| Grantee | Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel ↗ |
| Grant Amount | $648,000 |
| Duration | Three Years |
In the Israeli Mediterranean deep sea, development is rapidly growing while conservation policy has not been established yet. Yet, this is still an almost pristine area. To date, recent scientific discoveries in the EEZ documented deep water corals, including the critically endangered Bamboo coral, cold gas seeps with rich chemosynthetic communities, brine pools, shark aggregations, cetacean observations and more. Israel has yet to establish a comprehensive legislation framework in the EEZ, thus sectorial regulations are not synchronized through marine spatial planning, and environmental regulation is lacking.
As 2030 is around the corner, and marine reserve declaration process takes years to complete, the science-based planning and establishment of marine reserves in the Israeli EEZ is an urgent mission to be completed before development takes over vulnerable areas.The project will promote new marine reserves in the deep sea, based on scientific evidences, field surveys, and visual documentation. the project will seek to mainstream the marine reserves masterplan for the EEZ within the governmental marine EEZ spatial plan and promote necessary legislation to support its establishment. we will promote cross-border marine reserves network, and strive to expand the current ban on bottom trawling from a third of the marine area - to the entire marine area of Israel.
*Photo credit: Adam Weissman and Yizhaq Makovsky, University of Haifa
