Island Nation in the Pacific Ocean Plans To Stop Commercial Fishing in and Around Their Territory

Sea life populations have been slowly becoming a concern over the past several years. Thanks to commercial fishing and illegal techniques the ocean's population is threatening to take a nose dive. What the island nation of Kiribati is promising to do may well help preserve sea life populations in their section of the Pacific Ocean.

As one of the opening speakers at the Our Ocean conference held by the State Department in Washington DC, a conference focused on protecting the world's ocean and creating methods to help preserve it, president of Kiribati Anote Tong made some powerful promises for the future. He stated at the conference that by January 1st of 2015 commercial fishing in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area would come to an end.

The Phoenix Islands Protected Area, or PIPA for short, is the Pacific's largest marine protected area. In this protected area both marine and land populations are being assisted so that their native populations can flourish once again. By not allowing any commercial fishing to happen in this California sized chunk of the ocean the native fish populations will begin to recover from years of fishing. While accusations have been made against Anote and his policies being unable to stop commercial fishing in the past, his new claim to stop commercial fishing is a big promise that many hope he will be able to keep.

Citing an example of an area protected from fishing off of Spain's Mediterranean coast Anote explained that the lack of fishing allowed for bigger fish to enter into the environment. From there populations of all kinds of fish sky rocketed so much that they began to spill over into the surrounding areas of the protected zone. Anote hopes that the same will happen with their own protected zone, and that it will be able to sustain itself financially through ecotourism.

Whether they will actually be able to protect this area as well as they hope, it will be a massive undertaking and one that can help preserve the ocean for generations.