Saving The Seas

As CEO of the Blue Marine Foundation, Clare Brook is tasked with a monumental challenge: trying to slow and effectively stop industrial overfishing on a worldwide scale. Blue Marine has been making headway. Over 1.5 million square miles of ocean are now protected—from Ascension Island, in the middle of the Atlantic (and a favorite nesting place of sea turtles), to St. Helena, off the coast of lower Africa. But there’s still much more work to be done. We caught up with Clare to learn more.

- Simon Murray

READ SOMEWHERE RECENTLY THAT 71 PERCENT OF THE EARTH IS MADE OF OCEANS, BUT ONLY 4 PERCENT IS PROTECTED. IS THAT STILL TRUE?

It’s now closer to six, which shows how rapidly we’re making headway in terms of getting governments to protect more and more of the ocean, which is exciting. When Blue Marine was founded in 2010, less than 1 percent was protected.

WHAT DOES THAT 6 PERCENT INCLUDE?

The main movers on this have been the U.S., France, and the U.K. These countries have overseas territories, and even the tiniest little island has an exclusive economic zone around it that extends out about 200 nautical miles. So, you’re talking areas nearly the size of France around each of these remote islands [including Pitcairn, Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan da Cunha].

These little scraps of territory around the world are a hangover of our imperial past. So we have huge amounts of ocean that is “ours,” that’s up for protection, if our governments are minded to do so.