These areas are quite remote, so it’s helpful to have a fairly large area delineated, but we didn’t want to go larger than the current weight that the science supported in terms of finding conservation benefit. So as you began to go out to 100 miles or 150 miles, it just wasn’t clear we would be accomplishing much more in the way of fully protecting these coral reef ecosystems and the birds that surround them that we were interested in.

We may yet learn more, but there appeared to be pretty solid ground focusing on 50.

Q: And if I could just follow, if I could. You mentioned that it’s going to be tough to monitor these areas. How are you going to do that?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Well, that will evolve over time, both with people in and about the resource, but also with advances in technology. So we begin to lay down the marks, we begin to put more monitoring systems, including passive monitoring systems that don’t require people. And then people pay more attention, because when you draw these lines, as we’ve learned from Hawaii and people enter the resource, important questions are asked, as, what are they doing there? Is this innocent passage? Are they there for scientific reasons? And then people just have a heightened level of awareness.

We know that over time this evolves well because our experience with marine sanctuaries has shown that after time people become quite invested in the conservation program, and you get a lot of just personal self-policing. And with things like Google Maps and Google Earth, our capacity only increases. And to me, what’s important is also let’s learn more about what’s happening under the water. Often we tend to focus on the surface or the very shallow coral systems, but these areas are an opportunity really to sort of revisit and reenergize our desire to learn about the depth of our world, even as we work on trying to get to Mars.

Q: Hey, there. So I wanted a very quick clarification of an earlier comment. So are you saying that recreational fishing through permitting will be allowed in all of these areas? Or are there any areas in which that activity would be absolutely prohibited?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: We’ve created a presumptive exclusion for — with the initiation of the monument. And upon request they’ll take a look at it on a location-specific basis. So as I indicated with the Central Islands, I think only one group, the Nature Conservancy, has asked for that, and they went through a process and have a well-managed process for doing it. That hasn’t occurred at any of the other Central Islands that are currently being managed. So we just don’t know what the potential for that is, but we’ve — to allow some flexibility, we’ve put in a process. But it will be undertaken to ensure that the activity will occur as a sustainably managed activity.

Q: And then, just a separate question. Obviously we talked about the 50 versus 200 miles. I was wondering, there’s also, I understand — in terms of the — for the length of the Marianas Trench, that’s protected from the rim of the canyon to the sea floor, and not from the rim to the surface of the water. And I was wondering, again, if you could clarify what the scientific reasoning was behind that.

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Yes, so the objects to be protected, as a result of the science review, was the geologic and natural bottom resource. So once you get up above the rim and out to the rim, you’re kind of in generic sea floor resource. If you go further out east, you begin to encounter the mineral resource, which is quite interesting. But the item of highest scientific value and interest is the geology and the living resource on that geology on the sea floor.

And so that’s why I wanted to be clear, the trench and the volcano’s events are going to be fully protected under the authorities of the Antiquities Act. The living resource in the water column, which you’re asking about, Juliette, it’s a very low productive area for fish and other marine life, so it was not an area that the science process identified as particularly significant. And so, at least in terms of the science as we know it today, there was no reason to consider fishing restrictions of any kind because they weren’t related to the protection of the resource that we were focused on. Does that make sense?

Q: Yes.

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Because I’ve heard this different ways from folks. I just want to be clear, we’re achieving full protection at 100 percent of these monuments with respect to the resources that we’re seeking to protect. So I think there’s been some confusion about that.

Q: Good afternoon. Thank you, sir.

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Thanks, Dean. Good to talk to you.

Q: Two questions. One, you mentioned monitoring. You also mentioned how remote this area is — and I have actually fished this area quite a bit. And my question to you is, monitoring is one thing, but enforcement is an entirely different issue. And I don’t honestly see how you can enforce any of this out there with the amount of government-based traffic that you have in the area. How do you plan to enforce these laws?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Well, let’s begin — first, this is our experience — these are challenging areas to get to, so there’s an embedded enforcement of just the difficulty of getting to these areas. Two, we operate from the presumption that most people who care about the resource, including your constituency, are law-abiding citizens, and so we expect that there will be a fair amount of increased awareness of the importance of the resource, and certainly that the boating community is very good about staying up to date on charts, especially the adventurous boating community, and staying up to date on — just for safety purposes — the conditions with respect to these remote areas.

