By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst
3 January 2016
From the sectionUK
Image captionThe government is to create a marine reserve almost as big as the UK in the Atlantic waters of Ascension Island.
Just over half of the protected area will be closed to fishing.
The fishery in the other half will be policed under a grant of £300,000 from the Louis Bacon Foundation, a charitable body.
It is the latest marine reserve to be declared around remote islands, which will increase marine conservation zones to about 2% of the ocean.
That remains a far cry from the 30% recommended by scientists to preserve species and expand fish stocks, but is much more than just a few years ago.
Governments have designated marine parks at Palau in the North Pacific, Easter Island and Pitcairn in the South Pacific, and New Zealand's Kermadec islands, in what has become a landmark year for ocean conservation.
The latest reserve at Ascension Island is said to hold some of the largest marlin in the world, one of the largest populations of green turtles, big colonies of tropical seabirds and the island's own unique frigate bird.
Conservation commitment
The reserve totals 234,291 sq km, slightly less than the size of the United Kingdom. It could be ready for formal designation as soon as 2017, once further data has been collected and analysed.
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