Together, the global eOceans® community is understanding and rebuilding many aspects of the ocean — protected areas, endangered and culturally valued species, blue economy. Learn more about these fields with links listed below.

MARINE PROTECTED AREAS

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMS) are needed to protect and restore the ocean — from climate change, biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, destructive fishing practices, etc. They need to perform. Here, we provide a list of papers to learn more about MPAs, MPA performance, methods for data collection and analysis, and other MPA related works.

**For clarity, we only include OPEN ACCESS papers here, but suggest using “Google Scholar” or other reputable search engines to find relevant studies.

Varied sampling methods are needed to evaluate MPA performance

“Correspondence among multiple methods provides confidence when measuring marine protected area effects for species and assemblages” — Journal of Applied Ecology (2023). READ PAPER

MPAs are not effective at preventing plastic (microplastic) pollution

“Microplastic contamination in seawater across global marine protected areas boundaries” — Environmental Pollution (2023). READ PAPER

MPAs are concentrated in national waters, despite the need to expand beyond national jurisdiction

“Marine protected areas in the 21st century: Current situation and trends” — Ocean & Coastal Management (2019). READ PAPER