The west coast of Vancouver Island in Canada, as an example, has all three attributes. It has a healthy amount of biodiversity. It also is very productive in terms of fish, and when these fish die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking their carbon with them, Worm told Ars.
The team identified which parcels were hot spots for one, two, or all three of these features. The paper shows that only 0.3 percent and 2.7 percent of the ocean have three or two of these factors, respectively. The researchers then developed an algorithm that allows them to maximize the benefits of each zone using marine protected areas. According to Worm, this research could help the world’s governments get the most out of their efforts to protect ecosystems in their waters and the ocean as a whole.
“In the end, we brought it all together to try to understand how the protection of any parcel of ocean space in the world would affect those three objectives: biodiversity, fisheries, and carbon,” Worm said.
The algorithm allows users to weigh the objectives however they like and then provides them with the optimal network to do so—the smallest area you would need to protect to fulfill those objectives.
Less space, more benefits
Hypothetically, if the world’s governments wanted to maximize for biodiversity, they would need a strategically located 21 percent of the ocean placed under marine protected areas. This would raise the average protection of endangered and critically endangered species from their current rates of 1.5 and 1.1 percent to 82 and 87 percent, respectively, the paper notes. This form of optimization would, coincidentally, protect 89 percent of at-risk carbon sequestering areas in the oceans.