The Largest Protected Water on Earth

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Getting twenty five governments to agree on anything is hard; getting them to agree to give up fishing rights over more than a million square kilometers of ocean took even longer. Negotiations over a Ross Sea marine protected area ran for years inside the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources before a breakthrough finally came on 28 October 2016: an agreement among 24 countries and the European Union that took effect the following December, covering roughly 1.55 million square kilometers, with about 1.12 million square kilometers closed entirely to commercial fishing. Scientists studying the region had lobbied for the designation for years, calling the Ross Sea one of the last large marine ecosystems on Earth still close to untouched, home to Antarctic toothfish, orcas, minke whales and enormous colonies of Adelie and emperor penguins. The protection is not permanent: it runs for 35 years and will lapse in 2051 unless the same commission renews it.