Read the full article by Benji Jones on the Vox website. Start reading below…
A new global treaty to conserve the high seas is a giant win for the ocean and its most dazzling creatures.
What’s the largest habitat on Earth?
It’s not the Amazon rainforest or the African savanna. It’s not even the Great Barrier Reef.
It’s the high seas — a.k.a. the open ocean.
The high seas start 200 nautical miles offshore (about 230 miles), beyond any country’s national jurisdiction. This region is truly massive. The high seas cover nearly half of the planet’s surface, make up about two-thirds of the entire ocean, and represent an estimated 95 percent of all occupied habitat on Earth. 95 percent! All of the world’s forests and grasslands and lakes and rivers make up just a tiny fraction of Earth’s space for wildlife.
This gargantuan ocean habitat isn’t just some big, empty pool. It’s full of life — of whales and octopuses, albatrosses and turtles, and schools of fish that end up in restaurants and grocery stores. Plus, the high seas are teeming with microscopic critters called phytoplankton, which supply about half of the oxygen we breathe. The Amazon isn’t the lungs of the Earth. The high seas are.
Nonetheless, the high seas are nearly entirely undefended. Protected areas cover only about 1 percent of the open ocean, leaving this habitat vulnerable to overexploitation, plastic pollution, and commercial shipping — all of which harm wildlife and threaten to upend entire ecosystems on which many of us depend.
But big changes are coming, and they could help shield the high seas from many of these threats. In early March, after nearly 20 years of planning and heated negotiations, more than 190 countries agreed on a global treaty to conserve the high seas. It’s a big deal: The treaty marks the first time in history that the world has a cohesive strategy to sustain this enormous, life-supporting region.
