Protected Areas
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Increase ecologically connected hectares with enhanced protected status
Improving
Gökova Bay to Cape Gelidonya
Türkiye
Problem: The Mediterranean basin is vulnerable to habitat and species loss. Pressures include global sea temperature rise from climate change, an increasing number of invasive species, unregulated fishing and unsustainable tourism.
Action: AKD is working to expand the number and size of protected areas along the coastline, to facilitate the recovery of fish populations and trophic webs, and contribute to ecosystem and seascape-scale recovery.
Indicator: Increasing the area officially declared with enhanced protection by the government is an indicator of institutional progress towards marine conservation, but also an indirect measure of ecological function through increasing connectivity.
Methods
The area (hectares) of No-Fishing Zones (NFZs) and Fisheries Restricted Areas (FRAs) was described and quantified using maps from Turkish government designations, using GIS software.
Results
In total, 47,735 ha was under protection as Fisheries Restricted Areas (no trawling, no purse seining) and/or No Fishing Zones (no amateur fishing, no professional fishing) in 2019 within the project area, between Gökova Bay and Kaş. This increased to 67,079 ha under protection in FRAs and NFZs during the ELSP-funding period (Fig.s 1 & 2).
This additional 19,344 ha protected represents an increase of 41%. Of this additional area, 17,577 ha were FRAs (no purse seining) and 1,767 ha were NFZs (no professional fishing).
Figure 1: Increase in area protected during the project period.
Interpretation
The results highlight significant advancements in enhancing marine ecosystem protection in south west Türkiye. In August 2020, additional designations were gazetted by the Turkish Government following significant lobbying efforts and support from AKD. During the project there were also minor boundary adjustments to the MPAs – for example in September 2022, following AKD’s efforts to advocate for NFZs to include bans on amateur fishing, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries announced the change in regulations to include the ban of amateur fishing, including for NFZs in Datça-Bozburun and Kaş while at the same time minor reductions were made. This included removing one NFZ and opening the area to small-scale fishing, important for local livelihoods.
Lessons learned
A connectivity metric was originally planned to assess the ecological connectivity of existing protected areas, understand seagrass overlap within NFZs and to inform future NFZ and FRA proposals. However, attempts at mapping seagrass did not produce sufficiently accurate or high-resolution results to carry this out. This reflects the fact that remote sensing seagrass mapping and marine connectivity assessment both remain notoriously difficult to evidence in an affordable, reliable way at scale.
Next steps
Since the designation of these additional protected areas, AKD continue to focus efforts on consolidating MPA implementation and management in an area that already spans over 500 km of coastline, due to the importance of robust enforcement for MPA effectiveness.
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