 back to ThinkTech. This is Community Matters here on a given Tuesday. I'm Jay Fidel, and we have Bob Richmond. He is the Executive Director of the, he's the Principal Executive of the Marine Laboratory at Koala, which is part of the University of Hawaii. Welcome to the show, Bob. Hi, Jay. At the time of this, I'm a Research Professor and the Director. We have no Executive Director or any Grand Puba, just a Research Professor and Director at Kuala Marine Lab. You've been there for what, 400, 500 years now? It feels like it. Yeah, 18 years and counting. Okay. And where is the laboratory? I think it's very interesting. It's in Koala, but where? Yeah, we're at Point Panic for those of you that are body surfing aficionados, that are right outside our door here. It's one of the best body surfing places around. We're just by the cut at Kuala Basin on the other side of the cut at Point Panic. In general, what does the laboratory do? We have five, what we call major research groups with principal investigators. We're focused in on the marine environment of Hawaii and the broader Pacific Islands. A lot of the work we do here is based using the most modern molecular tools, but we also engage quite a bit with traditional cultural practitioners as well. So we do everything from molecules to ecosystems and from rich to reef. What's your specialty? What are you trained in? My specialty is right behind me, coral reefs. I'm a coral reef biologist by training, but like all the other members of our faculty and our graduate students postdocs, a lot of the tools that I and my colleagues use are molecular tools. We actually call it Dr. Doodle Science. It's a way of actually listening to the animals by corals are just chronic liars. They lie about their age. They lie about their taxonomy. One thing they can't lie about are molecular processes. And so we use these tools to be able to ask them, how are you feeling? And we basically mooched a lot of techniques from human medicine using what we call Dr. Doodle Meet CSI. We use forensic techniques to be able to understand the health and well being a coral reef. And of course, the people who depend on them. Yeah, it sounds like fun, but it also sounds very important. Are you part of SOAS, by the way? Yes, we are. So we're now part of SOAS. We moved in about three years ago. So now we're a part of the School of Ocean Earth Science and Technology. So why is it important that we care about these reefs? You know, a lot of people at SOAS and in the university and in the state, I'm thinking of the aquarium itself, you know, down in Waikiki, very interested in coral. What's so important about it? And assuming that it's very important, I think it is, but what can be done to save the coral? Okay. Certainly my area of coral studies show that it's a no brainer, that these things are incredibly important ecologically for the services they provide. They provide over $360 million worth of revenue into Hawaii alone on an annual basis. They protect our shorelines from erosion in some places, not so much where the reefs are not doing well. But they're also cultural resources. These are the centers of activity, not only for the people of Hawaii, but throughout the Pacific Islands, that is a very much part of the social fabric. Everything from the activities people do to glean the reefs to get healthy foods, rather than can spam and ban a sausage that have become kind of rampant throughout the Pacific. Interestingly enough, there is just a very strong link between environmental health and human health. And we see that definitely between coral reefs and people and the ocean in general, our research here and what we're talking about today with Pacific remote islands goes beyond the coral reef to the open ocean itself. But there again is a huge connection. It turns out for many of the pelagic fish, especially the ones that people love to eat in Hawaii, things like ono and mahi, the majority of their stomach contents for the juveniles up to 60% can be derived from coral reef larvae and organisms coming off the reef. Bottom line is without reefs, a lot of our oceanic fisheries would be in trouble. Our coastal areas would be in trouble. Worldwide, over 500 billion people depend on coral reefs with an estimated value of about a trillion dollars. Okay, let's switch gears and talk about the larger picture of the monuments. And I've always had trouble with why you call it a monument in the first place. The first monument that was newsworthy was a few years ago. And it was somewhat controversial, matter of fact. And it involves some of the islands in the Pacific, not too far from Hawaii. So query, what is a monument? What is that monument? And how does the one we're talking about today, which is the remote Pacific Islands monument, differ? Yeah, so they're actually part and parcel of the same concerns, the same opportunities and the same challenges that go with it. But the concept is that the way things are going in the world and what's going on in the ocean, the bottom line is whatever we do that's good for the ocean is good for all of humanity. We depend on the ocean. The majority of the oxygen comes from tidal plankton in the ocean. Majority of protein comes from the ocean as well. The ocean resources are critically important, but the ocean is a buffer for temperature. And so in a world of climate change, we're among the first ones to see it, not only Hawaii, but all of the Pacific Islands. There's a general scientific consensus that is well borne