Mongabay Series: Oceans

Malaysia gets its largest marine park

by Shreya Dasgupta on 13 June 2016

Malaysia has formally established its largest marine park — the Tun Mustapha Park — off Sabah Province in Borneo.
The park is the result of more than 13 years of negotiations between government authorities, international partners, local communities, and non-governmental organizations, including WWF-Malaysia.
The park will allow local communities and commercial fisheries to operate in designated regions in a bid to ensure “sustainable use of resources”.

Last week, Malaysia formally established its largest marine park — the Tun Mustapha Park — off Sabah Province in Borneo.

The park is the result of more than 13 years of negotiations between government authorities, international partners, local communities, and non-governmental organizations, including WWF-Malaysia. At nearly 1 million hectares, the Tun Mustapha Park includes more than 50 islands and islets spread across Kudat, Pitas and Kota Marudu districts.

The park aims to protect coral reefs, mangrove, seagrass and productive fishing grounds in the Coral Triangle bioregion — a rich marine area that is home to more than 3,000 species of fish and three-fourth of the world’s coral species. The Tun Mustapha park itself has more than 250 species of corals, according to the WWF. It also harbors dugongs, endangered green turtles, and more than 300 species of fish.

At nearly 1 million hectares, the Tun Mustapha Park includes coral reefs, mangrove, seagrass and productive fishing grounds spread across more than 50 islands and islets. Photo source: Pixabay, public domain. — At nearly 1 million hectares, the Tun Mustapha Park includes coral reefs, mangrove, seagrass and productive fishing grounds spread across more than 50 islands and islets. Photo source: Pixabay, Public domain.

The Tun Mustapha park is located in the Coral Triangle bioregion, an extremely biodiverse, roughly triangular region of tropical marine waters off the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. Photo by The Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries, and Food Security, Public Domain.

The region is currently threatened by overfishing, blast fishing (a destructive form of fishing that uses explosives to kill hundreds of fish at one go), as well as pollution.

The park will not ban fishing, though. Instead, it will allow local communities and commercial fisheries to operate in designated regions in a bid to ensure “sustainable use of resources”. This management approach is essential, according to WWF, because the area supports more than 80,000 people in coastal and island communities, “generating around 100 tonnes of fish catch each day”.

“The establishment of Tun Mustapha Park will boost the conservation and biodiversity of this uniquely rich natural environment,” Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International said in a statement. “This will also help ensure the sustainable management of the significant marine resources in the area that support jobs, livelihoods and food security. The park’s gazettement should act as a model and an inspiration for marine conservation in the Coral Triangle and worldwide”.