Huge Marine Sanctuary Created In South Atlantic

A tiny island community just made a vast contribution to protecting ocean biodiversity.

- Stuart Blackman

The citizens of Tristan da Cunha – the most remote inhabited islands on Earth – have banned fishing and mining in their waters, creating the largest notake zone in the Atlantic and the fourth largest worldwide.

The volcanic archipelago, a UK dependent territory 2,400km west of Cape Town, with a population of fewer than 300, has designated nearly 700,000km² of sovereign waters (about three times the land area of the UK) a Marine Protected Area.