out that we need to protect about 30% of the world's oceans in order to leave any kind of legacy for future generations. And that's really been one of the great things about working in Hawaii and working throughout the Pacific Islands is people here care about place. They care about themselves, their cultures. They care about future generations. I go to Washington DC about four to five times a year, at least in non COVID years, the last couple of years have been different. But during a normal year, I'll go to Washington DC anytime between four to six years in a role as an advisor for some of the congressional committees in the White House on science issues and ocean issues. Whenever I go to Washington DC, the time frame is two years if you're in the House of Representatives, four years if you're in the executive branch, or six years if you're in the Senate. And rarely if ever does anyone ask me about anything that goes beyond two, four, six years. When I work in Hawaii and when I work throughout the Pacific Islands, typically it's what will the impacts of this decision be on our children, our grandchildren and generations to come. And what a world of difference. That's why it's such a pleasure to be a marine biologist working in the Pacific Islands where people care about the legacy we need for future generations. And I say that not just as a scientist, but as a parent. So this idea of 30% of the world's oceans in protection, you may have heard of that as a 30 by 30 Hawaii has our own 30 by 30 program where we're trying to protect 30% of our coral reefs and marine environments by the year 30 2030. But that's also national and now it's international. And it's just common sense, we can continue to exploit the ocean at the level right now and expect there to be anything left over for our children. We can expect to continue using the ocean as a dumping ground for plastics and pesticides and pollutants of all sorts. I mentioned briefly in our discussion there's a plan to release over a million tons of radioactive water from the Fukushima power plant disaster. And the ocean simply can't keep doing this and have anything left over for the future. And once again, whatever we do that damages ocean health really affects the health of all humanity. So this 30% goal, how do we achieve it? We're under 5% right now. These marine national monuments are critically important. Papanamokuakea, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands was the one that came up a few years ago. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. But what can the federal government do in a monument? What makes a monument different than the rest of the ocean? You know, once the federal government designates a given set of islands or some stretch of ocean as a monument, what does it do in that area that protects the coral and the ocean in general? It provides a regulatory framework. It doesn't mean that it's closed to use. What it does mean is that the uses are controlled and regulated to allow for sustainability. The idea there is within these marine national monuments that are different. There's something called the Marine Sanctuary. So this gets down to the various laws, but under something called the Antiquities Act, the executive branch, the president, and designate areas for protection. And this has been done throughout history in the US, everything from Yellowstone National Park. It's been done on land. And more recently it's been done in the ocean. So what it does from anything else is it provides layers of protection. It regulates fisheries. No commercial fisheries allowed. Real hot topic these days is seabed mining. There's kind of a free for all going on of countries wanting to buy up leases to be able to mine the bottom of the ocean. Very destructive practice. And this gets to the idea of sustainability. The oceans are a bit different than land in that boundaries don't really matter as much because of connectivity. We're going to ask you about that. So the federal government wants to regulate these areas. Are they within the federal jurisdiction, the jurisdiction of the United States? And I'm wondering exactly how the federal government can pretend to have the control of these areas. What's that based on? Yeah. So it's called the exclusive economic zone. Every nation in the world has what's called their right to their exclusive economic zone, often called the EEZ. And that goes out to 200 miles from mean high water. So you basically measure out anywhere around that. And that's what it is for the Pacific remote islands. Some are protected already to 200 miles from this mean high watermark that went a number of years ago. And the goal for this recent effort is to be able to expand the protections from the present 50 miles out to the full exclusive economic zone of 200. And so those boundaries are well designed. The issue is that fish don't respect political boundaries. So they move in, they move out. The same can be said for pollutants. The same can be said for plastics. And so these are what we call trans boundary issues. We can set a geographic boundary. But what moves in and moves out is really tied to currents and the biology of the organisms you're looking at. So the important, the islands are important because you measure the economic zone from the islands. If the island is a U.S. island, then you measure out to 200 miles from that, right? So that's why it's not that you're doing anything much on the island, but you're creating the monument from the