Bill’s Reals Blog - Scuba, Travel & Gadgets

The small island nation of Kiribati has created what looks to be the world’s largest marine protection area. The purpose of this 410,500 square kilometers preserve is biodiversity and will be off limits to commercial activities like fishing.

Fishing concessions make money for the Atoll based nation but they have a plan:

Protecting the Phoenix Islands means restricting commercial fishing in the area, resulting in a loss of revenue that the Kiribati government would normally receive from issuing foreign commercial fishing licenses. NEAq and CI are helping Kiribati design an endowment system that will cover the core recurring management costs of PIPA and compensate the government for the foregone commercial fishing license revenues. The plan allows for subsistence fishing by resident communities and other sustainable economic development in designated zones of the protected area.

Basically, they are hoping for eco-tourism. This new reserve is bigger than the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument west of Hawaii (137,797 square miles) and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia (345,000 sq km.)
If you want to read about life on Kiribati , you should pick up, The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost, who lived on Kiribati and recounts his experience living in a nation that is far removed from most other countries. It’s hilarious, he’s a good writer.