Coral at Jarvis Island National Wildlife Refuge
{credit}US Fish and Wildlife Service{/credit}

US President Barack Obama has vastly increased marine protection in the Pacific by declaring 1 million square kilometres of ocean part of a giant marine reserve.

Obama’s declaration on 25 September increased from 210,000 square kilometres to 1.3 million km² the size of the protected area around a group of small islands in the central Pacific, stretching from Wake Atoll to Jarvis Island. This makes the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRINM), originally created by former president George W. Bush, one of the largest marine protected areas in the world. Thousands of sea birds, turtles, sharks and other marine life will now be fully protected from commercial, if not from recreational, fishing over this extended area.

The expansion was not as large as some researchers and conservationists were hoping. It had been suggested that the reserve could have been expanded by 1.8 million km², and the scale-down seems to be a concession to the tuna fishing industry, which is active in the region.

Still, the expansion means Obama has put more of the planet under protection than has any other world leader, says Elliott Norse, chief scientist at the Marine Conservation Institute, a non-governmental organization in Seattle, Washington, that has played a central part in the creation and expansion of PRIMNM.

“We have been working to make this happen for nearly a decade,” says Norse. “We’re thrilled that President Obama has done this.”

Norse says the expansion should act as a trigger to nations that have been less progressive in protected their own waters, such as China, Russia and France: “We would love to see these and other nations take their cue from this action.”

{credit}Mohammed Al Momany/NOAA{/credit}

Don’t just gather data, do something. Scientists need to stop using a lack of knowledge as an excuse for not doing more to protect threatened species, a major gathering of marine conservationists has been warned.

“Science matters deeply, but we can’t let ourselves be trapped by the need to gather more data,” Amanda Vincent, a marine researcher at the University of British Columbia, told delegates at the opening of the International Marine Conservation Congress, which kicked off on 14 August in Glasgow, UK.

Vincent’s work with seahorses has involved fighting for better control of the international trade in these animals, many of which are endangered. Trade in seahorses is now restricted under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). If scientists had waited until they knew everything about every species – or even until they had enough data to propose detailed plans for managing catches in individual countries – this protection would never have arrived, she says.

Vincent told the meeting that every speaker who called for more data on a conservation issue should also be prepared to present a recommendation for something that could actually be done now.

Making an analogy with the medical profession, she told the meeting that doctors use all available evidence when deciding how to treat their patients, but when there is a lack of evidence for a particular condition they don’t generally stand by and do nothing. The oceans are under threat, says Vincent, and “you don’t do research while your patient is dying”.

She warned the gathering of conservation researchers that “we’re a bit weasely sometimes in hiding behind our lack of knowledge” and told them to “just get going”.

Follow the meeting on twitter via @dpcressey and #IMCC3