The Heart Of The Pacific: Why The Pacific Remote Islands Need Protection

By: Brian Kennedy. Originally published on civilbeat.org.

I was sitting in the control room on the research vessel watching the video feed coming from the underwater remotely operated vehicle Hercules working 1,500 meters below the ship, when I saw a transparent orb floating through the water near the ocean floor. It was tiny, just a few centimeters wide. And, despite having watched hundreds of hours of video from the deep sea, I had no idea what it was.

This moment of mystery happened in some of the most remote parts of the U.S. Pacific Ocean: the waters around Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll, located about 3,300 miles away from both North America and New Zealand. I was the co-lead scientist for the NOAA-funded month-long underwater exploration of this special place aboard the Ocean Exploration Trust’s E/V Nautilus, a special vessel equipped for deep-sea research and exploration.

Whenever I see something that totally stumps me, it reminds me how big the ocean is — and how much of our underwater world — about 99.99% of it — is still new to science. This particular creature turned out to be a bioluminescent organism called a Tuscaridium that had been documented a few times in the Pacific. Even after working in this part of the ocean for years, this was the first time I had ever seen one.

The area that our dive explored lies within the proposed boundaries of a new National Marine Sanctuary to protect the surrounding waters in the Pacific Remote Islands area. This new sanctuary would not only keep these waters safe from harmful human activities like deep-sea mining and industrial fishing, but it would also channel federal dollars toward better exploring and sharing the wonders that exist here.

Sanctuary protections can keep destructive activities out while allowing scientific research to continue, making them some of our best living laboratories for understanding the incredible ecosystems in the ocean — and how they are responding to climate change impacts. Huge swaths of the waters around the Pacific Remote Islands remain unexplored. Our dive was part of a broader mission to better understand how these deep-sea ecosystems work and how to protect them into the future.

At one point, we came up the side of a seamount — an underwater mountain — and suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a huge forest of deep sea corals. There were the pale pink and white of the Hemicorallium precious corals, the bright yellow of the Enallopsammia and ivory white with tree-like branches of the bamboo corals.

Not only were these corals huge but some of these corals are likely over a thousand years old. It was one of the highest densities of old large corals anyone had ever seen around Palmyra Atoll, and located in an area that’s currently unprotected. Finding such a dense community of several different families of ancient corals is always rare and exciting, but this one had so many large corals, so close together. It was spectacular!

Huge swaths of the waters around the Pacific Remote Islands remain unexplored.

Without protections, corals like these risk being ripped up by deep-sea fishing gear or destroyed by deep-sea mining. Enhancing protections for the Pacific Remote Islands with a new sanctuary would protect this forest and give us the opportunity to discover others that we haven’t seen yet.

Worldwide, our oceans are facing a climate and biodiversity crisis. But we know that protecting large areas of the ocean — taking an ecosystem-wide, inclusive approach — is one of the best solutions we have for enhancing climate resilience.

In the case of the Pacific Remote Islands, the deep-sea ecosystems we have been exploring are inextricably linked to life closer to shore: seabirds travel hundreds of miles away to gather food for their nesting families; sharks, beaked whales and manta rays swim between coral reefs and the open ocean. One can’t be parsed from another — it’s essential to protect the ecosystem’s entire range.

Right now, the Pacific Remote Islands are among the last wild and healthy marine ecosystems in the world. NOAA should move this sanctuary designation forward to protect and ensure this area can have the potential to be as healthy and as wild as we remember.

Every dive in the Pacific Remote Islands surfaces with a new species discovery and a better understanding of the interconnected nature of marine life. Let’s protect more of this spectacular part of the ocean so research teams can continue learning and growing our understanding of it — and how to best protect it.