Faced with the decline of life due to human activities, more than a hundred countries are pleading for the adoption of a common objective of 30% of land and seas protected by 2030. But Unesco warns: certain areas Marines now protected could become obsolete in the future.
In Shark Bay in Australia, off the Valdés Peninsula in Argentina, or in the heart of the Banc d’Arguin in Mauritania… more 18,000 marine areas are protected on the planet. But with the global rise in temperatures, the oceans are warming and the fish, supposed to be protected there, are migrating to cooler areas. ” There is quite a bit of research today that is beginning to show that species are escaping from the equators into waters that are colder or also in some cases deeper. », stresses Fanny Douvere, responsible for the marine program of Unesco.
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Participatory science
To adapt marine areas to this phenomenon, Unesco is launching a vast participatory science operation. On 25 sites protected by the UN agency, citizens, and in particular schoolchildren, will take environmental DNA samples in the coming months. In other words: they will collect the genetic traces left by fish and turtles in seawater. It’s mucus, waste that they leave in the water, it’s exactly the same as us humans, it’s traces that they leave in the water that allow us to look at the species. »
The thousands of samples will then be studied in the laboratory and this world map of marine species will be made available to everyone on a scientific platform.
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