{"id":10133,"date":"2019-08-12T23:03:52","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T23:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/marine-park-on-salas-y-gomez\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T01:02:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:02:55","slug":"marine-park-on-salas-y-gomez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/marine-park-on-salas-y-gomez\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine Park on Salas y G\u00f3mez"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Marine Park on \u201cSalas y G\u00f3mez\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/h1>\n

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The international conservation organization, Oceana, and the National Geographic Society scheduled an expedition to the Salas y G\u00f3mez Island in March of 2010.\u00a0\u00a0 The scientific team, with their guide, Michel Garc\u00eda, a diver from Easter Island, were able to record the underwater life that exists at depths of more than 100 meters (330 feet) with a submarine robot.\u00a0 At that time, the scientists were able to verify the presence of a wealth of life and that some species \u2013 such as sharks, lobsters, fish and algae \u2013 are notoriously more abundant than on Easter Island, only 415 km. (260 miles) away.<\/p>\n

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Both organizations, together with the Fisheries Commission of the Chilean Senate, made recommendations to President Sebasti\u00e1n Pi\u00f1era for the creation of a marine park of 150,000 km2<\/sup> (57,900 sq. miles) surrounding the Salas y G\u00f3mez Island, one of the most pristine areas still remaining in the ocean.\u00a0 With this park, 19.5% of the Easter Island marine ecosystem, of which Salas y G\u00f3mez is part, would be protected.\u00a0 In marine parks, the only activities which are permitted are observation and extraction for authorized scientific and research purposes in order to safeguard the diversity of species and their habitat.\u00a0 This opens possiblitites for tourism from Easter Island for diving and marine observation.\"\"
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The Salas y G\u00f3mez Island was discovered in 1793 by the Spanish sailor, Jos\u00e9 Salas, and annexed by Chile in 1808.\u00a0 It consists of two unihabited rocks with a land area of only 15 hectares (37 acres).\u00a0 Nesting on the island are 21 of the 150 species of marine birds found in Chile, including the Easter Island petrel, the white-throated swallow and the red-tailed tropicbird.\u00a0 Within its economic exclusion zone \u2013 the 200 nautical miles surrrounding the island \u2013 there are nearly 30 submarine seamounts where 170 species of fish have been identified.\u00a0 Among those we find the Nanue (gray chubb \u2013 kyphosus bigibbus), the Po`opo`o (trevally jackfish \u2013 pseudocaranx dentex), the Ruhi (black jackfish \u2013 caranx lugubris), the Mahito (surgeonfish \u2013 acanthurus leucopareius) and crustaceans siuch as Ura (lobster), the Rape Rape (Easter Island mitten lobster – parribacus perlatus), the Heke (octopus rapanuiensis) and many others.\u00a0 The massive presence of sharks is an indication that the area is rich in endemic animal life which also leads us to believe that there may well be a number of new species yet to be found.The island is already a nature sanctuary since 1976.\u00a0 Nonetheless, Chile has decided that it is better to declare the ecosystem a Marine Park or Reserve.\u00a0 According to Michel Garc\u00eda, this would be of great benefit for Easter Island.\u00a0 \u201cSalas y G\u00f3mez is a nursery for the same Rapa Nui ecosystem and this would be, additionally, a legal international weapon to control the foreign factory ships which we know are fishing without any controls around Salas y G\u00f3mez Island.\u00a0 The over-exploitation of the marine resources on Easter Island is serious.\u00a0 The closed seasons imposed by the National Fisheries Service are not respected.\u00a0 The Rapanui feel that they are the lords of their island and don\u2019t accept regulations.\u00a0 The closed season on lobster between November and April isn\u2019t respected by fishermen nor by the owners of hotels and restaurants.\u00a0 We shouldn\u2019t forget that Rapa Nui doesn\u2019t have any other reserve for flora or fauna than Salas y Gomez.\u00a0 According to some scientific studies (Atalante 2004), Rapa Nui is in an area with the lowest density of plankton of the entire Pacific Basin and, therefore, very poor in variety of species and marine life.\u00a0 As an example, there are only 65 families of fish registered for Easter Island compared with over 300 families that are found in Polynesia in general.\u00a0 Nonetheless, in spite of the limited variety in species, some are very abundant on the ocean floor.\"\"
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Due to natural catastrophes, such as the 1983-84 El Nino current, the Miritonu (Lobophora variegata) alga was completely eliminated and, with it, the Uhuhanga (parrot fish) and several other species.\u00a0 Between 1940 and 1960, fishing was sometimes done with dynamite in several parts of the Island (source, Jorge Edmunds-Rapahango), which meant the extinction of all the species that were near to the explosion.\u00a0 The recovery of the ecosystem has been very slow and incomplete.<\/p>\n

The increase in population and in tourism has increased fishing on all levels.\u00a0 The narrow coastal strip is not able to fulfill the requirements of development and the equilibrium has been broken.\u00a0 The dramatic decrease in species mentioned has been 100 to 1 in the last 25 years.\u00a0 Man is the principal cause of this situation.\u00a0 The future generations will demand their inheritance back.\u00a0 The Rapanui people themselves must stop the indiscriminate harvest of the marine flora and fauna and establish some Tapu, or prohibitions, in the breeding periods of the species.<\/p>\n

In mid-2011 a new expedition hopes to go again in order to get the biological information that is needed to design a general conservation plan.\u00a0 Alex Mu\u00f1oz, executive director of Oceana, noted that : \u201cOur committment is to continue the work of increasing the areas that are under protection.\u00a0 Presently only 2% of the world\u2019s oceans are protected and in 2012 this should increase to 10% of the economic exclusion zones established by the nations.\u201d <\/em>\"\"<\/p>\n

Featured Reports:<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marine Park on \u201cSalas y G\u00f3mez\u201d The international conservation organization, Oceana, and the National Geographic Society scheduled an expedition to the Salas y G\u00f3mez Island in March of 2010.\u00a0\u00a0 The scientific team, with their guide, Michel Garc\u00eda, a diver from Easter Island, were able to record the underwater life that exists at depths of more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-underwater-world","category-living-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}