While kudos are due for President Barack Obama for his recent Marine National Monument designations in the Pacific and off New England, it is significant that these actions mostly protect remote, deep-water areas where there is little human use, little threat and little political opposition. Conspicuously absent from the monument designations (so far) are shallower waters over continental shelves, where the greatest biological productivity, human use and ecosystem degradation occur.
In the final months of his administration, Mr. Obama needs to correct this spectacular omission by designating additional monuments in ecologically sensitive continental shelf waters, including Alaska, and negotiate an agreement with other Arctic nations for a High Arctic Marine Sanctuary.
The five existing Marine National Monuments (MNMs) include the following:
Papahanaumoukuakea MNM, in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, established in 2006 by President G. W. Bush, expanded from 139,737 square miles to 582,578 square miles in August 2016 by Obama, encompassing all waters surrounding the islands out to the 200-mile limit, now one of the largest marine protected areas in the world.
Pacific Remote Islands MNM, established by Bush in January 2009, and expanded by Obama in 2014 from 86,888 square milesto 370,000 square miles, including remote tropical islands and waters of Wake, Baker, Jarvis, Howland, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll.
Marianas Trench MNM, established January 2009, covers 96,714 square miles, including the islands, trench and volcanic units in the Northern Mariana Islands. The monument includes the deepest point in the world ocean — the Challenger Deep — at 36,070 feet deep.
Rose Atoll MNM, established Jan. 2009, a pristine coral atoll and offshore waters covering 13,436 mi2 in American Samoa.
Northeast Canyons and Seamounts MNM, established September 2016, covering 4,913 square miles, including four seamounts and three deep-sea canyons, 130 miles off the coast of New England — the first marine monument in the Atlantic.
As our most restrictive marine protected area designation, Marine National Monuments generally prohibit commercial fishing, offshore drilling, deep-sea mining, and other potentially harmful industrial activities.
In contrast with marine monuments, National Marine Sanctuaries are generally closer to shore but are less protective and accommodate multiple uses. The thirteen existing National Marine Sanctuaries — seven along the Pacific coast, three in the Northeast and Great Lakes, and three in the Southeast — cover a total area of approximately 170,000 square miles. The Obama administration has established two new sanctuaries (in freshwater), is considering two others and denied the 2014 nomination of sanctuary designation of Aleutian Island waters, due to lack of local political support.
Mr. Obama is to be commended for the marine monuments he has designated and expanded, but it is troubling that he has failed to address the most urgent marine conservation challenge in the nation – heavily exploited and declining coastal ecosystems on continental shelves.
One important ocean area Mr. Obama has all but ignored, and must protect before leaving office, is the extraordinary offshore region of Alaska.
Alaska’s seas and coasts are globally unique for their diversity, expanse, abundance of fish and wildlife, as well as their historical, cultural and economic importance. Alaska has half of the nation’s entire shoreline and three-fourths of the U.S. continental shelf, and some of the most abundant populations of fish, shellfish, seabirds and marine mammals in the world ocean.
But many of Alaska’s marine ecosystems are in decline, primarily due to synergistic effects of overharvest and climate change. Management by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the industry-led North Pacific Fisheries Management Council has failed to reverse Alaska’s marine ecological decline.
Logically, Alaska should be at the top of the administration’s shortlist for marine monument designation. However, due to strong political opposition in Alaska to any federal protections, to date there is not one square mile of permanently protected offshore federal waters in Alaska. This is a national disgrace, and Mr. Obama knows it.
Alaska’s offshore ecosystems clearly deserve permanent federal protections, yet so far, Mr. Obama has cowered from this challenge. Other than enacting a few limited withdrawals from offshore oil leasing in Alaska, which could be reversed by a future administration, the Obama administration has been virtually indistinguishable from the Bush administration in managing Alaska’s offshore waters.
Both Obama and Bush have picked low-hanging fruit by protecting remote areas with little human use, threat or political opposition. While this boosts the total square miles in protected status, is politically easy and looks good on the conservation scoreboard, this simplistic approach misses the more critical conservation challenges in productive, heavily exploited near shore waters on continental shelves. The nation deserves better.
Many industrial interests that have long-profited from Alaska’s offshore waters reflexively resist any proposals for permanent federal ocean protection. But these federal waters are co-owned and co-managed on behalf of all Americans, and their protection is clearly in the national interest.
Had President Jimmy Carter cowered in the face of local political opposition to his proposed federal land protections in Alaska decades ago, he wouldn’t have succeeded in enacting the most significant land-conservation deal in U.S history — the 1980 Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act (ANILCA), which established 157 million acres of new national parks, monuments, preserves, and refuges on Alaska lands. ANILCA’s “no more” clause does not apply to federal offshore waters.
Thus, we now need Obama to be politically bold, and summon the same wisdom, courage and transcendent national spirit as did Carter decades ago and finish the ocean protection job he started.
In his final months in office, Mr. Obama should designate additional marine monuments in the nation’s continental shelf waters. This should include at least three marine monuments in Alaska — in the Aleutian Islands, Bering Strait and the Arctic Coast. In addition, he should work to secure an agreement with other Arctic nations to establish a High Arctic Marine Sanctuary in international waters surrounding the North Pole.
Short of this, Mr. Obama’s ocean legacy grade will at best be an “I,” for “Incomplete.”
• Rick Steiner is a conservation biologist in Anchorage, former professor with the University of Alaska for 30 years, and has worked on climate change issues for decades.
