Greece to Expand Protected Waters, End Bottom Trawling
Greece plans to create two large marine parks and end bottom trawling, it announced at an international conference on the protecting the world’s oceans. It also aims to cut the volume of plastic waste flowing into Greek waters in half.
“The ocean has paid a heavy price for its service to humankind. It has been a vital source of life and livelihood,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotaki said Tuesday at the Our Ocean Conference in Athens. “We have not been kind to it in return.”
One new marine park will cover 3,000 square miles of the Aegean sea, while the other will cover more than 5,000 square miles of the Ionian Sea. Together, the two parks will span an area larger than New Jersey. In total, Greece plans to safeguard some 30 percent of its waters, putting the country on track to meet an international goal of protecting 30 percent of land and sea.
Greece will also end bottom trawling in protected waters by 2030, using drones, satellites, and artificial intelligence to patrol these areas. Bottom trawling, the practice of dragging heavy fishing nets across the ocean floor, is not only disastrous for sea life, but also stirs up buried carbon. By one estimate, bottom trawling unleashes as much carbon dioxide globally as air travel.
Notably, Greece has not afforded protections for the whole of the Hellenic Trench, the deepest stretch of the Mediterranean Sea, where sperm whales give birth and raise their calves. Campaigners have railed against seismic exploration in the trench, which endangers marine life.
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