Boat International - February 2016

Highly commended

Douglas J McCauley, Malin L Pinsky, Stephen R Palumbi,

James A Estes, Francis H Joyce, Robert R Warner

For – their paper “Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean”,

January 2015. Marine scientists from the University of California,Stanford University

and the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, New Jersey,

compared loss of marine animal populations with endangered terrestrial species

and found that marine fauna are generally in better condition than terrestrial fauna.

They conclude that, with careful stewardship, the rehabilitation of affected marine

animal populations remains possible

Highly commended
M Aaron MacNeil, Nicholas AJ Graham, Joshua E Cinner, Shaun K Wilson,
Ivor D Williams, Joseph Maina, Steven Newman, Alan M Friedlander, Stacy Jupiter,
Nicholas VC Polunin and Tim R McClanahan
For – their paper “Recovery potential of the world’s coral reef fishes”, February 2015.
Published in the journalNature, researchers from Australia, the UK and the US
examined more than 800 reefs in 64 locations around the world and found that
83 per cent of fished reefs now have less than half the number of fish they were
expected to have. Their findings have been used to develop the first
benchmarks for the recovery potential of fished reefs

O

f the 5,600 or so species of animal protected by

the Convention on International Trade in

EndangeredSpeciesofWildFaunaandFlora,

known morecommonlyasCITES,onlyjustover100arefish.

Two are species of manta ray:Manta birostris,whichcan

grow to be eight metres wide; and the smaller reef manta ray,

Manta alfredi. Their protection is, in most part, thanks to

petitioning by the US-based Marine Megafauna Foundation,

founded by the marine biologist Dr Andrea Marshall, and

the Manta Trust, founded by the British-born marine

biologist Guy Stevens.

Marshall ’s research team has worked for years to

highlight the vulnerability of these animals: their low

reproductive rates, small population sizes and quick

population collapses. Establishing the first global online

database, called Manta Matcher, enabled scuba divers

around the world to report encounters with mantas and post

identification photographs, which allowed researchers to

track their movements and lifespans.

Combiningthis“citizenscience”collecteddatawith

information from advanced satellite tags, researchers were

able to show how far and often these rays migrate into

unprotected waters – further evidence of their grave situation.

This information was used in recent years to list both species

of manta on the appendices of the Convention of Migratory

Species, but it was a listing on CITES that was the critical step

needed to endtheunregulatedtradeinthesespeciestoChina.

“As conservation biologists, all we can hope for is that

ourresearchhasatangibleimpactonconservation,”

Marshall says. “The CITES listing was the culmination

of a decade of hard work to gain more protection for

theseincrediblespecies.Itwasthesinglemostimportant

conservation win for manta rays in history and we are

overjoyed by the achievement.”

“It was a wonderful win to put manta rays on the CITES

list,” says Professor Callum Roberts, one of the judges of

this year’s Ocean Awards. “They made the case cogently and

very convincingly that exploitation of manta rays was not

sustainable and would endanger them with extinction.”

“There were two areas that needed to be tackled,”

Marshall explains. “My team did the research and field work

behind the ecology, the migrations, the biological detail and

thethreatthatmantasfaceasaspecies,whileGuy’steam

reallyfocusedontheAsiantrade,whatitwasworth, the

fisheriessideofthings.”

Stevensadds:“MantagillplatesareusedinChinese

medicineandthetradeinthatiscausingtheseanimals to

declineincertainareas.ByhavingthemlistedonCITES,

we can regulate that trade and hopefully stop it.

“In the grand scheme of things manta rays aren’t worth

a huge amount to the nations that are fishing for them,” he

continues. “If you’re going to throw a bone to the conservation

world, giving them manta rays is not a particularly painful

thing to do in terms of economic loss.” It terms of its value to

the marine environment, and the world as a whole, though,

this move to conserve manta populations is immeasurable.

Winner – Science*

DR ANDREA MARSHALL

&GUYSTEVENS

Marine biologists

For – research that led to the listing of reef mantas on the Convention of Migratory

SpeciesandtheConventiononInternationalTradeinEndangeredSpecies

THE OCEAN AWARDS 2016

*Criteria – the scientific work or paper that made the most original, important

or insightful contribution to ocean conservation in the past year

http://www.boatinternational.com | February 2016