Cook Islands – en ø-gruppe langt ude i Stillehavet – har afsat et enormt havareal til beskyttet område for verdens hajer, som er alvorlig truet af overfiskning og anden menneskelig efterstræbelse – området kobles til andre nyligt fredede farvande.
The South Pacific island chain declared a 1,9 million-sq-km (km2) sanctuary, contiguous with (der hænger sammen med) one established last week by neighbouring French Polynesia, BBC online reports Thursday.
That sees a ban on shark fishing and possession or sale of shark products in an area now totalling 6,7 million sq km – nearly the size of Australia.
As top predators, overfishing of sharks disrupts complex oceanic food webs.
And about a third of ocean-going sharks appear on the internationally-recognised Red List of Threatened Species – se http://www.iucnredlist.org
Other island nations with sanctuaries also include Palau, the Maldives, Tokelau, Honduras and the Bahamas.
Last week’s move by French Polynesia overtook the Marshall Islands’ area, outlined in late 2011, as the world’s largest – and the Cook Island’s claim adds 40 per cent more area to that title.
As with the Marshall Islands’ declaration, the Cook Islands’ effort was with the help of the Pew Environment Group, which advocates island nations’ involvement because of the vast scope of their territorial waters.
Se mere om Pacific Islands Conservation Initiative på http://www.picionline.org
