Champion endorses marine park

One of the world’s foremost oceanographers, hailed by Time Magazine as a ”hero for the planet“, is on Rarotonga to endorse the Cook Islands’ proposed marine park.

Between three days diving in Aitutaki, watching whales aboard Nan Hauser’s research vessel and taking calls from Radio New Zealand, Sylvia Earle somehow found time to sit down with Cook Islands News.

Earle is an oceanographer, author and lecturer who has led over 50 ocean research expeditions around the world.

Three decades ago she became the first woman to walk, untethered, on the seafloor at a greater depth than any other woman before or since, and in the 1980s she founded two companies that designed and built undersea vehicles enabling scientists to work at previously inaccessible depths. She was promoted to the rank of chief scientist at the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and today she is explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society.

Celebrated in scientific circles, she has a powerful voice and uses it to promote the careful conservation of the world’s oceans.

Earle told Cook Islands News she is in Rarotonga to endorse and support the Cook Islands marine park initiative at the Pacific Islands Forum. She believes that licensing foreign vessels to dip into Pacific fish stocks ”takes a lot of integrity out of the system“, and supports a movement toward more sustainable fisheries.

She also applauded the Cook Islands’ goal to be energy independent, noting that ”it’s possible (to) return to the roots and to those values“, particularly in a place where sun and wind are abundant resources.

Earle is here to support an idea that, in her words, will ”make a real difference that affects people and the natural system in this part of the world“.

She called the Cook Islands marine park movement ”truly unprecedented“, and applauded its leadership and the attitude and awareness level she senses from local people.

She hailed Kevin Iro, who had a dream years ago to create a marine park in Cook Islands waters, as a passionate and ambitious conservationist.

”(Iro) is driven by the same sort of thing that drives me,“ she explained. ”He says he created the concept of the marine park because he was here as a child and went to New Zealand, and when he came back the place had changed.

”He wants his children to know the Cook Islands he knew as a child. I tell people I come from a different planet. We have a chance to return to that,“ she said.

Her glass-half-full perspective is what propels her to keep promoting conservation of the oceans. She says that today, 10 percent of the world’s sharks and 50 percent of its corals remain.

”They’re almost gone but they’re not all gone. This week (in Aitutaki) we saw a big Napoleon wrasse – they’re not all gone, but they are almost gone because of the actions taken in my lifetime.

”And we did it in innocence. We didn’t know. But now we do, and the gift of our time is that we know, and we have a chance.“