Jay Nelson is director of the Pew Environment Group’s Global Ocean Legacy, a project to protect some of the world’s most spectacular marine environments. The organization has devoted plans to establish a world-class marine park in the waters around the three northernmost Mariana Islands – Asuncion, Maug and Uracus. Letters.
The Pew Charitable Trusts believes that such a programme would not only benefit the Mariana’s marine environment and economy, but would also greatly enhance the reputation of the Mariana Islands as an environmentally friendly tourist destination. The Pew Environment Group has launched a global effort to improve scientific understanding of the oceans, prevent the continued decline of fisheries to the benefit both fish and fishermen, and promote the preservation of particularly spectacular locations that have yet to suffer the devastating impacts of much of the world’s marine environment.
The main aim of the project is to reduce the scope and severity of three major global environmental problems such as dramatic changes to the Earth’s climate caused by the increasing concentration of global warming pollution in the atmosphere; erosion of large wilderness ecosystems that contain many of the world’s rapidly vanishing plants and animals; and damage to the world’s marine environment.
According to the Trusts the Mariana Islands is an ideal place for such project first, the environment in the waters around the northernmost islands has been little impacted by fishing or other extractive activities and is relatively healthy, containing some of the world’s most unique geological features and ecology. Secondly, there is virtually no fishing in this area because it is so remote, and has never had the concentration of high-value fish that would make it a productive commercial fishing area. And lastly, it contains a portion of the world’s deepest marine canyon and a host of native species, plants and other marine organisms that make it ecologically unique.
