Parks & Reserves: Nazca-Desventuradas Marine Park

"The Chilean government on Monday announced that it has created the largest marine reserve in the Americas by protecting an area hundreds of miles off its coast roughly the size of Italy. The new area, called the Nazca-Desventuradas Marine Park, constitutes about eight percent of the ocean areas worldwide that have been declared off-limits to fishing and governed by no-take protections . . . The Pac-Man-shaped marine protected area (MPA) encompasses roughly 115,000 square miles (297,000 square kilometers) of ocean around San Ambrosio and San Felix islands. Together, they're known as the Desventuradas (or Unfortunate in Spanish) Islands, which are part of the underwater Nazca Ridge, which runs southwest from Peru to Easter Island . . . Desventuradas sits in a unique oceanic environment, harboring a mix of tropical and temperate species. Due to its isolation from the mainland—it takes a two-day boat ride from Chile’s coast to get there—much of Desventuradas’ marine life is endemic, or found nowhere else in the world," including Juan Fernández fur seals, the Chilean sandpaper fish, and Juan Fernández trevally.