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Argentina Creates Two Massive Marine Parks

The Government of Argentina has created two massive, offshore marine parks in the southwest Atlantic that will help protect the diverse marine life of the Patagonian Sea.

Yaganes and Namuncurá-Burdwood Bank II now protect habitat and critical feeding grounds for penguins, sea lions, fur seals, sharks and rays, cold-water corals, mollusks, sponges, and many other marine species found nowhere else on Earth.

Both are located in a zone of transition between temperate and sub-Antarctic waters. Cold-water currents meeting the submerged banks rising up from deeper waters create highly productivemarine environments that, in turn, support enormous biodiversity. The new marine parks cover a combined area of approximately 85,000 square kilometers (more than 32,000 square miles).

“Argentina’s new marine parks are a significant step toward the preservation of the ocean and the diversity of ocean-dependent species in the Patagonian Sea,” said Dr. Claudio Campagna, Director of WCS’s Patagonian Sea and Sky Project and President of the Forum for the Conservation of the Patagonian Sea. “These parks will permit marine wildlife to pursue their life cycles undisturbed.”