Steve Jones celebrates Papua New Guinea’s remarkable Bismarck Sea
Words and photographs by Steve Jones
Papua New Guinea plans to make more than 7,500 square kilometres of the Bismarck Sea a marine conservation zone – more than trebling the amount of ocean it protects. It is easy to see why. This remarkable stretch of sea, even by PNG’s standards, is extraordinary. A recent French survey found the sea to be home to more than 1,300 species of fish, including more than 130 species of shark and ray; a staggering 4,500 species of mollusc, 1,450 species of decapod (crabs, lobsters, shrimps and the like); 320 species of echinoderm and 400 species of hard corals.
This relatively small sea (it totals about 40,000 square kilometres) is open to the Pacific Ocean to the north and separated from the Solomon Sea to the south by the island of New Britain, and to the southeast by New Ireland. To the southwest lies the vast, mountainous barrier of the world’s second-largest island – New Guinea.
The sea is protected from the southeasterly trade winds and, crucially in recent years, from the worst impacts of over-heated seas flowing northwards and bleaching reefs in their wake. Compared to regions such as the Solomon Sea and the northern Great Barrier Reef, the Bismarck Sea has escaped the worst of the coral destruction caused by seas warmed following the climate disruption after the 2016 El Niño.
The Bismarck Sea is also fortunate that it has a relatively low level of population to sustain. Compared with other areas in the Coral Triangle, which stretches from this southeasterly extreme up through Indonesia and the Philippines, it has not been ravaged by overfishing or polluted by agricultural run-off.
One of the most serious threats to the delicate environmental balance of the Bismarck Sea has recently receded, with the Canadian deep-sea mining firm Nautilus going bust. The company had wanted to start the world’s first seafloor mining for gold, copper and silver in the Manus Basin right in the heart of the Bismarck Sea, despite vociferous environmental protests. However, after losing its 15 per cent stake in the mining project, the PNG government has turned its attention to preserving this unique resource rather than allowing its exploitation. At the Our Ocean Conference in Bali, it announced the new marine park, which is a big step in reaching its target of protecting 10 per cent of the nation’s territorial waters and coastlines by the year 2025.