How effective are MPAs in the conservation of cetaceans?

The previous posts I created on this blog introduced the MPA network that Scotland currently has and displayed a couple of online interactive maps that I came across. I would now like to investigate how effective the Scottish MPA network is in preserving marine life and how animals can impact future expansion and development of the current MPA network. 

Due to the vast number of animal species that live in Scottish waters, I have decided to narrow my focus down a bit whilst investigating these questions. I will focus on a group of the marine mammals known as the Cetacea, which consists of the whales, dolphins and porpoises. I have chosen this group of animals to study as they are very iconic and highly important in a number of different niches in the marine food chain of Scottish waters. Scotland is home to many cetaceans including bottlenose dolphins, minke whales and even sightings of humpback whales and large pods of orca.

Now, you would think that such an important group of animals would therefore be considered in any planning of MPAs in Scotland. However, this was not been the case up until 2012, which spurred this creation of this rather quirky YouTube video by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS):

In 2013, following a long campaign by the WDCS and petition that gathered over 36,000 signatures, the Scottish government finally began to plan the implemetation MPAs that took bottlenose dolphins into account. Some more details can be found via this link: http://uk.whales.org/blog/2013/07/what-future-for-scotlands-whales-and-dolphins.

As of September 2015, the WDCS is continuing to campaign to the Scottish government to start implementing MPAs surrounding other cetaceans, including the Risso's dolphin and harbour porpoise. More details can be found here: http://uk.whales.org/blog/2015/09/we-got-lucky-will-rissos-and-porpoises-get-lucky-too.