The federal government recently created two marine protected areas in the Pacific region and has committed to increase ocean protection from one per cent to 10 by 2020. But will this be enough?

Canada has the longest coastline of any nation, but our country doesn’t end at its ocean shores. With a 200-nautical-mile economic zone and international obligations, Canada is responsible for almost three million square kilometres of ocean, an area roughly the size of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba combined.

Although that’s a big area, thinking of the ocean in square kilometres is just skimming the surface. The ocean isn’t just a cold, wet seascape blanketed by howling winds. Below the surface, life thrives throughout the water column, top to bottom, warm or cold, winter or summer.

Northern aquatic food webs are rich with creatures of all shapes and sizes, from tiny plankton, urchins and sea stars to fish, orcas and sea lions. That the world’s largest living creature ever, the blue whale, feeds on some of the smallest, plankton, is astonishing in itself. Yet the plankton thread in the food web doesn’t end in the whale’s stomach; whale poop is also a critical part of the marine food web, cycling nutrients from the surface to creatures at the bottom.

The way otters keep kelp forests healthy by eating sea urchins is one of myriad interconnected relationships in Canadian coastal waters. Although barnacles and clams live in a single location, some whales and fish travel thousands of kilometres within a single season. Salmon don’t even have the ocean as a boundary, swimming far inland to spawn.

How can we understand and manage such complex systems? Natural cycles in Canada’s coastal waters include currents, tides, upwellings, migrations and seasons. Trying to predict how multiple factors like pollution, industrial fishing, climate change, ocean acidification, glass sponge reefs, ships, rights and title claims, kayakers, recreational fishing lodges and renewable energy sites will interact with these cycles is becoming increasingly more complicated, and important, than ever. With all these uncertainties and complexities, how can we know if marine protected areas are effective?

To understand how creating a refuge works, let’s go back to a simple 1936 study of an “ecosystem.” It was a test tube with two microscopic single cell species, prey and predator. In that oversimplified ecosystem, the predatory species ate the prey, and then died because, without prey, they could not survive.

Putting material in the test tube so the prey could hide and multiply changed everything, creating a variety of unpredictable outcomes. However, one pattern emerged: It was far more likely that both prey and predator would survive.

Canada Has the Longest Coastline in the World. Guess How Much is Protected? https://t.co/OfKiHFvPun #bcpoli #cdnpoli #bcelxn17 #YVR #YYJ

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 10, 2017

Expanding the concept to marine protected areas, this simple experiment bodes well for one top predator (humans) and prey (fish). Even though science can’t predict whether protected areas will help specific stocks increase, evidence suggests they show promise as “nurseries” for fish and other ocean wildlife and can provide a buffer against our lack of understanding.

Canada’s two new Pacific marine protected areas shield magnificent, fragile glass sponge reefs near Haida Gwaii and important seabird nesting sites on the Scott Islands. Safeguards are in place to protect the glass sponge reefs and the countless species that use them for refuge. However, current protections for the area surrounding the Scott Islands are too vague to reduce threats to the millions of seabirds that depend on the forage area to breed and feed.

The federal government deserves credit for beginning to develop a network of marine protected areas. They’re an essential part of keeping ocean ecosystems healthy, but they must have meaningful safeguards. Protected areas are just one aspect of keeping coastal ecosystems healthy. Responsible stewardship also requires effective fisheries management, strong penalties for polluters and a global carbon emissions reduction.

With pollution, climate change and increased shipping and development along Canada’s coast, it’s more important than ever to reduce the risks to ecosystems that provide us with the fish we eat, the air we breathe and the bounty of nature we love. Marine protected areas on their own won’t be enough to do all that, but with strong regulations and safeguards, they’re one piece of the intricate, multidimensional puzzle.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Specialist Panos Grames.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image: Murchison and Faraday Islands, Gwaii Hanaas National Park Reserve, British Columbia, Canada. Photo: by David Will/Island Conservation via Flickr

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It’s been shocking to watch news of the Brexit vote in Britain, Donald Trump’s promise to build a wall between Mexico and the U.S. and the ongoing threats and violence against ethnic minorities in many parts of the world. I’m not a political or social scientist, but my training as a biologist gives me some insight.

When I began my career as a scientist, geneticists were starting to analyze the molecular properties of single genes within a species. When we started looking at highly evolved species such as fruit flies, we thought we would find that their genes had been honed through selection over time, so they would be relatively homogeneous within single species. Examining one kind of protein controlled by a specific gene, we expected to find them all pretty much the same. Instead, we learned there was a great deal of heterogeneity, or diversity. A gene specifying a protein could exist in a number of different states.

This is now called “genetic polymorphism” and is considered to be the very measure of a species’ health. Inbreeding or reduction of a species to a small number reduces genetic polymorphism and exposes harmful genes, thereby rendering the species more susceptible to sudden change. In other words, genetic polymorphism confers resilience by providing greater possibilities as conditions shift.

Within ecosystems, species diversity provides greater flexibility to adjust to disturbances. Around the planet, ecosystem diversity has enabled life to flourish under different conditions. Like nested Russian dolls, life seems to have been built on diversity within diversity of genes, species and ecosystems.

Over time, conditions on the planet have not remained static. In response to change, life has had to adapt or disappear. The sun is 30 per cent warmer today than it was when life arose four billion years ago. The atmosphere changed from oxygen-free to oxygen-rich after plants evolved. Continents have moved, collided and pulled apart. Oceans have filled and emptied. Mountains have risen up and worn down. Life spread from the oceans to land and into the air. Ice ages have punctuated warm periods. And all the while, life fluctuated and flourished because of the resilience conferred by diversity.

Human beings have added another level of diversity: culture. Cultural diversity has enabled our species to survive and flourish in regions as different as deserts and Arctic tundra, wetlands and steaming tropics, prairies and mountains.

Monoculture — the spreading of a single gene, species, ecosystem or idea — runs counter to the biological principle that diversity confers resilience. It creates vulnerability to change, especially sudden change. As a biologist, I believe we should encourage, spread, maintain and celebrate diversity. The drive to restrict immigration of people with different beliefs and the hostility to people of different ethnic, religious or cultural background are extremely dangerous.

In Canada, the apparently well-meant exhortation for Indigenous people to abandon their remote communities reflects the failure to see the enormous value offered by a sense of connection to place and accumulated cultural knowledge. As newcomers to these lands over the past five centuries, many of us lack the deep ties to place that are critical in a time of vast ecological change and degradation.

The United States is built on colonization and destruction of the diverse cultures that existed on this continent before European contact. That nation has evolved on the assumption that it’s a “melting pot,” where newcomers shed their identity of origin and blend with the dominant culture as Americans.

Similarly, Canada developed with a policy of growth while maintaining immigration dominated by a British majority. Under Pierre Trudeau’s government, Canada deliberately embraced the notion of the “cultural mosaic,” valuing diversity within society. I believe this is an exciting experiment in nation-building based on fundamental scientific truths. The challenge is to ensure that we can celebrate our diversity while recognizing our place as a country without elevating some groups above others.

From the microscopic level of genes to large-scale biological systems, and from natural ecosystems to human communities, diversity brings strength and resilience in the face of ever-changing conditions. In today’s world, that’s more important than ever. We must resist attempts to reduce diversity in all its forms.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image: David Suzuki by Kris Krug via Flickr

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