Workshop on Important Marine Mammal Areas in the South Pacific

The IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force invited 23 marine mammal researchers and other experts from 14 Pacific countries to Apia, Samoa, for the second in a series of regional Important Marine Mammal Area (IMMA) workshops, 27-31 March 2017. This followed the first IMMA workshop in the Mediterranean in October 2016 sponsored by the MAVA Foundation.

The South Pacific IMMA workshop, sponsored as part of the Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative through the German government’s International Climate Initiative (GOBI-IKI), recommended a preliminary total of 29 candidate IMMAs (cIMMAs) and 16 areas of interest (AoI). These will now go to an independent review panel.

The Samoa workshop was hosted and facilitated by the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP). The initial results were announced by the Task Force members attending the “Whales in a Changing Ocean” conference in Tonga, 4-6 April. This event, as well as the IMMA workshop, formed part of the “Year of the Whale” celebrations in the South Pacific organized by SPREP and the countries of the South Pacific.

The region covered by this latest IMMA workshop was vast—from the Hawaiian archipelago in the northern hemisphere to the network of island states including Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Niue, Tonga, Fiji, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia, among others. Various cIMMAs were mapped for humpback whales, sperm whales, spinner dolphins, pygmy and dwarf sperm whales, Risso’s dolphins, Cuvier’s beaked whales and rough-toothed dolphins, as well as dugongs.

For more information, go to https://www.marinemammalhabitat.org/second-imma-workshop-held-samoa-helps-celebrate-year-whale-south-pacific/