The UK is creating four marine protected areas by banning fishing around four remote British islands.

The ban on commercial fishing will take place in a million square kilometres of ocean around four islands in the Pacific and Atlantic. This area is full of endangered marine life – sharks, whales and turtles that desperately need our protection.

The ban will start immediately around Pitcairn in the south Pacific and St Helena in south Atlantic with an area of 840,000 sq km around Pitcairn island. The other bans are set to come in by 2019 around Ascension island in the south Atlantic and by 2020 in Tristan da Cunha in the south Atlantic.

This news has been unanimously welcomed by conservationists. These new protected areas will safeguard the vast array of marine life within these waters. With the recent news that President Obama has declared a massive marine protected zone in Hawaii, this is another great step forward in protecting the future of the world’s oceans.

Overfishing and human interference is having severely harmful effects and causing extinction for untold numbers of marine species around the world. Losing these important ecosystem contributors impacts heavily on the ecology of the whole ocean; future planning and designating these marine protected areas is an important part of addressing these incredibly important issues.