Finally, some good news from President G.W. Bush.
On January 6th 2009 the White House announced that 195,000 mile2 of the Pacific Ocean will be designated as National Marine Monuments. The provisions in this declaration include the banning of commercial fishing within all of these areas and the probably banning of all fishing in significant areas. There are three National Marine Monuments to be setup as follows:
- Pacific Remote Islands
- These lie to the South and West of the Hawaiian Islands and are described as a “predator dominant system” with a biomass of top predators exceeding the Great Barrier Reef or the Kenyan Marine Protected Areas.
- Rose Atoll
- Located 130 nautical miles east-southeast American Samoa. “A dynamic reef ecosystem”
- Marianas Trench
- Covering an area including the 14 Northern Mariana Islands and the Marianas Trench, the deepest points in any Ocean.
These National Monuments are additions to other significant areas set aside by other governments, including the Great Barrier Reef (Australia) and the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (Kiribati).
This is very welcome news. Many international conservation groups are pushing to get 40% of the world’s oceans to be protected from exploitation. This is needed as increasing fishing pressure, pollution and climate change mean that we need to set aside extensive areas of Ocean to be protected. Terrestrial protected areas and country parks have been setup in most countries of the world, the same needs to be done in the world’s oceans.
More needs to be done.
A very useful and informative webpage on the announcement can be found HERE