Lead: Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara and Simone Panigada, Tethys Research Institute
Background
Marine mammals are a key component of the marine ecosystem. They live most of their lives in the water, preferring undisturbed natural environments and showing sensitivity to disturbance. Some species depend on shallow fishing grounds, nearshore warm waters and beaches to breed and calve; others spend their lives travelling the global ocean or diving to great depths to feed. Whales and dolphins in particular have complex social structures and behaviours passed from one generation to the next. Like most long-lived animals, they are slow growing, late to mature, and invest heavily in the upbringing of only a few offspring. This combination of characteristics renders them vulnerable to – and slow to recover from – sudden, unpredictable or prolonged disturbance to the marine environment.
Modelled on BirdLife International’s Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs), Important Marine Mammal Areas (IMMAs) are discrete portions of habitat, important to marine mammal species, that have the potential to be delineated and managed for conservation. The concept of IMMAs was developed by the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force in 2015 as a tool to help governments, intergovernmental organisations, conservation groups, industry and the public to prioritise conservation measures for marine mammals.
IMMAs are identified through a robust technical process centred around regional workshops that bring together scientists with large and robust datasets that can support scientifically agreed criteria. Data from EBSA descriptions provide a starting point for this process, augmented and enriched by local and regional expertise and knowledge. The outcomes of each workshop – a portfolio of candidate IMMAs – is then subjected to rigorous independent expert review, which provides consistency and validates whether proposed areas satisfactorily meet the IMMA criteria. The approved IMMAs are posted on the IMMA e-Atlas with accompanying information and shapefiles, which are freely available. The global IMMA layer can also be viewed on industry platforms like Proteus and Vanguard and alongside fishing and other data from Global Fishing Watch.
GOBI supported seven regional IMMA workshops during the period 2016-2023: Pacific Islands; North East Indian Ocean and South East Asian seas; Western Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea; Black Sea, Turkish Straits System and Caspian Seas; Australia, New Zealand and South East Indian Ocean; South East Tropical and Temperate Pacific Ocean; and South West Atlantic Ocean. Collectively, these workshops covered an ocean area of 198,000,000 km2 or 55% of the global ocean. These workshops identified 201 IMMAs, including habitat of 73 qualifying marine mammal species (34% of which have IUCN Threatened status), through the collective efforts of 205 workshop participants from 50 nations. To date, through additional funding sources, the IMMAs now number 280 and the examined ocean area is 80%.
All IMMAs recognised so far are available to view via the IMMA eAtlas and database.
The IMMA e-Atlas provides visualisation of the IMMA portfolio as well as access to information about individual sites. To date, there are 280 IMMAs identified across the global ocean. Map courtesy IUCN Joint SSC/WCPA Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force.
Above: scenes from IMMA workshops around the world
Following on from the regional IMMA workshops, four areas were selected for pilot actions: the Republic of Palau, the Andaman Islands in India, the Bazaruto Archipelago to Inhambane Bay area in Mozambique, and Karachi and the Indus River estuary in Pakistan. In each area, field visits by the GOBI IMMA team focused on working with local experts to raise awareness about local IMMAs, analyse pressures and threats to the resident marine mammal species, stimulate inclusive discussions on the most appropriate conservation tools or approaches to address the specific needs of the local IMMAs, and distil management options or recommendations. For example, interactions with government and civil society stakeholders during the team’s 2019 visit to Mozambique contributed to halting plans for hydrocarbon exploration and extraction activities in the prime habitat of the last remaining healthy dugong population of East Africa.
Impact and relevance
The importance of work on IMMAs was recognised by the UN Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) through a formal Resolution1 adopted at the 12th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CMS COP12) in 2017: Resolution 12.13 (“Important Marine Mammal Areas – IMMAs”), acknowledging the Important Marine Mammal Areas (IMMAs) criteria and identification process, and – among other things – requesting Parties and inviting all Range States, intergovernmental organisations and partners to identify specific areas where the identification of IMMAs could be particularly beneficial. IMMA identification efforts in the Black Sea region in 2021 was also recognised by the CMS ACCOBAMS agreement. IMMA information has also been provided to (and acknowledged by) the CBD and used by several national governments in marine planning processes – including the US Navy concerning the use of naval sonar.
Marine mammals are considered indicator species for the health of the ocean, as well as charismatic species that can help focus the conservation spotlight. The creation of a network of IMMAs represents a cost-effective approach to large-scale conservation of marine biodiversity and whole ecosystems, providing valuable lessons for other conservation initiatives and a model for similar processes to be established for identifying Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs) and Important Marine Turtle Areas (IMTAs).
1CMS Resolution 12.13 “Important Marine Mammal Areas – IMMAs”, adopted by the 12th Conference of Parties, Manila, October 2017. https://www.cms.int/en/document/important-marine-mammal-areas-immas-1
