Lasting Action Helps Save The Seas

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May 2009

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FUTURE OCEANS

Lasting Action Helps Save The Seas

BY JEAN-MICHEL COUSTEAU

Yellow Tang near Maug Island in the Mariana Archipelago. Photo: Robert Schroeder - NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, Coral Reef Ecosystem Division

A 2006 White House screening of the PBS feature Voyage to Kure, helped launch the campaign to create the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument. In the final days of the Bush Administration, another major achievement of mine, the Ocean Futures Society and other conservation organizations was realized with the outgoing President’s declaration of three new stunningly beautiful and biologically diverse protected areas in the Pacific Ocean. This commentary discusses the importance of the decision and follows on our November 2008 DIVER column entitled ‘The Deepest Legacy’.

In a bold move that will have a lasting effect on marine life, President George W. Bush assured his legacy in terms of preserving large portions of the ocean for future generations. I was among the invited guests at a White House ceremony on January 6 where the President made his declaration of the three new Marine National Monuments: Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument.

Bush’s 2006 designation of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, preserved 138,000 square miles of ocean.

According to the Pew Ocean Legacy campaign, President Bush has 10

“designated monuments protecting 335,561 square miles of ocean, a larger area of the world’s marine environment than protected by any other person in history.”

Humanity has witnessed a global devastation to marine life, in spite of decades of research and policy changes. President Bush’s designation of Marine National Monuments is an insurance policy that ocean life can be preserved. By making these areas off limits to commercial fishing and development, we are giving the ocean the chance to restore itself and to provide its natural abundance, which will spill over from these protected areas.

Such protected areas will see an increase in biodiversity, abundance and size of species in the reserves. With healthy populations inside such reserves successful reproduction provides larvae and juveniles to populate adjacent reefs. In particular, large territorial fish move out of the protected areas. There is now evidence that fishing in regions near such marine protected areas has improved.

The health of most ocean ecosystems can be judged by the presence of large predators, like sharks and groupers. These apex predators control other populations with a cascade of effects that ripple through

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FUTURE OCEANS

entire ecosystems, maintaining ecological balance and community integrity. Yet these are the preferred catch of fishers - big fish are better.

The numbers of sharks especially are severely depleted worldwide and large fish populations are down 90 percent in some cases.

And, to make the situation worse, when some species like groupers and snappers aggregate to spawn en masse, fishers descend upon these aggregations for an easy catch. Killing large adults at the time they are reproducing is a sure way to eliminate future harvest. In many of these species the larger individuals produce far more spawn than their smaller counterparts. So if we want to protect and restore reefs we must protect larger individuals.

It is a wise move to halt fishing in these areas and to protect these last remaining refuges of biodiversity and abundance. Thanks to ocean currents and larval dispersal, reefs are interconnected such that these healthy areas can be critical in the natural restoration of less healthy reefs.

So if we want to help fishers stay in business and have a healthy ocean, we must create refuges, where fishing is prohibited, to ensure there will continue to be a source of offspring to replace what is harvested.

I applaud this lasting decision and the hard work of President Bush, his Administration, and the NGOs and dedicated scientists who have made this possible for us all. And I look forward to the role President Barack Obama and his Cabinet will play to safeguard our life-support system above and below the sea.

Jean-Michel Cousteau, president of Ocean Futures Society and Dr. Sylvia Earle were at the White House for President Bush’s designation of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument. Photo: Lori Arguelles, National Marine Sanctuary Foundation

Soft corals and tropical fish share a paradise of habitat on the summit of an underwater volcano more than 500 feet (152m) deep in the Mariana Island Arc, a 900-mile (1,450km) chain of volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean that includes the Northern Mariana Islands. These underwater volcanoes, some of which emerge as islands, rise almost 10,000 feet (over 3,000m) from the deep sea floor just west of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth. Photo: Courtesy NOAA Submarine Ring of Fire 2004 Exploration and NOAA Vents Program.

President and First Lady Laura Bush receives copy of the OFS book, America’s Underwater Treasures from Jean-Michel Cousteau during White House ceremony designating three new Marine National Monuments. Photo: Lori Arguelles, National Marine Sanctuary Foundation

To learn more, see: New Ocean Monuments Give President Bush a Blue Legacy; Pew Applauds Historic Action: http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=47874 Statement by the President on the Occasion of the Designation of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2009/01/20090106-9.html Fact Sheet for Marine National Monuments: www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2009/01/20090106-12.html divermag.com

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