areas.asp
Having grown up close to the
Having grown up close to the powerful and stately Atlantic ocean, playing in the sand and collecting the beautiful rocks smoothed by millions of years of sometimes gentle and sometimes ferocious movement, I have loved (with all my heart) and been in awe of oceans all my life. So it is not a surprise that I just spent my entire vacation-week at the oceans edge. First, I travelled by ferry to take in the meandering splendor that is the Southern Coast of Vancouver Island. And not surprisingly, I was once again deeply moved and awed by its unpretentious majesty and unwavering, yet pacific strength.
And when I got to the Hornby Island part of my trip, I had the distinct feeling that I had arrived just in time for my very own once in a lifetime chance at a glimpse of eagles soaring above the secret mysteries of the seemingly extra terrestrial rock formations of that place. My imagination whispered to me, speaking of ancient volcanic eruptions that churned and sizzled when the fiery fingers of the lava met the expansive and forgiving power of an ocean that never once objected to receiving the molten streams.
I often hear that the trees on this planet are our lungs. Surely, then the ocean is our blood. Why don’t we make this connection more consciously? It confounds me. Is it the same ability to warp the information that reality offers us that a smoker engages in order to poison their body that allows us to poison our oceans, our very own lifeblood?
To be sure if there were no oceans, there would be no humans. There would be no earth as we know it. The birds, fish, crabs, seaweed, whales, and the tides themselves, none of these could possibly exist without everything else. When the ocean is in bad shape so are we. It isn't just a new agey sentiment that we are ‘all one’. We actually *are* literally connected. All of it.
Let’s have a closer look at what we are putting into and taking out of our oceans, and how. There just might be a better way to get what we need in a way that we all thrive.