The Spratly Islands: a marine park?

The Spratly Islands encompass a dense system of several hundred coral reefs in the most biodiverse of the world's seas. They serve as breeding grounds for a wide variety of organisms including sea turtles, birds, marine mammals, and tuna. A study of pelagic larval survival times and current patterns indicates that they may supply recruiting organisms for marine ecosystems throughout the South China Sea. They may be of growing importance in replenishing overharvested stocks which provide food and livelihood to coastal villagers in the Philippines, Taiwan, mainland China, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Strategic concerns and vague possibilities of hydrocarbon deposits have led each of these countries to station troops in the area, resulting in violent confrontations and environmental stress. Future oil drilling could have widespread impacts. A more sustainable-use strategy would be to freeze current claims on the islands and establish an international marine park. Such a park would rival the Great Barrier Marine Park in size, number of reefs and biodiversity, and could generate on the order of USD 1 billion annually from tourism. Carefully managed, the park would safeguard substantially-sized populations of tens of thousands of species, and help to ensure a steady supply of recruits to regional fisheries.