Grand challenges in marine conservation and sustainable use

Whether this is a result of the difficulty and additional expense of working in the marine environment, a lack of perceived interest by those working in terrestrial systems, or a lack of available funding is a matter of debate (Norse and Crowder, 2005; Richardson and Poloczanska, 2008), but recent data from the IUCN would suggest that lack of data is a major issue for accurate species and habitat assessments (IUCN, 2014). A closer look at the data however, shows that 25% of all marine species assessed are listed as Data Deficient (DD, meaning insufficient data to make an accurate assessment), in comparison to 12% of terrestrial species (and 17% of all species assessed). Adapting the existing IUCN Red List species criteria to assess marine ecosystems, Jackson (2008) has suggested that Coral Reefs and Estuaries and Coastal Seas should be listed as the most critically endangered marine ecosystems. Owing in part to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for countries to protect 10% of coastal and marine areas by 2020, we have recently seen an increase in the designation of large-scale marine protected areas (LSMPAs) that now make up 80% of MPAs world-wide (Leenhardt et al., 2013) and more recently the USA has proposed an expansion of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument that would make this one of, if not the, largest MPAs in the world.