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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): A region of the Pacific Ocean three times the size of California will now be off-limits to commercial activity. President Obama signed an order today expanding protection for what scientists say is one of the most pristine remaining ocean ecosystems.
Hari Sreenivasan has more.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The Pacific Remote Islands Marine Preserve is farther from human settlement than any other U.S. territory. The president’s expansion of the reserve today will close 490,000 square miles of largely undisturbed ocean to commercial fishing and underwater mining.
The area is home to thriving colonies of rare and endangered ocean life, including fish, sea turtles, and coral reefs.
Joining me now to talk about the significance of today’s announcement is Elliott Norse. He is founder and chief scientist of the Marine Conservation Institute.
Thanks for joining us.
So, first off, what is in these waters?
ELLIOTT NORSE, Marine Conservation Institute: These waters are filled with marine life.
They have extraordinary coral reefs, extraordinary because they are among the most pristine coral reefs on earth. They still have their big sharks. Waters further from shore have large predators, including tunas of several species. They abound with seabirds, sea turtles. There’s a species of whale there that was discovered within the waters of that monument just a relatively few years ago. It’s full of life.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The area was deemed a monument by President George W. Bush. Why the need to expand it?
ELLIOTT NORSE: Well, President Bush did something really visionary in 2009 by designating it as Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, but I don’t think all of the scientific information was taken into account at that point.
We know now that the seabirds that feed their chicks in their nests on the islands forage out to a distance in some cases of several hundred miles, and they need to find concentrations of food so they can go back and feed their babies.
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