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Why Nobody Can Name a Marine Protected Area · How To Protect The Ocean

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  A few years ago, an aquarium in South Africa asked its visitors
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  a pretty simple question: Can you name one marine protected area?
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  And these were people who had spent their day off looking at
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  fish, as you do in an aquarium.
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  And a lot of them came up blank.
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  They just couldn't name that MPA.
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  But some of them named the aquarium.
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  And that blank space is one of the biggest threats that MPAs face.
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  And we're gonna talk about why that is on this episode of the
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  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  And I wanna ask you a question.
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  Name one marine protected area in your country.
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  Go.
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  Go ahead.
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  I'll wait Nothing?
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  That's okay.
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  You're in good company.
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  Most people can't name a single MPA.
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  And a place that nobody can name is a place that nobody notices when
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  these MPAs get weakened, shrunk, or even quietly opened back up.
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  And by the end of this episode, you'll be able to name at least one,
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  and you'll know why that matters to you personally, and you'll have a
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  five-minute task that changes how you look at your own coastline.
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  Hey, everybody.
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  Welcome back to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, marine biologist and science communicator,
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  here to talk about all ocean news, ocean science, and ocean conservation.
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  And this week, we're gonna be talking about how we communicate the ocean,
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  and why some of the most important tools in conservation are the
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  ones people know the least about.
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  So let's start with why you can't name an MPA, because it's not your fault.
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  On land, protected areas have gates.
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  You can go visit them.
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  They have signs, parking lots, gift shops, postcards.
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  You can picture, like, Banff or Yellowstone or Kruger National
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  Park because you've seen photos of them and you know of them,
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  you've known about them your whole life.
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  And you know there's a line, like, an actual boundary, 'cause you know you've
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  actually crossed it or not, you have this physical picture in your mind.
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  Now, in the ocean, there's no gate.
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  The boundary's a set of coordinates, so
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  It's just an imaginary line.
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  And you can float right over on a paddleboard and never
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  know that you're in it.
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  And when conservation people talk about them, like myself, we use
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  words like representative network and biodiversity connectivity.
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  These are all the different terms and they're accurate, but they also make
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  people's eyes just kinda glaze over, 'cause it's a lot of jargon for them.
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  And it's all jargon for you, I imagine.
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  I can't even imagine that, Like, now compare that to an orca or a humpback or
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  a great white, and then you can put a face on those 'cause you know what they are.
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  But an MPA is harder.
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  A marine protected area is harder.
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  It's a place, And we've done a bad job introducing people to that place.
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  And I'll own that.
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  As a marine biologist, like, I get it.
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  I've spent more than 15 years communicating ocean science, and I
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  had to stop and think when I asked myself to name MPAs in my own country.
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  So, like, the thing is, is like how deep does all this go?
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  Like, the best example I found comes from an aquarium in South Africa, And
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  it surprised even the people who work there Now picture a public aquarium
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  on the coast of Durban, South Africa.
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  Sharks circling in huge tanks.
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  We get rays gliding past the glass, kids pressing their faces against it,
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  and just loving what they're seeing.
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  And the team there wanted to know one thing.
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  Their visitors clearly like the ocean.
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  They always saw the sharks, and they saw the fish and everything.
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  They paid money and given up their day to come see all the different exhibits.
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  But how much of these visitors know about the places that protect the
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  ocean, like the marine protected areas?
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  So they started asking people, "What do you think about marine protected areas?
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  Do you support them?" And then the simplest question
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  of all, "Can you name one?"
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  And most people couldn't do it, and some people who did give
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  an answer like an aquarium.
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  That's the protected area.
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  That's what they think are protected.
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  Now think about that for a second, They thought the aquarium
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  was the marine protected area.
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  And that's not like to say that they don't know what they're talking about or
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  they're not smart or anything like that.
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  This is just what people think.
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  And it's good thing to know.
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  And honestly, like when you think about it, it makes sense.
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  For a lot of visitors, the aquarium was the one place they'd ever
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  seen ocean life being protected.
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  You have big walls, clean water, people looking at the animals, And to be honest,
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  that's what protection looks like to them.
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  So I get it.
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  And what's interesting too is, like, the same team that heard kids walk
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  up to the main tank and ask where the switch was to change the channel,
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  they thought it was a giant TV.
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  Other visitors want to know how the staff had stopped the waves.
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  That aquarium learned something every communicator needs to hear,
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  that people you're talking to are seeing the world through completely
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  different glasses than you are.
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  And if you start the, "Support our new representative MPA network," you've lost
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  them already, even before you started.
