Monument will heal little, if anything

The proposed Pew monument of the three upper northern islands must have positive environmental attributes in order to be considered. One of the base ideas driving its and other monument areas’ creation is the fact that the Earth and its creatures are under stress from human activity, and by eliminating various types of human activity the Earth may or will heal itself. This self-healing area will then act as a cushion, a bank, a band-aid; a sanctuary and a source of life both inside and out of its boundaries.

There is no doubt that on the near shore oceans and islands less visited and impacted by humans as compared to those more impacted and visited, the amount of animal, plant and other natural life is much greater. I have been to areas of little human activity: Helens reef and the southwest islands of Palau. Bikini and its nearby atolls. Midway Atoll and the northwest Hawaiian islands. The Darien jungle and the seas on the Columbian/Panamanian border. I’ve made more than a dozen trips as far north as Guguan.

There is no dispute that all of these places are incredible and the lack of human activity has allowed life to resist the decline in variety and numbers that is seen otherwise across the globe. Each is unique, but they also share features. One of the primary features they share is the difficulty of sustaining human life on any scale, and so they are considered remote. Distance from human centers of population, difficulty in transportation to the area, lack of food, shelter and comforts, plus lack of commercial, recreational, social, historical or commercial importance mean people won’t go there. The few people that currently enter the proposed boundaries of the monument are scientists from the United States and other countries; occasional cruise and other ships transiting the area, and illegal fishing vessels from outside the U.S.

If I recall correctly, when the Japanese controlled the Marianas there was a thriving tuna fishery, but currently there is little to no U.S.-flagged fishing pressure on the proposed area. Illegal foreign fishing has and will continue in the Marianas until some sort of system is in place that allows officials to find, track, communicate with and expel offending vessels. Up until now it’s mostly by actual ship and air patrols that these vessels are interacted with. The U.S. Coast Guard is the lead federal agency in interacting with foreign vessels entering into U.S. territory, and in this and virtually every other mission both the Guam CNMI offices hold high standards and I commend them.

The USCG’s mission scope has many facets and stopping illegal poaching by foreign vessels in CNMI waters is one of them. However, the ability to do so even when confronted with direct evidence is severely limited by multiple constraints; the two greatest are the massive size of the area, the other is budget. There just isn’t money to have patrol vessels steaming up, down and around the 200 miles on either side of the NMI looking for illegal fishing boats. While I lived on Saipan an Asian commercial fishing boat came into port because the captain had been speared while killing a marlin. The age of the wound and the speed of the vessel left not doubt the boat was poaching. The USCG made no action to investigate or sanction the captain or vessel even after I and others complained. There are still reports of foreign vessels poaching.

The creation of a monument will not alter the budget of the USCG, and it is clear that it is unlikely they will shift budget priorities in favor of more patrols. The creation of a monument will do little to actually change the amount of poaching or any other human activity around the islands north of Saipan: the upper three islands are already one of the least visited places on Earth. Making a monument will not change that. In those terms alone the monument will heal little, if anything. To make the greatest positive change in the CNMI’s marine environment we need to look a bit closer to home, which I will do in my next letter.