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British Indian Ocean Territory (the Chagos Archipelago): Setting, Connections and the Marine Protected Area

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Coral Reefs of the United Kingdom Overseas Territories

Part of the book series: Coral Reefs of the World ((CORW,volume 4))

Abstract

The British Indian Ocean Territory consists of the Chagos archipelago, almost all of which was designated a no-take MPA in 2010. It covers 650,000 km2, with >60,000 km2 shallow limestone platform and reefs. This has doubled the global cover of such MPAs. It has strong biological affinities with the western Indian Ocean, and larval travel time to reefs to the west of it is 25–35 days. Genetic work is only recently commencing, but it is likely to be a cross-roads, or bridge, in this respect. A licensed fishery used to exist, but this too was closed in 2010, and the large diameter of the area may prove to be a significant reserve for pelagic fishes such as tuna also. The region probably contains about 300 sea mounts and knolls, which is about 10 % of all Indian Ocean seamounts and nearly half of all those protected worldwide, and so the area is regionally important for these features as well with their unexplored but probably diverse deep benthic and fish biota. The area is also well placed to fill a large gap in global monitoring systems; it is located in key region of climate variability, so programmes carried out there are particularly important to research into climate change effects also. The area has very high conservation value and is an important biological asset in an ocean where most reefs show significant and continuing decline in health.

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Acknowledgements

Some of this material was published previously in Sheppard et al. (2012) and is reproduced with permission of Wiley & Sons.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Gibbit Hill Campus, CV4 7AL, Coventry, UK

    Charles R. C. Sheppard & Anne L. S. Sheppard

  2. Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawaii, 1346, Kane’ohe, HI, 96744, USA

    Brian W. Bowen

  3. Biodiversity Research Centre, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Road, Nankang, Taipei, 115, Taiwan

    Allen C. Chen, Chai-hsia Gan, Shashank Keshavmurthy & Ming-Che Yang

  4. Department of Marine Sciences and Environmental Studies, University of San Diego, San Diego, USA

    Matthew T. Craig

  5. Center for Insect Science, University of Arizona, 1140 E. South Campus Dr, Tucson, AZ. 85721, USA

    Jeff Eble

  6. Faculty of Applied Science, University of Canberra, ACT 2601, Canberra, Australia

    Nancy Fitzsimmons

  7. Ichthyology Section, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA, 94118, USA

    Michelle R. Gaither

  8. Zoological Society of London, Regents Park, NW1 4RY, London, UK

    Matthew Gollock, Heather Koldewey & Chris Yesson

  9. Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Jeanne A. Mortimer

  10. CORDIO East Africa, #9 Kibaki Flats, Kenyatta Beach, Bamburi Beach, 10135, Mombasa, 80101, Kenya

    David Obura

  11. RWTH Aachen University, Templergraben 55, 52056, Aachen, Germany

    Miriam Pfeiffer

  12. Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, The Tinbergen Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK

    Alex D. Rogers

  13. Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften Paläontologie & Geobiologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Richard-Wagner-Str. 10, Munich, 80333, Germany

    Catherine Vogler & Gert Wörheide

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  1. Charles R. C. Sheppard
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Correspondence to Charles R. C. Sheppard .

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    Charles R.C. Sheppard

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Sheppard, C.R.C. et al. (2013). British Indian Ocean Territory (the Chagos Archipelago): Setting, Connections and the Marine Protected Area. In: Sheppard, C. (eds) Coral Reefs of the United Kingdom Overseas Territories. Coral Reefs of the World, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5965-7_17

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