The IMMA initiative is the major activity of the Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force (MMPATF) which was created in 2013 by the International Committee on Marine Mammal Protected Areas (ICMMPA), the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) Marine Vice Chair, and members of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) to help support a stronger global profile for the role of marine mammals in protected areas, and to provide a stronger voice for the MMPA constituency within IUCN.
The goal of the MMPATF is to facilitate mechanisms to encourage collaboration, sharing information and experience, accessing and disseminating knowledge and tools for establishing, monitoring, and managing MMPAs. The MMPATF promotes effective spatial solutions and best practices for marine mammal conservation within MMPAs.
From 2016-2021, the Task Force has been, and will continue to be focusing on setting up a series of regional workshops to identify Important Marine Mammal Areas (IMMAs), beginning with the Mediterranean in 2016, followed by the Pacific Islands (2017), the North East Indian Ocean and South East Asian Seas (2018), the Extended Southern Ocean (2018), the Western Indian Ocean and Arabian Seas (2019), Australia-New Zealand waters and South East Indian Ocean (2020), the Black Sea, Turkish Straits and Caspian Sea (2021) and the South East Tropical and Temperate Pacific Ocean (2022).
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