location: Cook Islands

location: Cook Islands

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Young Māori divers hunt invasive crown-of-thorns starfish to save coral reefs
- The island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands is experiencing an outbreak of crown-of-thorns-starfish (taramea, Acanthaster planci), which could jeopardize the survival of its surrounding coral reef.
- Local environmental organization Kōrero O Te `Ōrau has been tackling the outbreak since 2020 by training young Māori people in scuba diving and running regular expeditions to remove taramea from the reef and bury them inland.
- The work has contained the outbreak on two sides of the island by collecting over 3,700 crown-of-thorns starfish, ultimately mitigating its impact on reef health. However, ongoing efforts are required.
- The project is also upskilling young Cook Islanders in marine management theory and practice.

Cook Islands to grant seabed mining exploration licenses within a year
- The Cook Islands government will allow miners to prospect for minerals on its seabed within the coming financial year.
- Officials justify the decision partly on the need to ease the country’s economic dependence on tourism, which has taken a hit from coronavirus-related travel restrictions.
- Scientists, environmental advocates and civil society organizations have expressed alarm at the plan and warned of potentially disastrous ecosystem impacts that could also hurt local fisheries.
- The Cook Islands in 2017 designated its entire exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of nearly 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles) as a mixed-use marine protected area, but advocates are concerned that seabed mining could contravene the objectives of the park.

Cook Islands MPA leader fired after supporting seabed mining freeze
- Last month the Cook Islands government dismissed the director of the world’s biggest mixed-use marine protected area (MPA), which is called Marae Moana.
- Jacqueline Evans, a marine scientist, had played a key leadership role in the seven-year campaign to establish Marae Moana and served as its director since the MPA was enshrined into law in 2017.
- Her firing came after she expressed support for a 10-year moratorium on seabed mining across the Pacific Ocean. Seabed mining has been a sticking point throughout the history of Marae Moana, with some environmentalists hoping to prohibit it outright and other parties wanting to explore it as a potential source of revenue.
- Evans was a 2019 winner of the prestigious international Goldman Prize for grassroots environmentalists in recognition of her work to make Marae Moana a reality.

Give it back to the gods: Reviving Māori tradition to protect marine life
- Ra’ui is an ancient Polynesian form of resource management in which traditional leaders close designated areas to the harvest of key species.
- While the power of ra’ui remains strong in the outer Cook Islands, where local tradition often trumps national decree, the system fell into disuse on the largest and most populous island of Rarotonga half a century ago.
- There, traditional leaders briefly and successfully revived the ra’ui system two decades ago, only for it to falter again in recent years.
- Today, traditional leaders in the Cook Islands are cautiously optimistic that the country’s 2017 decision to designate its entire marine territory as a mixed-use protected area will help reinvigorate ra’ui across Rarotonga.

Paradise, polluted: Cook Islands tries to clean up its tourism sector
- Tourism accounts for almost 70 percent of the Cook Islands’ economy, but the industry is proving extremely damaging to its delicately balanced island ecosystem, and is contributing to islanders’ detachment from traditional ways of life.
- Now, though, some tourism players, activists and government officials are pushing the industry to change tack in hopes it can start to sustain the island’s people and culture while protecting its ecology, too.
- Tourism operators are being asked to live up to the sustainability street cred that the country’s 2017 decision to designate its entire exclusive economic zone as a multiple-use marine protected area has granted it on the international stage.

Will a massive marine protected area safeguard Cook Islands’ ocean?
- In 2017, the Cook Islands government passed the Marae Moana Act, which designated the country’s entire exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as a multiple-use marine protected area (MPA).
- Spanning almost 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles) — an area roughly the size of Mexico — the MPA is the biggest of its kind in the world.
- Now, as bureaucrats, NGOs and traditional leaders get to grips with implementing Marae Moana, many stakeholders are wondering what the act will mean in practice and whether it can meaningfully change the way the ocean is managed.

Building the world’s biggest MPA: Q&A with Goldman winner Jacqueline Evans
- In July 2017, the South Pacific nation of the Cook Islands made a bold bid to convert its entire territorial waters, the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), into a mixed-use marine protected area.
- Called Marae Moana, or “sacred ocean,” the MPA spans almost 2 million square kilometers (772,200 square miles), making it the biggest in the world, although only parts of it are strictly protected from fishing and other extractive activities.
- Jacqueline Evans, a marine conservationist, was the driving force behind the MPA.
- This week, Evans was awarded a prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her work on Marae Moana.

Meet the winners of the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize
- This year is the 30th anniversary of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
- Also called the Green Nobel Prize, the annual award honors grassroots environmental heroes from six continental regions: Europe, Asia, North America, Central and South America, Africa, and islands and island nations.
- This year’s winners are Alfred Brownell from Liberia, Bayarjargal Agvaantseren from Mongolia, Ana Colovic Lesoska from North Macedonia, Jacqueline Evans from the Cook Islands, Alberto Curamil from Chile, and Linda Garcia from the United States.

Women in small-island states exposed to high levels of mercury: study
- Tests of hair samples from hundreds of women in small-island countries and territories found 75 percent had mercury levels high enough to cause fetal neurological damage.
- Nearly 60 percent of the women had mercury levels exceeding a threshold beyond which brain damage, IQ loss, and kidney and cardiovascular damage can occur.
- The report attributed the mercury pollution in fisheries in these regions to air emissions of the toxic heavy metal emanating from coal-fired power plants and artisanal gold mining.
- The researchers have called for a complete ban on the trade in and use of mercury, and urged a transition away from coal power to renewables.

Tuna catch monitoring enters the electronic age
- A new electronic monitoring system is being tested in the western and central Pacific to improve the timeliness and accuracy of tuna catch data and the transparency of tuna supply chains through faster more effective on-board and portside catch monitoring.
- Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing results in overharvesting and an annual loss of US $600 million for the region and is perpetrated primarily by licensed vessels hauling in unreported and unregulated fish stock.
- The Onboard, Observer, and TAILS portside e-Reporting apps are still in the testing phase, but their use is expected to expand across the Pacific.

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