island. Yeah. Absolutely. And that's critically important two ways. One, people may be familiar with China dredging and building up islands in the South China Sea to expand their exclusive economic zone. What they're basically doing is saying, we're making new islands. And oh, by the way, now that we have this thing that didn't used to be there, we're extending our control 200 miles in all directions from that. The opposite is a concern for many of the low islands in Micronesia, the atolls with sea level rise. Some of them are already getting overwashed in 2014. Majuro Island in the Marshall Islands, their capital was underwater for about 72 hours. There was a big storm that went by during the King tide. And there was water washing across the atoll the entire time. What happens to an island when it starts to succumb to sea level rise? Does the nation lose access to that? That's one of the issues everyone's watching for security. Can you build an island in the middle of nowhere and claim it for 200 miles in all directions as your EEZ? And if under sea level rise scenarios, and it's happening, it's not a projection, it's real. What happens to islands that are losing some of these low lying areas? Are they going to no longer have that as part of their exclusive economics? Sure, it's changing, it's all changing. You mentioned undersea mining, and I'm very interested in that, that manganese nodules, as I remember, it's very valuable. But you talk about getting a lease, getting a lease of the undersea area, and then mining. But who gives you the lease if the United States is interested in protecting the environment? It's not going to be so quick to give you a lease. How does that work and who's doing it? And how far advanced and developed are we in terms of mining manganese nodules and other minerals in this area? Either the first monument that we talked about a few years ago, or the monument now, the remote Pacific Island monument? Yes, so these are all really important questions that need to be addressed. Right now, nobody is commercially doing seabed mining at the level that makes it profitable. It's expensive to do things in the deep ocean, but by the same token, there's a great deal of concern about just how damaging these things are. Our oceans right now are receptacle or land-based runoff that's doing damage. If you take places even in the Midwest and the central of the United States where the Mississippi River begins, that's where the oceans' pollutions begin. Pesticides, runoff, heavy metal, cadmium from tire wear, you name it, is washing off of farmlands in urbanized areas, going into the headwaters of the Mississippi, making all the way down into the Gulf of Mexico and then from there distributed into the ocean. And so we're used to having what we call land-based sources of pollution. We also have atmospheric pollution and we know global climate change is a great example of that as CO2 and other greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere. They press into the surface of the ocean and that's what we call ocean acidification. CO2 is basically carbonating the ocean and making it more acidic, which is definitely causing a problem with zooplankton that feed fish and other organisms. The last thing we need is another source of pollution from the bottom up. The deep ocean is a receptacle for a variety of toxicants that have sunk over time. We have radionuclides that are in the bottom sediments from the nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands from the 1940s and 50s into the 1960s. There was a study done recently in the bottom of the Mariana's trench, the deepest part of the ocean, the most remote part of the ocean, north of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana, north of Saipan. And they pulled amphipods, a little marine crustacean out of the mud down there and it had levels of pollution higher than in the most polluted rivers in industrialized China. Wow, that's terrifying. I would not expect that at all. No, and it was a real wake-up call. The point is that there's no place on earth that is isolated from human activities, pollution. And when we talk about seabed mining, not only does it go for things like manganese crusts and cobalt crusts, manganese nodules, but they're extremely dirty. They're like these underwater tractors that tear up the bottom. And it turns out, and this is one of the reasons why we worry about the deep ocean around these monuments, is we have some of the oldest animals on the earth living in these deep water environments. Golden coral, bamboo coral, black coral, can be hundreds of years old or even thousands of years old. Right behind me, we're looking at a coral reef. Most of those corals are five years to 17, maybe 25 years old. And we have corals on Maui, Oluwalu site that were maybe two to three hundred years old. We have corals that are living on these slopes within these marine protected areas, these monuments that are 2,000 to 3,000 years old. Right now we're in such a bad position with many coastal reefs in places like Florida. It went from 60% coral cover to 40%. Now many of their reefs after a major typhoon, global warming, bleaching events, and a coral disease outbreak that are less than 5% coral cover down to 2%. And the only hope we have for coral reefs in the future is for restoration. It's one thing to restore a coral that's five to 30 years old. It's another thing to try to think about restoring deep water ecosystems where the corals are thousands of years