Biodiversity: Think big for marine conservation

Marine protected areas are key tools for conservation, but they have some serious shortcomings. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has called for these areas to cover 10% of each of the world's marine and coastal eco-regions by the end of 2020. Even this modest target is proving elusive. So far, less than 2% of the ocean has been designated as protected, and nearly all of these areas are in coastal and continental-shelf regions. This is partly the result of a lack of data from the open ocean, and partly because of pressures from various interest groups, which may resist the management of ocean areas with valuable resources.