Turtles, seabirds and dolphins who make Maltese territorial waters their home are to be further protected thanks to the creation of eight new marine protected areas. The eight areas cover 3,450 square kilometres and will join Malta's five existing Natura 2000 protected marine sites. They were selected on the basis of two EU projects which mapped out the areas most critical to the conservation of loggerhead turtles, bottlenose dolphins, Yelkouan and Scopoli's shearwaters and European storm-petrels. Natura 2000 sites are an ecological network of protected areas designed to protect the ecologically important habitats and species across Europe. Malta's previous five such sites were based primarily on the presence of Posidonia seagrass meadows. The EU Life + Migrate project, which began in October 2012 and is ending in April 2016, focused on the loggerhead turtle il-fekruna tal-baħar il-komuni and of the bottlenose dolphin id-denfil ta' geddumu qasir in Maltese waters. It was led by the Environment and Resources Authority, Environment Ministry and a Spanish firm specialising in marine resource conservation. Bank of Valletta co-financed the project. Migrate manager Carmen Mifsud said...
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