Marine Protected Areas, From a Reef Park to an Ocean Sanctuary

Kisite-Mpunguti Marine National Park, Kenya, is where the path starts, at about 39 square kilometers of reef around four small coral islands, made up of the 28 square kilometer Kisite park and the 11 square kilometer Mpunguti reserve. It was established in 1978 as the first marine national park in Kenya and holds around 250 recorded fish species.

Ballena Marine National Park in Costa Rica was created by executive decree on 9 June 1992 to protect migrating humpback whales, and it is named for them, since ballena means whale in Spanish. It covers about 5,160 hectares of water and only 171 hectares of land, so the sea is the larger part of the park.

Las Baulas, also in Costa Rica, protects Tamarindo Bay and the largest nesting colony of leatherback sea turtles on the Pacific coast of the Americas, whose females come ashore at Playa Grande between October and May. Of its roughly 175 square kilometers, more than half is underwater, and it was also designated a Ramsar site in 1993.

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, designated on 18 September 1992, steps up to 6,094 square miles of the California coast and holds a submarine canyon deeper than the Grand Canyon, at 12,743 feet. It is a sanctuary with managed public use, and oil drilling and seabed mining are prohibited within its waters.

Mayotte Marine Natural Park, established in 2010, covers the entire territorial waters and exclusive economic zone of the French island of Mayotte, about 68,313 square kilometers. It shows a different idea of scale, where the park is drawn around a whole island territory and its surrounding ocean rather than around one reef.

Phoenix Islands Protected Area in Kiribati was established in January 2008 and covers 408,250 square kilometers, though its total land area is only about 25 square kilometers. It protects an intact oceanic coral archipelago with 14 known seamounts, and in 2010 it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Palau National Marine Sanctuary, established in 2015, covers about 502,539 square kilometers. Its rule is a split: all extractive activities, including commercial fishing and mining, are prohibited across 80 percent of the sanctuary, while domestic fisheries are permitted in the remaining 20 percent.

Chagos Marine Protected Area was established by the British government on 1 April 2010 and covers 640,000 square kilometers of the central Indian Ocean, including the Great Chagos Bank, the largest coral atoll in the world. It is also contested, as the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled it unlawful on 18 March 2015 and its status remains under negotiation between Britain and Mauritius.

Coral Sea Marine Park, established on 1 July 2018, covers nearly 989,836 square kilometers off Queensland, making it the largest individual marine park in Australia. It protects humpback whale migration corridors, green turtle nesting sites and shipwrecks from the Second World War Battle of the Coral Sea.

Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, established on 6 January 2009 and expanded on 25 September 2014, covers about 1,269,980 square kilometers around seven remote United States islands and atolls, from Baker Island to Wake Island. It is closed to commercial fishing and deep sea mining, and is managed jointly by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA.

Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument was created on 15 June 2006 and expanded more than fourfold on 26 August 2016 to approximately 582,578 square miles. It shelters more than 7,000 marine species, roughly a quarter of them found nowhere else, and it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2010.

Ross Sea Region Marine Protected Area ends the path at more than 1.5 million square kilometers. It was declared on 28 October 2016 by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources under an agreement signed by 24 countries and the European Union, and it was the largest protected area in the world at the time.