Ross Sea (Marine Protected Area)

Declared in 2016 after years of negotiation between the 24 countries and the European Union that make up CCAMLR — including overcoming earlier Russian vetoes on geopolitical grounds — the Ross Sea area is the largest marine protected area on the planet, at over 1.5 million km², of which more than 70% is permanently closed to fishing of any kind. It supports roughly a third of the entire world population of Adélie penguin, a quarter of the emperor penguins and half the planet's type C orcas, and is reckoned by many scientists the largest-scale marine ecosystem left in a practically intact state anywhere on Earth, with very little direct human disturbance to date.