old. It's simply impossible. So once again, the argument for what goes on in these marine national monuments is protection against commercial fishing, trawling, and seabed mining. And we really need to protect a portion of the ocean as our bank account from which we can draw the interest, which is the reproduction for generations to come. Well, I want to talk for a second about the competition with China. You mentioned China has its own way of looking at the economic, boost of economic zone. We can't control that. I suppose they can't control what we do. But this is a global issue. It's a global deterioration. So what they do affects the world, what we do affects the world. And one particular metal, and I think it's very important, is cobalt. Cobalt is a battery metal. And I don't know if you are aware of this, but there was this big competition in the Congo for a company there. It was an American company originally. And China bought this company out. It was a source of enormous amounts of cobalt. And then somehow more recently, the American company bought it back again. And this is agencies for the two countries in the US and for China competing for sources of cobalt. Well, if cobalt is down on the sea bottom, and if cobalt can be mined the way manganese can be mined, I can see this is going to be a real contention about who can go where and take what cobalt, even if they can't come under the original monument or the new, you know, remote Pacific Islands monument, the Chinese can go elsewhere and disturb the sea bottom taking cobalt because they want the cobalt. Do you see this as a geopolitical issue? Oh, absolutely. And that's the reality of it. Right now, the United States is going through what they call the Pacific Pivot, realizing that if the United States doesn't provide the support and security for a lot of these islands, then China will. And so, you know, I've been involved with some of the military groups in helping provide them with good science and how to do things in a way that's sustainable as well. But, you know, you would be naive not to think that this is not a big geopolitical issue going on for the Pacific region. That's why things like these marine protected areas, these marine national monuments and marine sanctuaries are so important because this sets aside something for the future. Once again, it's a bank account. The living organisms in these areas are basically the principal. And every time they reproduce, we have corals that spawn on an annual cycle. We have fish that spawn regularly. And that spawn is basically the interest that you can then use for the future. We call that fishing the line. If you can develop a large population, your large principal in these protected areas, as your kind of bank account, it's an interest bearing account, you really want that. And for things like fish and fisheries, we say it's BFFs, not best friends forever texting. It's big fat females. You double the size of female fish, you increase her a capacity by a thousand volt. So a few large female tuna can outdo a thousand smaller tuna. And the way you protect these BFFs, these big fat females, is by having protected areas large enough to keep them within the boundaries there. So when you ask about the issue of deep seabed mining, this is the other problem. Mining is one of the dirtiest industries on earth. We know that the runoff, the sediment, the pollution that goes with it, is easier to control on land where you can put dams and you can try to keep things in an area. When you do things in the seabed, it truly is transboundary, meaning it will drift. All of the pollutants and all of the waste will drift with occurrence over large distances. We can control, and that's why these are so critically important for the US to step up and protect these remote areas. Right now they're not being used for much. There's not much, even in the way fisheries going on there, this is low hanging fruit. And this gets us towards that goal of getting 30 percent of the ocean protected. We use eight criteria, if you just ignore Papua and Amakua, Cape Pacific, remote islands and the location, and just say what would you look for, or the best places to put these things? That's a different approach. Rather than saying should you protect this area, we backed up and said there are eight criteria, the location, especially with regard to things like climate change, warm water is piling up around Indonesia called the Western Pacific Wormpool. It's pushing fish away from the Western Pacific, north of the equator, south of the equator, and to the east. So the Pacific remote islands and Papua and Amakua Kaia are the perfect location to set up these protected areas for the present and future migration of fish. What the content is, what's the biodiversity, what lives in there, what fish, what reefs, what others. But also the geographical features, you said about manganese nodules and cobalt crusts, they're usually associated with subduction zones with trenches and with seamounts. The seamounts are the areas where ocean currents cause upwelling. And we know that there are areas where upwelling creates nutrient plumes that attract fish for spawning aggregations. Some of these are within the exclusive economic zones. So we have seamounts within Papua and Amakua Kaia and within the Pacific remote islands, which makes them great candidates for protecting fisheries and generating that interest from the reproduction of the fish. But we also know there are going to be some high