Pelagos Sanctuary: the Mediterranean marine protected area for whales

Where it is and how big it is

Pelagos Sanctuary sits in a specific corner of the Mediterranean: not the whole sea, but the north-western stretch shared by France, Italy and the Principality of Monaco. Its 87,500 km² take in part of the Gulf of Lion, the entire Ligurian Sea, a section of the northern Tyrrhenian and the Sea of Sardinia, running along 2,022 km of coastline from the French Giens peninsula to northern Sardinia, past Liguria and Tuscany. It is a marine protected area created by a treaty between states, the same legal family covered in international law, where several countries commit together to shared rules.

A story that starts in 1993

The agreement now known as Pelagos took years to build. The first step came in 1993, when France, Italy and Monaco signed a joint declaration of intent in Brussels, a political commitment rather than a binding treaty yet. The final text followed six years later, signed in Rome on 25 November 1999. Even then the agreement needed more time: it entered into force only in 2002, once each of the three countries had ratified it through national law (Italy did so with Law 391 of 11 October 2001).

Practical example: a boat running a whale-watching trip in the Ligurian Sea operates inside the Pelagos perimeter: the rules against deliberately disturbing marine mammals apply to that outing just as they apply to a cargo ship crossing the same route.

The species that live in the sanctuary

The Italian Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security lists the fin whale, striped dolphin, sperm whale, long-finned pilot whale, Risso’s dolphin, bottlenose dolphin, Cuvier’s beaked whale and common dolphin among the species present in the area. The Mediterranean monk seal is also on the list, a pinniped the ministry still counts among the protected marine mammals. How a cetacean feeds and grows is covered by the parent Recap whale; what matters here is that these are Mediterranean species, used to far warmer water than the Arctic habitat of the bowhead whale and the narwhal.

The table compares the two main cetacean groups found in the sanctuary.

A cyclonic current runs up along Corsica and Tuscany, and the mistral wind stirs the water enough to trigger upwelling along the coast: according to the DEIMS-SDR record for the sanctuary, these dynamics support very high primary productivity offshore, which in turn feeds large concentrations of krill. That krill, at the base of the food chain, is one reason the cetaceans gather in these waters specifically.

Who sets the rules: the agreement’s governance

A treaty between three sovereign states needs bodies to run it. The Meeting of the Parties is where decisions get made: it brings together representatives from Italy, France and Monaco. A Scientific and Technical Committee supports the Parties in an advisory role, drawing on the available research. A Permanent Secretariat handles the day-to-day administration that keeps the structure running. Every decision still passes through the Meeting of the Parties, the one body shared by all three states.

What the agreement bans and what it regulates

Anyone operating inside the sanctuary cannot capture a marine mammal or deliberately disturb one: that is the agreement’s first restriction. It also regulates or bans high-speed powerboat races, an activity that brings noise and collision risk into waters the cetaceans use. Tourist whale watching falls under the same framework: the agreement regulates it alongside the other activities that take place in the area.

Pelagos and ACCOBAMS: two overlapping agreements

A second agreement covers the same animals on a wider scale. ACCOBAMS, signed in 1996 and in force since 2001, extends across the whole Mediterranean and a neighbouring stretch of Atlantic water. By 2022 it counted 24 member countries, including the same three that signed Pelagos. It exists to cut down the pressures cetaceans face, largely by building better scientific knowledge about them. The two agreements work together through a standing Memorandum of Understanding, with mutual attendance at institutional meetings, and the Pelagos area sits entirely inside the wider ACCOBAMS perimeter.

The DEIMS-SDR record for the sanctuary also describes the other side of the picture: the same waters that hold the highest cetacean diversity also carry very high human pressure, from shipping traffic to fishing and pollution.