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  So if you came up blank with the naming of the MPA, you're standing exactly
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  where most people stand, and this is why.
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  So when a public doesn't know a place exists, like an MPA, like the
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  decisions about that place happen in rooms like the public never sees.
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  It usually happens in like workshops where you're in a hotel conference
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  room, or you're in a room anywhere.
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  Like you're in a government building, wherever you are.
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  Industries that want access to the area show up to every single meeting.
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  They know where to go.
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  The fish, the corals, and the people who depend on them mostly don't.
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  they're not there for that kind of information session.
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  So South Africa lived through this
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  And how they got out of it is the reason I can tell you this story with a happy
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  ending Back in 2004, South Africa ran a national check on its biodiversity.
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  It found out that the country's offshore ecosystem were the least
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  protected of anything that they had ever had on land or at sea.
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  So scientists got to work.
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  They said, "All right, we're gonna figure this out." Starting in 2006,
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  researchers at the South African National Biodiversity Institute spent
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  years mapping where new protected areas should go, which canyons, which reefs,
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  which nursery grounds mattered the most.
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  Then came the consultations, years of them.
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  That always takes the longest, Commercial fishing, oil and gas exploration,
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  mining, tourism, coastal communities, everyone with a stake got a seat.
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  And in 2014, the government finally backed the plan.
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  in October 2018, cabinet approved a network of 20 new
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  MPAs, and then they waited.
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  The plan sat on a desk while the competing interests just kept talking.
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  And at a point, South Africa protected 0.4% of the ocean around
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  its mainland, less than half of 1%.
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  On May 24th, 2019, the wait was over.
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  All 20 were officially declared, and protection jumped from 0.4% to
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  5.4% of South Africa's ocean area.
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  That network gives at least some protection to 90% of the
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  country's marine habitat types.
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  That means there are, whatever you see around the coastline, 90% of it
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  fit within those reefs, So you have a proportion, a representation of
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  what is on the coast of South Africa.
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  Now, the people who fought for those 20 places realized something during
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  the long wait, that scientists had done the work, the consultations were done,
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  but what was missing was the public.
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  Hardly anyone outside the conservation world knew about these places.
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  And which meant, like, hardly anyone was making noise for them.
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  And this is not new.
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  This is happening all over the world.
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  So they decided to change that in South Africa.
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  And what they were able to do in South Africa can actually be used other
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  places, including where you're living.
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  The first move was a name change, at least in spirit.
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  South Africans grew up with game reserves, so everyone knows what a game reserve is.
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  So communicators started calling MPAs nature reserves of the sea.
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  So you take something people already understand and walk them
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  one step over to something new.
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  The second move was even bigger.
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  For years, MPAs have been sold on what they do for nature, biodiversity,
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  habitats, climate resilience.
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  All that is true.
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  They still do that.
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  But in a country facing serious economic challenges, nobody had clearly
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  explained what MPAs do for the people.
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  So more fish spilling over into fishing grounds, tourism jobs, coastlines
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  that hold up better in storms.
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  Once you say all that out loud to the people, the MPA becomes
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  something that's on your side.
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  And I think this is something we do as communicators all the time in science.
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  We think about the science.
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  The science is the hero.
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  The science is not the hero.
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  The protection is not the hero.
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  The people are the hero.
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  So how are they going to connect with this MPA if it doesn't relate to them?
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  The people are the hero.
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  You want them to connect, you have to make it important to them.
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  And there was one tick that worked better than almost anything else.
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  When the aquarium built an exhibit about the new MPAs, the piece the visitors
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  connected most was a simple map.
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  Coastal towns with the protected areas marked was right beside them.
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  People would walk up.
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  So they had coastal towns with the protected areas marked right beside them.
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  So people would walk up, find their town, and say, "Hey, that one's near me. That's
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  kinda cool." That's the whole game.
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  Make it near me.
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  Make it near the hero of the story.
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  And that idea of Near Me grew into something much bigger than one
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  exhibit, and it all started with a phone call to a handful of friends.
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  We all know there's a day for everything, right?
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  So Ocean Day, Rhino Day, Zebra Day.
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  And somebody at the aquarium looked up at the crowded calendar and thought, "Why not
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  have a day for marine protected areas?"
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  So she called six to eight friends and said, "Let's do MPA Day." Every
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  one of them asked the same thing, "What's MPA Day?" And her answer was
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  basically, "I'm not totally sure yet.
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  Let's figure that out together." So they pulled together, like, two digital
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  agencies, a traditional communications company, a few conservation groups, and
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  the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town.