seas one as well. And that's where we need to work together. You don't want people marine mining in areas where you have upwelling that's going to be good for tuna and pelagic fish reproduction. You want to protect those areas as an investment for the future. All these elements work together and you have to be concerned about them all and the way they insight the environment itself. It's the many elements all engaging, interacting with each other. So what's remarkable about Hawaii is that we are expert about this. We are expert in the Pacific. We are expert in these monuments and beyond these monuments. We know the science and I suppose you could say we know the culture too. And I would like you to talk about the coalition of organizations from Hawaii that are interested in this and their efforts to make the point in Washington. Oh, absolutely. And Papua and Amakua Kaia expansion actually started with Indigenous practitioners from Hawaii. There were seven Kapuna, including Ainoa Thompson, Uncle Saul, Ahala, others who are traditional practitioners of Hawaiian culture who were the first ones to bring into the Obama administration for the expansion. I was brought along as a scientist to support the science side and the data side, but it was really wonderful. It was just such a great opportunity to work as part of this coalition. There are NGOs involved in it, those that are for environmental protection, those that are tied to Indigenous practices and Indigenous rights. And then myself, that was one of what I actually call a pet scientist. Our job is to come in and be the honest brokers of information. And it was this beautiful confluence of what we call biocultural resources. They're biological resources of cultural significance. And when you put them together, it's not just the biology that matters, but the culture matters a lot. I'm not a cultural practitioner. I'm not native Hawaiian, but I can certainly deeply appreciate the passion and the way in which the cultural practitioners were looking at this intergenerational responsibility and what a treaty was for me to be able to come in with the science and say, you know, everything that you guys have said and the traditional knowledge of solid science is some of the best out there. But to take the traditional ecological knowledge and blend it with what we call the contemporary or the Western science, there was a complete harmony between the two. What is the, you know, the coalition is now seeking some relief, seeking benefit from the White House, from the federal government of Washington. Was that relief already established for the first monument? Is this something where you want the same relief as you have had in the first monument or is it different? And what efforts are you engaged in to try to get the White House and the federal government to help you out, that is, to respond to the coalition? Yeah, so the authority to establish the Marine National Monuments resides with the federal government and with the executive branch. They have the authority under the Antiquities Act to do that. And then there's another way of protecting areas through the Marine Centuries Program, which is under NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But the state also has a major role in this as well. The water is out to 12 miles under state jurisdiction. So first three miles and up to 12. And so it really needs to be a partnership between the state and the federal government. And what was really important about it is that the federal requirements include consultation with the affected communities that includes the indigenous people, that includes the fishers, that includes all the potential stakeholders and users. And they also identified these to be scientifically based. So my role was on the science. The culture matters a lot in these discussions as well. And again, it began with the Native Hawaiian community for Papua and Amokuakea. These precipitate remote islands were actually very important. There were Native Hawaiians who were leaving out on these islands during World War II to not only have quote unquote possession, but to keep an eye open. And several of them died in the process of protecting Hawaiian the nation. So there's a cultural value there. Some of the Great Battles of the Pacific were in Papua and Amokuakea. And so the cultural from traditional Hawaiian knowledge and culture to quote unquote American and Western culture are inextricably linked as well. And our job on the science was actually pretty easy. When we put together these criteria of location, content size, remoteness, the time they've been protected, the connectivity with other areas of the Pacific, the ability to do compliance and enforcement, it was a no brainer. You could not pick better areas under any circumstances than the Pacific remote islands and Papua and Amokuakea as areas for protection. Are you seeking money? The goal is to be able to get the protections put into place. But there's a request for funding to say, how do you protect biodiversity when you don't know what's out there? So we're in discussions with NOAA and the National Science Foundation to find what we're calling voyages of exploration to develop regional capacity within the native Hawaiian and Pacific Island communities to go throughout these areas to be able to do good science. The University of Hawaii has got some of the best ocean researchers in the world and so has the Elderware. And to be able to really say, if we're going to protect it, what