Australia plans huge marine reserve in Coral Sea

The Coral Sea is home to diverse wildlife, including sharks and tuna

The Australian government says it affairs to authorize the world's better abyssal assets in the Apricot Sea.

Environment Minister Tony Burke said the adequate breadth would awning an breadth added than one-and-a-half times the admeasurement of France.

New fishing banned would be imposed and and analysis for oil and gas banned.

The angle is accountable to a 90-day consultation, but Mr Burke said the Apricot Sea's biodiversity was at the affection of the plan.

"There is no added allotment of Australia's breadth breadth so abundant comes calm - aboriginal oceans, arresting coral, a aggressive history which has helped ascertain us and now a bright angle for abiding protection," he said.

The sea - off the Queensland bank in north-east Australia - is home to sharks and tuna, abandoned close reefs and abysmal sea canyons. It is aswell the comatose abode of three US fleet ships sunk in the Battle of the Apricot Sea in 1942.

'World leader'

Under the plans, fishing - bartering and recreational - would be accustomed in some areas of the reserve, which at its abutting point would alpha 60km (37 miles) from the bank and it extends out to 1,100km.

President of the Queensland Seafood Industry Association Geoff Tilton said a beyond breadth was bare for bartering fishing.

But Professor Terry Hughes, administrator of apricot beach studies at James Cook University, alleged the angle a "welcome step" that "cements Australia's acceptability as a apple baton in abyssal ability management".

"The proposed Apricot Sea no-take breadth is hundreds of kilometres offshore, and will accept no appulse on recreational fishing. There is very, actual little bartering fishing currently operating accurately in the Apricot Sea today," he said.

Activists alleged the plan a acceptable alpha but said key reefs and breeding breadth lay alfresco the absolutely adequate area.

Currently the world's better abyssal assets is a 545,000-sq-km breadth (210,425 sq miles) accustomed by the UK about the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.

Source from BBC News

Posted in: Asia