Pacific Nation Bans Fishing in One of World's Largest Marine Parks
Kiribati announces "very significant" step at U.S. Our Ocean conference.
A whitetip reef shark swims over coral in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAN SKERRY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
Brian Clark Howard
Published June 16, 2014
A tiny island nation that controls a vast area of the Pacific Ocean
has announced it will ban all commercial fishing in a massive marine
park that is the size of California.
Anote Tong, the president of
Kiribati—a chain of islands about halfway between Hawaii and Fiji—announced Monday that commercial fishing will end in the country's
Phoenix Islands Protected Area on January 1, 2015.
"We will also close the area around the
southern Line Islands to commercial fishing to allow the area to recover," said Tong, who spoke at the
Our Ocean
conference hosted by the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. The
southern Line Islands also will be closed to fishing by the beginning of
next year.
The Phoenix Islands and the southern Line Islands represent
some of the most pristine coral reef archipelagos in the Pacific, says
National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence
Enric Sala, who led the first underwater expedition to the five uninhabited southern Line Islands in 2009 as part of National Geographic's
Pristine Seas project.
Sala's team of scientists found healthy coral reefs,
abundant predator populations, and pristine lagoons carpeted with giant
clams and shark nurseries.
"Diving in the southern Line Islands is like getting in a
time machine and traveling back to the reefs of the past, when
sharks—and not humans—were the top predators," says Sala.
Marine scientist
Amanda Keledjian
of Oceana, an international nonprofit focused on ocean conservation,
calls Kiribati's announcement "very significant." Decreasing the impact
of fishing will "preserve biodiversity, large predators, and reefs,"
says Keledjian.
History of a Marine Park?
About as large as California, the 164,200-square-mile
(425,300-square-kilometer) park contains pristine reefs and eight coral
atolls teeming with fish and birds. The region is uninhabited, save for
about 50 people living on one of the atolls.
However, since the declaration, Kiribati has been criticized by some scientists and environmentalists for
failing to protect the area from commercial fishing. In announcing the park Tong had said publicly that it would be "off limits to fishing and other extractive uses."
In practice, however, the nation banned commercial fishing
only in the 3 percent of the reserve around the islands. The rest of the
zone remained open to industrial tuna fishers, who have steadily
increased their activities.
Tong's latest announcement is an "amazing action that shows what is possible with leadership," said
Catherine Novelli, the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, at the Our Ocean conference.
Tong said that the reserve "is an investment in the future and our contribution to humanity in the preservation of marine life."
Still, he cautioned that declarations of marine protected
areas "have no meanings unless they are enforced." He said technology
will be needed to help monitor the vast area, such as aircraft and
satellite-based remote sensing.
Tong, whose country has just 100,000 people, called on
other nations to help. "Let us pool our resources to protect this gift,
our mother ocean," he said. "Inaction is no longer an option."
The Gem of the Southern Line Islands
Tong's government has specifically declared that the area 12 nautical miles off the southern Line Islands will be protected.
Sala calls it a "great first step" and says he hopes the
protection zone may eventually be expanded. It has the potential to be
self-sustaining financially with ecotourism, he adds.
(Look for
National Geographic magazine's story on
the southern Line Islands in the September issue. Also see National
Geographic Channel's documentary on the area called
Journey to Shark Eden.)
"If you think of the ocean as a bank account in which
everybody withdraws but nobody makes a deposit, then protected marine
reserves are like savings accounts that produce interest," Sala told the
conference.
He explained that after fishing was stopped in a marine
reserve along Spain's Mediterranean coast, large fish quickly returned.
The fish increased so much in population that they spread outside of the
reserve. That revived the fishery and created jobs, in addition to
those supported by tourism.
Global Next Steps?
"The ocean is essential for maintaining the environment in
which we all live," Kerry said, explaining that it recycles carbon,
water, air, and nutrients. It is also home to millions of species.
"The importance of the ocean for life itself cannot be overstated," he said.
He added that President Obama may soon announce additional
protected areas in U.S. waters. He asked the other participants in the
conference to "walk away with a plan" to protect more of the ocean.