are we really protecting? What's down there? And we have just a fine, we know maybe one 1 millionth of 1% of what actually exists out there. So learning more about what's there to protect, first you protect it, then you begin to understand what's there, otherwise going the other way around by the time we figure out what's there, if we don't put the protections in, it will all be gone. Well, it strikes me, Bob. You have now two monuments, okay? First one, which had a certain amount of resistance from the fishing industry. Second one would, maybe I think if they're not part of your coalition, they're close to it to appreciate what you're doing and maybe it's not so controversial as before, but the other thing that strikes me is there's a lot of ocean out there. There's a lot of islands out there. Maybe there's another one coming down the pipe. There's another remote Pacific Island monument coming and maybe another coalition or an expansion of this coalition to cover not only one and two, but number three too. What's the future? Oh, right now Palau is a very good example. Palau established the Palau National Marine Sanctuary. 80% of their EEZ is closed to all fishing. 20% is open for indigenous fishing from their community. The Federated States of Micronesia, a little bit closer to the West for us, is now looking at establishing some large-scale NPAs and also the Marshall Islands. And that's what we really need. That's the connectivity. When we start to look at how we position this strategically, like pieces of puzzle on the table, how do you fit them together? If the US is leading by example, the Crimidek Islands in New Zealand, I work with the Maui communities there because they have authority, they're getting ready to set aside large areas as well. So the bottom line is that we can't do it alone, but if we're willing to do our share, other nations are stepping up as well. And the way that you do that is through collaboration, cooperation, that is really the goal for success. And that's how I think we will in fact reach our 30%. If the US is contributing 5%, the other islands in the Pacific are going to have to come up with about 20%. But I work with the Pacific Island Forum. That's 18 independent island nations. They're watching all of this and they're stepping up as well. What international bodies are concerned with the global picture on this? Do you work through them? Do they work independently or in a parallel way to what you're doing about these remote islands in the Pacific? Yeah, so there's through the United Nations, UNESCO. There's also a number of other groups. There's what's called the Partners to the Nauru Agreement for Fisheries. There are Pacific coalitions like the Pacific Island Forum, the Micronesian Island Forum, Association of Pacific Island Legislatures. I've been around here long enough. I've been working in the Pacific for over 46 years now. I'm working with a number of these. Some of the present day administrators and politicians and leaders are past students of mine, and which is wonderful to see. The Minister for Natural Resources for Palau is one of my past graduate students of Palau. And so these relationships exist on trust and respect, which is the coin of the realm of the Pacific. And it's going to take the community to do it together. As we say, the rising tide flows all canoes. The kind of leadership we're seeing coming from Nainoa-Thompson, Polynesian Voyage Society, other groups in the Federated States of Micronesia, the communities from Sadawal, Mt. Gilag, who taught Nainoa how to sail. The leadership out of the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, and Marshalls is really important to the U.S. as part of the COFA, Compact of Free Association States. And then we have the other 18 Pacific Island nations in the Pacific Island Forum. So I remain very optimistic about the future. And again, I just treasure my position of being able to provide some science to support the wonderful cultural strength that we're seeing and the leadership that's being presented for the Pacific Islands. This is really important. It sounds like a full-time job, though. This goes beyond marine research because we're talking about engaging with so many people and dealing with so many organizations and members of the coalition. Do you sleep well? I do. I started with full head of hair, so you can see what was underneath. But the bottom line is that it gives me optimism for the future. I'm working with graduate students. Most of my graduate students are native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders. They give me the confidence and the optimism for the future. I fully believe the oceans are threatened but not doomed, and it's totally up to us. And when I look at the leaders and I look at my students, I have optimism that it will be okay. That's great, Bob. Well, thanks so much for telling us about this. It's like we have to keep on talking about it, though, to make sure that everybody in the state of Hawaii appreciates the situation, the risks, and what you guys are doing and can do, and what others in the world are doing and what they can do. So I think you're involved in a very important mission, and I think we should all appreciate you for that. I appreciate you, Bob Richmond. A researcher, did I say that right, at the Marine Laboratory in Kuala? Part of the School of Ocean Earth Science and Technology at UH Manoa. Thank you so much, Bob. Thanks so much. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.