Marine Reserve just announced in Chile’s waters

Additionally, Chile is moving forward with a proposal to establish a massive marine park around Easter Island, located a few 2,500 miles west of Chile’s mainland.

In her speech earlier this week, Bachelet declared the formation of a 297,000 km2 Nazca-Desventuradas Marine Park surrounding the islands of San Ambrosio and San Félix, as well as a network of marine parks in the Juan Fernández Archipelago comprising over 13,000 km2.

Pending final approval by the island’s indigenous Rapa Nui people, fishing would be banned in a 243,630 square-mile area.

One of the largest marine reserves in the Americas was recently created in Chile, hundreds of miles off its coast.

The move, which is aimed at stifling illegal fishing operations, marks “an important step toward establishing the world’s first generation of great parks in the sea”, according to Joshua S. Reichert with the Pew Research Center. By contrast, the area surrounding the Desventuradas has been fished regularly, mostly for swordfish.

A few amounts of fishing will continue in an unprotected wedge-shaped area, which allows the MPA to take a unique shape.

The ocean “is like a bank account where everybody withdraws, but nobody makes a deposit”, says marine ecologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence Enric Sala. The areas will become the first national marine sanctuaries established in the past 15 years. “Unfortunately, that led to depletion of our marine resources”.

This National Geographic-produced video shows us only a handful of the incredible species that call the Desventuradas home, including fur seals, giant lobsters, octopi, sharks, and rays.

Many countries are still working on meeting the United Nations’ quota of protecting an average of 10 percent of the world’s oceans by 2020.