Canada has not protected enough of its marine habitat to help the dozens of species of whales and fish that are in danger of disappearing from Canadian waters, say environmental advocates and experts.

The federal government has protected less than one per cent of Canada’s ocean territory, according to an analysis of Environment Canada data. That ranks Canada second-to-last among G7 nations in percentage of marine territory protected.

The United States has protected 15 times more of its ocean territory than Canada has. Australia and Russia, two non-G7 countries, have protected 14 and 3.5 times more, respectively.

“I don’t think that there’s any question that, in terms of marine protected areas…Canada’s performance has been underwhelming in comparison to many countries around the world,” said Scott Findlay, an expert on conservation and ecosystem management at the University of Ottawa.

That’s a problem for the at-risk species that live outside of the few protected areas of Canadian ocean territory, said Chris Miller, a national conservation biologist at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s (CPAWS) Nova Scotia chapter.

“At-risk” species are those in danger of extinction, or of extirpation—meaning the species that is no longer found in an area in which it has historically lived, according to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

More than 80 species of at-risk marine fish and mammals—as well as the leatherback sea turtle, a reptile—spend at least part of their lives in Canada’s 5.7 million sq. km ocean territory, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

CPAWS Nova Scotia is advocating for a connected “system” of protected areas within the Bay of Fundy, which lies between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, to serve as safe havens for at-risk species native to the bay, such as the North Atlantic right whale and Inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic salmon.

The North Atlantic right whale was once hunted close to extinction, and has had trouble recovering in part because breeding-age adults are occasionally hit and killed by ships travelling through the bay, said Findlay.

Just a few such deaths per year can seriously harm an engendered and slow-to-reproduce population such as the right whale, he said.

Shipping lanes in the area have been changed to help remedy this problem, but more needs to be done to protect the at-risk species in the Bay of Fundy, said Miller.

The Inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic salmon, which spends much of its adult life in the bay, is nearly gone. At last count in 2008, fewer than 200 of this salmon population remained, down from about 40,000 earlier in the 20th century, according to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

The federal government has identified and protected important habitat for the salmon in freshwater rivers and brooks within Fundy National Park on the New Brunswick coast. However, the remaining Inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic salmon are likely dying because of “ecological changes” in the waters of the Bay of Fundy, not in the park’s protected rivers, the Fisheries and Oceans Canada website says.

“Canada has made no progress in identifying the critical marine habitat of inner Bay of Fundy (Atlantic salmon) despite the fact that these populations were listed (under the Species at Risk Act) about ten years ago,” said Sue Scott, a spokesperson for the Atlantic Salmon Federation, in an email.

The Atlantic Salmon Federation is a New Brunswick based-non-profit dedicated to conserving the Atlantic salmon and its ecosystems.

The federal government has protected eight marine areas in Canadian waters so far, including one around the Musquash Estuary, which feeds into the Bay of Fundy. There are eight other marine areas designated by Fisheries and Oceans Canada as “areas of interest,” which the government is working towards protecting. None are located in the Bay of Fundy.

Parks Canada is not considering establishing a protected area in the Bay of Fundy, according to an emailed statement from spokesperson Véronik Mainville.

Fisheries and Oceans spokesperson David Walters listed the Musquash Estuary protected area in an emailed statement when asked whether his department was considering establishing a protected area in the bay.

A protected area is “a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values,” according to Environment Canada.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, an international non-profit union made up of more than 1,000 NGOs and government agencies, uses the same definition.

Fishing and other commercial activities may be allowed in protected areas if the government determines it would not harm the recovery of the at-risk species that live there, according to the Fisheries and Oceans website.

Canada, as a signatory to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, has agreed to a target of protecting 10 per cent of its marine territory by 2020, Federal Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan said in his 2012 report to Parliament.

The federal government protected just one-tenth of one per cent, or just more than 730 sq. km., of marine territory over the past three years. Altogether, about 52,000 sq. km have been protected over the past several decades.

“We really need to be starting now” to come close to the 2020 target, said Miller.

There are three different federal government agencies that can protect marine areas: Environment Canada, Parks Canada, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Canada’s federal government has historically focused more on the conservation and protection of land habitat, said Findlay.

However, Canada doesn’t fare any better compared to its international peers at protecting land habitat: it ranked dead last compared to other G7 countries and Australia, Sweden and Russia, according to Environment Canada data from 2012.

Other developed countries have been more successful at marine habitat protection because their leaders made it a priority, said Miller.

Canada’s federal government has earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars for conservation projects on land and in the water over the past several years, and announced a national conservation plan earlier this year.

While Fisheries and Oceans Canada is working towards establishing eight new marine protected areas, Parks Canada has an “ultimate goal” of establishing 29 protected marine areas in Canadian waters, said Mainville.

The creation of a marine protected area “might be too blunt of an instrument” for conservation in some areas and for some species, said Findlay, though he could not say whether that was the case for the Bay of Fundy salmon or right whale populations.