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  They picked August 1st as the day.
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  So the first MPA Day happened in 2021, August 1st, 2021, in
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  the middle of the lockdown.
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  So it was a virtual tour, not exactly a, a perfect dream launch.
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  Then it started to spread.
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  In 2024, Mission Blue, Sylvia Earle's organization, brought its
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  network of hope spots on the board.
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  And the European project called the Protect Baltic, they also joined.
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  MPA Day went global.
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  By 2025, more than 80 events were planned across 25 countries with 92 partners.
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  More than 100 activities actually happened.
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  And in 2026, it was bigger again, and it's now officially endorsed as the
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  United Nations Ocean Decade activity.
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  So individuals, schools, small community groups, big NGOs, MPA
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  managers hosting celebrations inside their own protected areas, governments,
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  even businesses, all from a day that, at the start, nobody could really
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  explain what it was gonna be about.
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  Let me practice what I'm preaching and name a marine protected area for you.
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  Off the coast of Nova Scotia, about 200 kilometers out near Sable Island,
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  there's a place called The Gully.
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  It's an enormous underwater canyon,
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  one of the largest on the East Coast of North America, and Canada made
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  it a marine protected area in 2004.
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  And in fact, I was actually out in Nova Scotia in 2004, so it's got a little
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  bit of a personal fix to me, and I remember when it was actually designated.
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  It's home to northern bottlenose whales, deep-diving whales that can stay down
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  for over an hour, plus cold water corals that can live for centuries.
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  Notice what just happened.
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  Like, you got a giant canyon and whales that hold their breath for
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  over an hour, and that's how policy becomes a place you can picture.
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  So here's what I want you to do this week.
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  Find the marine protected area that's closest to where you live, and
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  learn one species that lives in it.
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  And that's it.
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  If you're in Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has a map
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  of marine protected areas.
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  In the US, NOAA keeps an MPA inventory.
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  Now, anywhere around the world, go to protectedplanet.net
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  and zoom in on the coastline.
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  And if you live inland, pick the closest coast and use that one when
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  you visit on your next vacation.
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  Then tell me what you found.
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  Drop it in Spotify comments or send me a DM on Instagram,
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  LinkedIn, or wherever you hang out.
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  I want to build a list of these places named by you.
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  I want this to be like a fun community thing that we do as a podcast community,
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  This is what we're all supposed to do.
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  I start the conversation, you continue it.
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  So I'd love to hear what the nearest MPA is towards you.
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  I just think a lot of times when we, learn about MPAs or we hear about MPAs, it's
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  just a fictional thing that's happened.
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  But it's, actual real place.
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  Fake boundaries, like invisible boundaries, but it's a real place, and
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  it's great that we get to know what's in there and what's being protected.
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  Because not a lot of people will know about this, and we hear marine protected
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  area and nobody has that connection to it.
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  And I think it's important to know what's in there so that we can have that
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  connection and we care more about it.
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  When I watched that movie Ocean, that was narrated by Sir David
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  Attenborough, it was a fantastic movie.
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  When they showed all the productivity in the UK waters on the ground,
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  all that purple, and there's like little anemones and everything.
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  It was just full of productivity, it was full of life.
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  And that people, like, got into it.
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  They're like, "Whoa, I never knew this happened." And then they had the trawl
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  come through and take it all out.
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  And you just sat there like, "Oh my Lord, how did this happen? How
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  did we let this happen?" And there was like, it felt like a chunk was
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  taken out of my heart, to be honest.
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  I know that sounds dramatic, but it did.
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  But we cared about it.
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  It doesn't take long.
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  That was maybe a five-minute segment to get people interested and to
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  care about what's in the bottom of the ocean, because it's the wonder,
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  it's the awe, it's the mystery.
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  And then when you find it, you're like, "Whoa, this is really cool stuff."
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  Same thing with the deep sea, same thing with every part of the ocean.
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  There's some really cool things in there that we can really
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  understand and fall in love with.
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  And until you find out what's there, you're not gonna remember
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  the MPAs that you want to name.
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  You're really not.
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  And so I think it's important that we start to name them
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  and understand what is inside.
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  Now, that's the episode for today, but tomorrow we're gonna look at what these
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  places actually do when things go wrong.
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  So a reef in the middle of the Pacific bleached white for more than six months.
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  And what came back from that surprised scientists who watched it happen.
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  So you don't wanna miss tomorrow's episode.
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  Hit that follow button on your favorite podcast app.
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  And I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
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  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
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  Have a great day.
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  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.