Now, is there the potential for some Chinese commercial fishing fleet to come in and intrude the area? The answer to that is yes. And so one of our goals is through the management planning, and through several years of building out capacity, to also build out our capability to enforce.

And I want to underscore, that’s probably the bigger issue here. So for example, in these areas that I talked about where there’s large abundance of apex predators, like sharks — well, shark fins carry a pretty high dollar value on the international market. There are agreed prohibitions on shark finning in U.S. waters, but these areas are remote, and so we hope that this will bring heightened awareness, attention, and resources to ensuring that we don’t get illegal poaching in our waters.

And our own fishermen are really good about helping to self-police that because they, themselves, have an interest in assuring the sustainability of American fisheries.

Q: That’s very true. Our fishermen are not generally the problem on an international scale.

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: No, and that’s what I’m saying. Our fisherman, both commercial and recreational, are among our best enforcers.

Q: Quite right. But we don’t have much enforcement for the other signatories to any of our fisheries agreements that we’ve signed. One follow-up question. You mentioned Johnston Atoll as being in this monument, and I’m wondering, Johnston Atoll is one of the main storage stockpile areas for American nerve gas and biological warfare weaponry. Are you planning to remove that to prevent any potential catastrophic accident leaking into this monument area?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Right now that is being managed by the military, and as are — as are the facilities around Wake Island. And so we will be working very closely with the Department of Defense in the ongoing management of that. They’re doing, as best as we can see, a pretty effective job of keeping tabs on that, and it’s very important that they do so, and the people doing it are pretty solid professionals.

So as I’ve indicated, we’ll — we continue to raise the awareness, raise the importance of these areas, and as the military withdraws from some of these areas, we’re able to ensure that they retain protections. Right now, a couple of areas are fully off-limits to anybody just for military purposes, but as the military transitions away and fulfills their obligations in terms of materiels management, we can then transfer them effectively to the resource agencies.

But there’s not — you know, the plans to do that are undertaken through another process. This monument declaration will just ensure that there’s an orderly transition when that occurs.

Q: Thank you.

Q: I just wanted to clarify a couple of the other questions that have been asked. I haven’t seen a map or detailed description of this area, so do I understand right that in some of the protected areas there would be commercial fishing allowed, and in some areas there wouldn’t be? Or can you explain that one more time, please?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Yes. Again, with respect to the coral reef ecosystems in the 50 nautical mile areas around these islands, commercial fishing will be precluded. With respect to the bottom geologic resource, so the trench, the Marianas Trench, and the undersea active volcanoes and hydrothermal vents, we just don’t deal with fishing because it’s not relevant to the protection of the resource.

So fishing is handled under the Magnuson Act. I want to be careful about your question about restrictions, because in these areas under Magnuson-WestPac, they’ve actually done a fair amount of delineation and set certain restrictions with respect to certain fishing activities. So those are being undertaken in the context of the broader fishery resource being done by WestPac and by NOAA.

So, for example, around Rose Atoll, WestPac and NOAA have established a 50-mile zone that precludes large vessels from entering, so smaller vessels can go in. They just set up, down in the Southern Marianas Islands, they’ve just set up a new management area out to 50 miles, under Magnuson for bottom fish. And then in the Central Pacific, the WestPac has a whole series of different management plans with respect to corals, with respect to bottom fishing, and a series of other types of fishing.

So don’t take away from this conversation that the other areas are unregulated. Actually, they are very effectively regulated under the Magnuson-Stevens Act and by WestPac. So this is — these are complementary strategies.

Q: And then what other protections come under this — these new national monuments? What else are people restricted from doing?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: The core of this is actually restriction against extraction or destruction of the resource that we’re protecting — so the coral reef communities, the geology and the unique living resources that inhabit the thermal vents and the undersea volcanoes, for example. And then there’s things yet to be discovered as we go back to the trench and begin the process of exploration.

It was in 1960 that the Navy and a Swedish scientist made it to the bottom of the trench, 29,000 feet below the sea, and very few have gone back to try that. So we actually hope to open a new age of exploration into the deep sea, as well.

Q: Thanks.

Q: Thank you. Thanks for doing this. What lessons have you folks learned as you’ve traveled (break in telephone/audio feed) Hawaiian Islands Monument — either lessons you’ve learned, or issues that came up you hadn’t anticipated that, now that you know about, that will stand you or the next administration in a better position to move forward on these new ones? Are there some sort of lessons learned or issues raised by this most recent effort before this announcement?

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