Honolulu Weekly

Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument / Since August, environmentalists had been waiting to hear just how serious President George W. Bush was going to be about his so-called Blue Legacy. There was an expectation that he would top his designation two years ago of the 140,000-square-mile Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which extends a no-fishing zone 50 miles on either side of the 1,200-mile long Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

And for journalists who got the first word of Bush’s decision from his environmental adviser, James Connaughton, the impression was clearly a yes.

Connaughton said that the area protected totaled 195,000 square miles, split up into three monuments. Asked if they were no-take areas like the Northwest Hawaiian islands, he replied: “In terms of no-take, I mean, they’re all no-take. You can’t destroy the resource. You can’t extract from it, except under very carefully managed—for example, for research purposes. So they’re on par with the highest levels of protection afforded anywhere in the world.”

Not so fast. Because the Weekly didn’t get the details until the following morning, when Bush made his announcement and the three documents creating three monuments were signed, we were not able to report the fact that the single biggest—by far—component of the advertised 195,000 square miles was the 79,102 square-mile Marianas Trench monument, which does not restrict fishing and only protects the sea bottom. At its deepest point, the bottom is 35,840 feet below the surface, which is the deepest place in the word, and is, according to Connaughton and others, of no interest to industry at present.

“Recognizing the Marianas Trench is a wonderful thing,” said Jay Nelson, director of Ocean Legacy for the Pew Environmental Group, who helped midwife both the Hawaiian and the Marianas reserves. He noted that when the Grand Canyon was made a National Park, there was little expectation that it would be much visited. But it hadn’t been protected then, he said, the canyon “would probably be underwater and behind a big dam today.”

Still, given that bacteria that are some of the oldest forms of life on earth live down in the Marianas Trench, “It would have been a lot better to fully protect and maintain the whole ecosystem,” he said. “After all, the oldest things are the ones you’d least want to alter.”

The Marianas Trench component was the only one that Connaughton and the White house Council on Environmental Quality he chaired came up with on its own. All the others had been proposed by Pew, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Marine Conservation Biology Institute.

Because of resistance from Governor Benigno Fitial of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas islands, the other component of the Marianas Marine National Monument was considerably stunted. Instead of reaching out 200 nautical miles north, east and west of the three northernmost Marianas, it extends between 25 and 60 miles and leaves out two dozen volcanic vents and hundreds of seamounts of considerable scientific interest.

As for the Central Pacific component of the monument, which includes waters extending 50 to 75 nautical miles off six islands or pairs of islands, the open-ocean waters protected by the creation of the monument are too small to have much effect on blue-water fish like tuna whose numbers are declining because of overfishing, fisheries biologists say.