General information
The Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean Marine Mammals is a vast marine protected area (WDPA ID: 365015) established in 2002, extending over 87,500 km2 of sea surface in a portion of the north-western Mediterranean Sea comprised between south-eastern France, Monaco, north-western Italy and northern Sardinia, and encompassing Corsica and the Tuscan Archipelago. The Sanctuary waters include the Ligurian Sea and parts of the Corsican and Tyrrhenian Seas, and contain the internal maritime (15%) and territorial waters (32%) of France, Monaco and Italy, as well as the adjacent high seas (53%).
It falls under the Specially Protected Areas of Mediterranean Importance (SPAMIs). Additionally, the General Direction for Land and Sea Protection of the Italian Ministry of the Environment, in the framework of the implementation of the ACCOBAMS Agreement (www.accobams.org) has funded a specific project to the International Whaling Commission, to assess the movements of fin whales in the Pelagos sanctuary. ACCOBAMS recognizes that MPAs can aid in ensuring a favourable conservation status of cetaceans within the Agreement area. The project aimed at deploying satellite tags on fin whales known to briefly appear in the waters surrounding the small Italian island of Lampedusa, in the Strait of Sicily, towards the end of winter (February-March 2015).
Biophysical Characteristics
Compared to the rest of the Mediterranean, this marine area is characterised by very high levels of offshore primary productivity, caused by the interplay of oceanographic, climatic and geomorphological factors. A dominant cyclonic current, flowing north along Corsica and Tuscany and thence hugging the coast of Liguria and mainland France in a westerly direction, creates a permanent frontal system which acts as a boundary between coastal and offshore waters. Intense biological activity is generated along this boundary by the dynamics of the water masses associated with the front. Such phenomena are seasonally and intermittently reinforced by vertical mixing and coastal upwellings, generated by the prevailing north-westerly wind (“mistral”), which lift up from the deep waters into the euphotic zone nutrients and organic substances contributed by rivers, most notably the Rhone. Consequent high levels of primary production, with chlorophyll concentrations exceeding 10g/m3, support a conspicuous biomass of highly diversified zooplankton fauna, including gelatinous macrozooplankton and swarming euphausiid crustaceans (krill), Meganyctiphanes norvegica. Zooplankton, in turn, attracts to the area a various levels of predators, mammals included.
Species of interest
The Sanctuary contains habitat suitable for the breeding and feeding needs of the entire complement of cetacean species regularly found in the Mediterranean Sea. The major cetaceans living in that area are the fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) and the striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba). Other important species in the area are sperm whales Physeter macrocephalus, Cuvier’s beaked whales Ziphius cavirostris, long-finned pilot whales Globicephala melas, Risso’s dolphins Grampus griseus, common bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus, and short-beaked common dolphins Delphinus delphis.
Two such species, fin whales and striped dolphins, numerically predominate in the Sanctuary, and accounted for over 80% of all cetacean sightings made during summer cruises conducted in the area between 1986 and 1989. About 3,500 fin whales are found in the western Mediterranean, most of which concentrate in the Corsican-Ligurian-Provençal Basin in summer to feed on krill, although whales can be observed there year-round. Striped dolphins are the most abundant cetaceans throughout the Mediterranean offshore waters; in the Sanctuary their numbers are 20,000-30,000, and accounted for 60% of all cetacean sightings in 1986-89 (data collected by the Tethys Research Institute).
Human activities
Such remarkable cetacean faunal diversity coexists in the Sanctuary with very high levels of human pressure. The greater part of the coastal areas bordering on the Sanctuary, particularly on the mainland, is heavily populated and disseminated with large and medium-sized coastal cities, ports of major commercial and military importance, and industrial areas. Furthermore, the entire Sanctuary coastal zone contains important tourist destinations, thereby subject to considerable added human pressure during the summer months.
Despite the establishment of the MPAs, the population of cetaceans in the Mediterranean keeps declining. The major threat towards the population of these cetaceans are human activities and environmental problems (e.g. ship strikes, fixed gear fishing, overfishing of forage, acoustic and microplastic pollution) many of which have been well recorded and documented (Coll et al., 2010, 2012). According to recent reports the decline of these species populations affects among others the impacts the local communities gain from tourism and the existence value of these species. For instance O’Connor et al. (2009) found that between 1998 and 2008 along with the cetacean population declines, the whale watching tourism has declined in some Mediterranean countries.
Overfishing, underwater noise, fisheries bycatch, plastic debris are among the major drivers that change the population of these species are either climatic (affecting mostly the species habitat) or those coming from the fishing industry. The presence of big fishing vessels causes deaths of the species’ being involved to boat strikes, they might be caught as fisheries bycatch or the overfishing might reduce their forage.
Recommended reading
Notarbartolo di Sciara G., Agardy T., Hyrenbach D., Scovazzi T., Van Klaveren P. 2008. The Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean marine mammals. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 18:367-391.
Notarbartolo di Sciara G., Hyrenbach D., Agardy T. 2007. The Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean marine mammals: case study. Available at http://ncep.amnh.org/
Coll M., Piroddi C., Albouy C., Ben Rais Lasram F., Cheung W.W.L., Christensen V., Karpouzi V.S., Guilhaumon F., Mouillot D., Paleczny M., Palomares M.L., Steenbeek J., Trujillo P., Watson R., & Pauly D. 2012. The Mediterranean Sea under siege: Spatial overlap between marine biodiversity, cumulative threats and marine reserves. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 21, 465–480.
Coll M., Piroddi C., Steenbeek J., Kaschner K., Ben Rais Lasram F., Aguzzi J., Ballesteros E., Bianchi C.N., Corbera J., Dailianis T., Danovaro R., Estrada M., Froglia C., Galil B.S., Gasol J.M., Gertwagen R., Gil J., Guilhaumon F., Kesner-Reyes K., Kitsos M.-S., Koukouras A., Lampadariou N., Laxamana E., López-Fé de la Cuadra C.M., Lotze H.K., Martin D., Mouillot D., Oro D., Raicevich S., Rius-Barile J., Saiz-Salinas J.I., San Vicente C., Somot S., Templado J., Turon X., Vafidis D., Villanueva R., & Voultsiadou E. 2010. The Biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea: Estimates, Patterns, and Threats. PLoS ONE, 5, e11842.
