Spain will expand its marine reserves and protect the vast nursery of sperm whales north of Menorca.

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced on Monday that Spain will expand its protected marine waters, a process that will include a new reserve northeast of the Balearic Islands to protect a sperm whale breeding area. Currently, nearly 21% of the country’s territorial waters are under some form of protection, which implies restrictions on certain activities to avoid impacts on the environment. With the announcement made by Sánchez, one of the 60 leaders who participated in the UN conference on oceans taking place in Nice (France), the percentage of protected waters will exceed 25%, thus reaching the goal set by the current Government for 2025.

Specifically, according to Sánchez, this new expansion process will bring Spain to a 25.7% level of protection for its waters. Additionally, the president highlighted Spain’s commitment at this summit to proactively halt the exploitation of minerals in the seabed: “We advocate for the implementation of a precautionary pause until a code regulating deep-sea mining exists.” A few hours earlier, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “the seabed cannot become a wild west.”

Sánchez’s announcement regarding the expansion of marine reserves will be realized on several fronts. On one hand, the Government will declare five new protected areas under the Natura 2000 Network. These areas are known as the Submarine Mountains of the Mallorca Channel; Submarine Mountains and pockmark field of the Seco de Palos; Tributary Canyon Systems of Capbretón; Banks and Gorges of the Alborán Sea; and Marine Space of the Central Catalan Coast. These five new spaces were already in the processing stage.

In addition, the announced approval in the Council of Ministers of the draft law for the National Park of the Sea of Calmas, on the island of El Hierro, and the initiation of processing in the coming months for a new protected marine area north of Menorca, in the Mediterranean, to preserve a breeding area for sperm whales will be added.

This last reserve is the newest of all. In March of this year, a group of scientists from the conservation organization Tursiops, specialized in cetaceans, presented a proposal to the Ministry of Ecological Transition to protect “the only confirmed breeding area in the western Mediterranean” for sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus), a fascinating and enormous marine mammal that is threatened. That proposal, reported by EL PAÍS, was based on the work of half a dozen scientists who documented the existence of this nursery of sperm whales. Researchers have recorded and captured drone footage since 2019 of up to 35 encounters in that specific area, and the vast majority involved social groups, primarily females with their calves.

The area northwest of Menorca is relatively calm at the moment, but these scientists are concerned about the potential impact of maritime traffic in the future. The “greatest risk” is a potential displacement of traffic routes precisely towards the north of Menorca due to restrictions in other nearby areas agreed upon a year and a half ago by the governments of France, Italy, Spain, Monaco, and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) specifically to protect cetaceans and other marine fauna. The problem is that, in the case of Spain, this international agreement mainly affects the strip between the Balearic Islands and the Peninsula, which is already protected by a declaration of AMP, but excludes the breeding area for sperm whales to the north and east of Menorca. Hence the importance of the new area proposed by Tursiops.

The proposal, once known, received broad political support. In early April, the Joint Commission on Insularity of the Congress and the Senate approved a non-legislative proposal urging the Government to declare this marine area as protected. The initiative was presented by the PSOE and received support from all parties present in the commission (34 votes in favor) except for the two representatives from Vox.

Sánchez’s announcement adds to others that have been made during the opening of the UN ocean conference taking place this week in Nice. “When we achieved a global moratorium on commercial whaling, whale populations recovered. When we protect marine areas, life returns,” summarized Guterres this Monday. “Today we have the opportunity to restore the ocean’s abundance: what was lost in one generation can be reborn in the span of another,” added the UN Secretary-General.

Plundering the Ocean

Guterres has lamented that humanity is “plundering” the ocean. He issued a warning that seemed directed towards the Trump Administration, though he did not name the president, who did not attend the summit and did not send a high-level delegation. “The seabed cannot become a wild west,” Guterres stated. The US president signed an executive order in April to promote mining in the seabed, including in international waters.

Environmentally protecting the high seas, that is, the areas of the ocean that do not belong to any state, is one of the pending issues in international diplomacy. In 2023, countries agreed on a treaty for the protection of the high seas, but two years later it still has not come into force. The Nice summit was set as the moment when this should happen, but so far the 60 ratifications required for it to take effect have not been gathered. As of this Monday, at the start of the summit, 31 countries had already submitted their instruments of ratification.

“I urge all delegations to ratify this agreement and welcome the momentum provided by the conference to promote its swift entry into force,” Guterres said. In the same vein, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also urged countries to join.

In his speech during the opening of this summit, French President Emmanuel Macron noted that there is already a commitment from more than sixty nations to ratify this treaty, including those that have done so and those that have clearly expressed their intention to do so, although it is expected to occur throughout the remainder of the year. In many cases, the issue is not one of will but of processing, as ratification must go through national parliaments. Macron, in his speech, also pointed at Trump when he stated that Greenland “is not for sale,” referring to the plans expressed by the Republican.