Costa Rica, Ecuador face swimway questions

As scientists learn more about the connections between undersea habitat in the eastern tropical Pacific, conservationists are pushing for transboundary protection of marine waters. (Photos by Max Bello, Blue Marine Foundation)

Efforts to protect migratory swimways that extend from one country’s waters to another’s have stirred growing interest in recent years, as global warming pushes ocean temperatures up and joins water pollution and overfishing to drive marine biodiversity down. In the eastern tropical Pacific, one such initiative has received particular attention—the creation of contiguous deepwater reserves to safeguard species that move between earlier-established marine-conservation areas around Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands and Costa Rica’s Cocos Island. The two new reserves—Costa Rica’s Bicentenario Marine Management Area, created in 2021, and Ecuador’s Hermandad Marine Reserve, established in 2022—occupy adjacent portions of their respective countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZ). In an EEZ, which extends 200 miles beyond baseline territorial waters, a nation has exclusive rights to natural resources, though other countries have the right to navigate or overfly the area. The connecting reserves cover part of a migratory swimway in order... Read more →