With the High Seas Treaty coming into force in January, efforts to establish protected areas in the marine spaces that lie beyond countries’ jurisdiction are gaining momentum — including one off the coast of West Africa. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is taking the lead in designing the proposal that will be up for consideration at the first Conference of Parties for the High Seas Treaty. The meeting is scheduled to take place within a year of the treaty coming into effect. Covering almost half of the Earth’s surface, the high seas host tremendous levels of biodiversity, much of it underexplored. However, these areas are also difficult to police, making them vulnerable to all sorts of illegal and unregulated activities, including exploitative industrial trawling. The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction accord (BBNJ), commonly known as the High Seas Treaty, provides the framework to establish marine protected areas in waters beyond countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs). However, the institutions and mechanisms to operationalize the treaty are still being established. The area under consideration in West Africa includes the convergence zone of the colder Canary and warmer Guinea Currents, characterized by a strong upwelling and nutrient-rich waters. It is considered an ecologically or biologically significant marine area (EBSA) that stretches from Cape Verde and Senegal in the north to Nigeria and São Tomé and Príncipe in the south, according to ECOWAS representatives Mongabay spoke to. A hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata). Image ©️ Rod Sleath via iNaturalist. (CC BY-NC 4.0).…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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