DORSAL DE NASCA: PERU PLEDGES TO CREATE A HUGE NEW MARINE RESERVE... their positive quota for marine conservation

• In October, Peru’s environment minister pledged to make a proposed 50,000-square-kilometer (19,300-square-mile) marine protected area a reality by 2021.
• The proposed protected area, called the Dorsal de Nasca National Reserve, comprises part of a range of 93 submarine mountains that harbor more than 1,100 species, many of them endemic.
• If it is approved, it will bring the proportion of the country’s territorial waters that are protected from just 0.48% to 6.5%.
• While supporting the new proposed reserve, marine experts continue to push for the establishment of the Grau Tropical Marine Reserve in the country’s north, over pushback from the oil and gas industry.
Under the sea, jutting into the Pacific from the southern Peruvian department of Ica, rises a mountain range called Dorsal de Nasca. The 93 submarine 
mountains harbor more than 1,100 species, many of them endemic, and a section of the range has become the latest marine protected area proposed by the Peruvian government.
The country’s minister of the environment, Fabiola Muñoz, made a firm promise to designate more than 50,000 square kilometers (19,300 square miles) of this underwater mountain range as a protected natural area during the III Congress of Protected Natural Areas of Latin America and the 
Caribbean, held in Lima in mid-October 2019. The protected area, called Dorsal de Nasca National Reserve, would be located 140 km (76 nautical miles) off the Peruvian coast.
According to the proposed marine reserve’s constitutional documents, Dorsal de Nasca would allow Peru to jump from protecting just 0.48% of its territorial waters to 6.5%, carrying the country closer to its commitment to bring at least 10% of its ocean under some form of protection.
Protection would prevent the government from granting any marine concessions within the area. Trawling by large fishing vessels, which can damage underwater habitat, is already prohibited, but fishing by other methods would continue.

An underwater mountain range

Dorsal de Nasca will be the largest protected area and the first underwater mountain range to be protected in Peru, according to Alicia Kuroiwa, director of habitats and endangered species for the international marine conservation NGO Oceana in Peru. Kuroiwa was part of the team that prepared the reserve’s constitutional documents.

She drew a parallel between the Dorsal de Nasca and the Andes mountain ranges, saying that both act as highways for the movement of species. There is a sea lion that only lives on Easter Island, it never reaches the coast of Chile, but does reach Punta Marcona in Peru, because the mountain range helps to guide it to our coasts,” Kuroiwa told Mongabay Latam.

Southern species such as southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) and emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) have also appeared in Punta Marcona, located about 480 km (300 mi) northwest of the Chilean border. “These animals travel from south to north and when they find the mountain range they follow this path,” Kuroiwa said.

The Dorsal de Nasca ridge butts into another ridge, called Dorsal de Salas y Gómez. Together the two chains of volcanic underwater mountains extend for 2,900 km (1,570 nmi) off the coasts of Peru and Chile. Formed over approximately 30 million years, the mountains reach a depth of 4,000 meters (more than 13,000 feet).

Yuri Hooker, a biologist at the Marine Biology Laboratory of Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, said studies are still needed to really understand this marine area delineated by the mountains. “Potentially the area may have high biodiversity, but the truth is that not much is known about this place,” Hooker said.

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