Robbing a bank
when no one's looking
he Saya de Malha Bank has been called the world’s largest invisible island, because it is a massive plateau, in some spots barely hidden under 30 feet of water, offering safe haven to an unprecedented biodiversity of seagrass habitats for turtles and breeding grounds for sharks and humpback and blue whales.
Researchers say that the bank is one of the least scientifically studied areas of the planet, partly because of its remoteness. The area’s unpredictable depths have also meant that over the centuries, merchant ships and explorers tended to avoid these waters. It has long been the type of fantastical realm so uncharted that on the old maps, it would be designated “Here Be Monsters.” More recently, though, the bank is traversed by a diverse cast of characters, including shark finners, bottom trawlers, seabed miners, stranded fishers, starving crews, wealthy yachters, and libertarian seasteaders.
Seagrasses are frequently overlooked because they are rare, estimated to cover only 0.01 percent of the ocean floor. “They are the forgotten ecosystem,” says Ronald Jumeau, the Seychelles ambassador for climate change. Nevertheless, seagrasses are far less protected than other offshore areas. Only 26 percent of recorded seagrass meadows fall within marine protected areas, compared with 40 percent of coral reefs and 43 percent of the world’s mangroves.
Directed by Ben Blankenship; Executive Producer: Ian Urbina
The most important place on earth that virtually no one has ever heard of is called the Saya de Malha Bank.
By Ian Urbina, Maya Martin, Susan Ryan, Joe Galvin, and Austin Brush
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Vanishing protectors and predators
Far away from human rights
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Licensetoswill
Often described as the lungs of the ocean, seagrasses capture about a fifth of all its carbon, and they are home to vast biodiversity. Thousands of species, including in the Saya de Malha Bank, many as yet unknown to science, depend on seagrasses for their survival. But the planet has lost roughly a third of its seagrasses since the late 19th century, and we lose 7 percent more each year — roughly equivalent to losing a soccer pitch of seagrass every 30 minutes.
Seagrass also cleans polluted water and protects coastlines from erosion, according to a 2021 report published by the University of California, Davis. At a time when at least 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year, seagrass traps microplastics by acting as a dense net, catching debris and locking it into the sediment, according to a 2021 study in Nature. At a time when ocean acidification threatens the survival of the world’s coral reefs and the thousands of fish species that inhabit them, seagrasses reduce acidity by absorbing carbon through photosynthesis and provide shelters, nurseries, and feeding grounds for thousands of species, including endangered animals such as dugongs, sharks, and seahorses.
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Among the world’s largest seagrass fields and the planet’s most important carbon sinks, this high-seas patch of ocean covers an area the size of Switzerland. More than 200 miles from land, the submerged bank is situated in the Indian Ocean between Mauritius and Seychelles.
Since the Saya de Malha Bank is mostly located in international waters, where few rules apply, its biodiversity is being systematically decimated by a huge fleet of industrial fishing ships that remain largely unchecked by government oversight. The bank remains unprotected by any major binding treaties largely due to an anemia of political will by national authorities and a profits-now costs-later outlook of fishing interests. The question now: who will safeguard this public treasure?
But the Saya de Malha is under threat. More than 200 distant-water vessels — most of them from Sri Lanka and Taiwan — have parked in the deeper waters along the edge of the bank over the past few years to catch tuna, lizardfish, scad, and forage fish that are turned into protein-rich fishmeal, a type of animal feed. Ocean conservationists say that efforts to conserve the bank’s seagrass are not moving fast enough to make a difference. “It’s like walking north on a southbound train,” says Heidi Weiskel, Acting Head of Global Ocean Team for the International Union for Conservation of Nature Team.
On May 23, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to declare March 1 World Seagrass Day. The resolution was sponsored by Sri Lanka. Speaking at the assembly, the permanent representative of Sri Lanka to the UN, Ambassador Mohan Pieris, said seagrasses were “one of the most valuable marine ecosystems on earth,” highlighting, among other things, their outsized contribution to carbon sequestration. But recognition is one thing; action is another. As the ambassador gave his speech in New York, dozens of ships from his country’s fishing fleet were 9,000 miles away, busily scraping the biggest of those very ecosystems he was calling on the world to protect.
Vanishing protectors and predators
Part 2
Far away from
human rights
Part 3
Monaco Explorations
Like most seagrass environments, the Saya De Malha Bank teems with life. It is home to a myriad of endangered species, including sea turtles (left), dugongs, and sharks.
The bank is also a is a breeding ground for humpbacks, sperm whales, blue whales, and tiny creatures such as this seahorse, as seen through a microscope.
WEY, licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0
Seagrass meadows, like this one in the South China Sea, act as a nursery for sharks and other fish species.
Underwater at the Saya de Malha Bank
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Ian Urbina, Maya Martin, Susan Ryan, Joe Galvin, and Austin Brush are editors at The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization focused on investigative stories about issues on the high seas.
GLOBE OPINION Editors: Jim Dao, Brian Bergstein, and Kelly Horan; Design: Heather Hopp-Bruce;
Audience engagement editor: Karissa Korman; Developer: Andrew Nguyen; Copy editor: Karen Schlosberg
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Part 1
Vanishing protectors and predators
Part 2
Vanishing protectors and predators
Part 2