Kerry Calls for United Action Plan to Protect Oceans

Table corals, as seen here on a reef of the Phoenix Islands of Kiribati, take decades to form. They can be destroyed by trawling fishing methods or boat anchors.

Washington — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is hosting government officials, scientists, business people and others at a two-day meeting focused on the sustainability of the global ocean. In an opening speech June 16, Kerry issued a challenge to those attending.

“I want us to walk away from here with a plan — a plan that puts an end to overfishing through new rules based on the best available science,” Kerry said, underscoring one of three focal issues — sustainable fishing, acidification and marine pollution — of the Our Ocean 2014 meeting.

One-third of the world’s fish stocks are currently overexploited, research shows, and the rest are being culled at a rate that will be unsustainable to support a growing global population.

Banning or limiting fishing for a time is one way to reverse the effects of over-harvesting, and people are ready to take that action in the Pacific Island archipelago nation of Kirabati. I-Kirabati President Anote Tong joined Kerry at the opening of the conference and told attendees that his nation will impose a ban on commercial fishing in more than 400,000 square kilometers of its territorial waters, effective January 2015.

The fishing ban is to be imposed in what is already a marine protected area in Kirabati’s waters, a zone including the Phoenix Island Protected Area. UNESCO designated this island group as a World Heritage Site in 2010 because of its unique coral archipelago ecosystem and other deep-sea habitats.

Marine protected areas can promote the recovery of fish populations, but they can also help lessen the impact of pollution and acidification. The oceans absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide that is contributing to climate change, raising ocean acidity and disrupting the delicate balance marine life needs to survive.

As a large atoll state, Tong said, Kiribati has already experienced the rising sea levels that are predicted as a consequence of climate change. The I-Kirabati are dealing with shoreline erosion, unusually high tides, the relocation of villages and the loss of food crops.

“Climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time,” Tong told the conference. Higher carbon dioxide levels, rising sea levels and ocean acidification also kill coral reefs and cause dead zones — areas where virtually no marine life survives — in ocean waters.

By focusing on these threats, Kerry wants to draw attention to the urgency of the need for concerted action to reverse these environmental trends.

“Protection of our oceans is a vital international security issue,” Kerry said. “It’s a vital security issue involving the movement of people, the livelihood of people, the capacity of people to exist and live where they live today.”

Kerry also hinted that the United States will announce steps to extend its marine protected areas, which presently encompass more than 580,000 square kilometers.

Kerry said the ocean is a shared resource of all of Earth’s people, and therefore it is the responsibility of all to protect it.

In keeping with that belief, the U.S. Department of State organized the Our Ocean 2014 conference to maintain a vibrant social media presence. The events can be followed live at the State Department’s Our Ocean 2014 video stream and on Twitter through the tag #OurOcean2014.

An online outreach campaign conducted via Thunderclap reached a social media network of 6.5 million.