North Atlantic Current and Evlanov Sea basin (NACES) MPA

Species and habitats

Research into seabird distribution and habitat use across the North-East Atlantic over the past decade highlighted the importance of the open ocean for highly mobile species. This tracking data, collected by BirdLife International, discovered the most important seabird foraging area in the North-East Atlantic in terms of the diversity and abundance of seabirds eventually creating the NACES MPA.

The area encompasses deep-sea and open-ocean habitats that support a diverse range of marine life. The area also contains seamounts and seamount-like features, abyssal plains and deep-sea trenches, which provide important habitats for marine species.

The NACES MPA is an important transition zone where major ocean currents and oceanic gyres meet. The mixing of water masses and the upwelling of nutrient-rich waters support productive marine ecosystems. Mesoscale eddies—large, swirling movements of water—can concentrate small marine animals, including mesopelagic fish, cephalopods and other micronekton. These organisms provide an important food source for larger marine predators, making the area an important feeding ground for a wide range of species. These include cetaceans such as whales and dolphins, fish including sharks, marine reptiles such as sea turtles, and a variety of deep-sea communities.

Together, these features underline the NACES MPA’s importance as a large-scale ocean ecosystem. Protecting the area can help conserve the feeding grounds, habitats and ecological processes that sustain marine biodiversity in the North-East Atlantic, including species that travel across vast distances of open ocean.

LOCATION:

The NACES MPA represents a high seas marine area of the deep-sea and open ocean habitats that support seabirds, cetaceans, fish including sharks, marine reptiles, and numerous benthic features. The Site encompasses a globally unique location; it is a region of year-round vigorous horizontal and vertical mixing where waters from the tropical/subtropical Atlantic encounter waters from the subpolar Atlantic and Arctic Ocean, promoting enhanced primary productivity, which helps to support this biodiversity.

The NACES MPA is located in OSPAR Region V, the Wider Atlantic. Region V represents the deep waters of the North-East Atlantic. Its topography ranges from continental slopes, through the sharply fluctuating seabed associated with seamounts, banks of fragmented continental rocks and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, to extensive areas of almost featureless abyssal plain.

Further location information can be found in OSPAR's MPA database https://mpca.ospar.org/abnjs/555715155