An international team of marine scientists, including from The University of Western Australia, is urging Australia to support the closure of fishing on the high seas at a global scale.
The commentary, published in Nature, claims exploitation of the high seas risks doing irreversible damage to biodiversity, climate stability and ocean equity.
As world ocean specialists, including experts from UWA, and policymakers convene this week at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, the scientists are making a case for permanent protection of all international ocean waters from fishing, sea-bed mining, and oil and gas exploitation.
The authors urge global governments to act now to avoid severe consequences, rather than wait until the situation becomes irretrievable.
Encouraged by government subsidies, fishing in the high seas has intensified and depleted many fished species, causing serious collateral damage to wildlife and habitats, driving iconic and vulnerable species, such as some albatrosses, oceanic whitetip sharks and leatherback turtles, to become critically endangered, according to the authors.
Pressure is now mounting to fish at greater depths, despite very limited understanding of the structure and function of deep-sea ecosystems.
"Protecting the high seas from extractive uses would not interfere with international shipping, recreation, legitimate scientific research (including bioprospecting) or other non-consumptive uses," the co-authors say. "However, it would provide planet-wide benefits at a time of growing peril for the climate.
"We recognise that there is currently no clear path by which this proposal could be implemented. But it has a precedent in the way the world came together in the 1950s to protect the Antarctic continent. We should do it again for the high seas in support of all life on Earth."
Co-author and Wen Family Chair in Conservation Professor Jessica Meeuwig, from UWA's School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute, said the lessons from the high seas applied to Australia's Ocean Territory.
"We know that highly protected marine parks, in which extractive activities such as fishing and mining are excluded generate benefits for both conservation and our blue economy," Professor Meeuwig said.
"Not only do such marine parks protect biodiversity but can contribute to climate mitigation through blue carbon storage.
"While Australia claims it has protected more than 40 per cent of its ocean territory, in fact the number is closer to eight per cent of high levels of protection around mainland Australia.
"Much of Australia's marine parks remains open to destructive fishing activities such as trawling. We need to do better."
This year's Wen Family Chair in Conservation Public Lecture at UWA will feature Professor Ben Halpern from the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Halpern is an expert on marine protected areas and will discuss the promise and peril of the blue economy.
The lecture will be held on Wednesday 18 June at 6.30pm at The University Club auditorium theatre and registrations can be made here.
