Tropical paradise: Grey reef sharks and humpback whales are just a few of the species that will benefit from the new reserves (hit play, above, for another image).
Credit: Juergen Freund
Tropical paradise: Grey reef sharks and humpback whales are just a few of the species that will benefit from the new reserves.
Credit: Micaela Fischer/Pew Environmental Group
Asuncion Island erupts so often that it’s known as “The Lighthouse of the Western Pacific.” It's a unique platform to observe the rapid birth, death and rebirth of coral and other marine life, something that occurs much slower elsewhere.
There's also a seamount with a so-called ‘champagne vent’ sending up bubbles of liquid CO2 that look like they came out of a sixties lava lamp, say experts. Nearby, millions of mussels thrive, despite the acidity leaving them with paper-thin shells, as does a fish believed to feed directly on bacteria at hydrothermal vents.
“All it would take is a few trawlers to go through there and it would all be wiped out,” says Robert Embley of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who has dived there.
The second monument, in the central Pacific islands, was proposed jointly by the Marine Conservation Biology Institute and by the Environmental Defence Fund, whose vice-chair, Jane Lubchenco, has been nominated to head the $4 billion-a-year NOAA, which manages U.S. oceans policy.
As such, she will oversee how these monuments are run. Nelson said Pew hoped to work with her to extend the area to the full 200 miles.
Called the Remote Pacific Islands National Marine Monument, it totals 225,000 km2 and includes five areas: Howland and Baker, in the Phoenix Islands; Jarvis, just south of there in the line islands; Palmyra and Kingman Reef, also in the Line Islands; Johnston Atoll and Wake island, two atolls west of Hawaii that are so isolated they are not part of any chain and are host to military bases.
The others are National Wildlife Refuges whose reefs are already protected.
As less than five per cent of the fishing of the Honolulu fleet of long-liners takes place in the EEZ of these islands, officials said the closure of one-fourth of those areas will have negligible effect.
Finally, the Rose Atoll National Monument, in American Samoa, protects the 35,000 km2 of waters off the world’s smallest atoll, which boasts some of the densest coral cover in the world.
In creating these monuments, Bush faced objections from three quarters: the Pentagon, recreational fishermen and politicians in the Marianas.
Though Bush had specified that monument designation “should not limit the department of defence from carrying out its mission” in the Pacific, environmentalists said senior Pentagon officials had told them they were concerned it would do just that.
They cited lawsuits against military uses of sonar in war games off the Hawaii monument as an example. “They didn’t care about the degree of protection,” one activist said, “but they did care about size.”
Recreational fishers also fought the move. “We do not support any unnecessary closures to recreational fishing unless there is a scientific determination that shows recreational fishing is harming the ecosystem,” said Patty Doerr, Ocean Resource Policy Director of the American Sportfishing Association.
She added that the only way for a closure to be justified in the Pacific areas would be for recreational fishing to be introduced and for it to demonstrably harm the environment.
