How does the Aquarium support the world’s biggest marine reserve?
Nearly a decade ago, a dive boat captain based in Fiji invited the Aquarium’s Greg Stone, a marine biologist and vice president of global marine programs, to visit the Phoenix Islands. This remote coral reef archipelago, located between Hawaii and Fiji, was swarming with reef fish and giant clams including many species that were rare or unheard of elsewhere. According to Stone it was “the first time I had seen what the ocean may have been like thousands of years ago.” In 2000 and 2002, Stone and other marine biologists catalogued coral and the fish species that lived on the reef. In 2001, Stone and the Aquarium proposed that the area be set aside as a reserve. He also called on Conservation International, a U.S.-based environmental group that raised money to offset the income that would come to the islanders from commercial fishing that would now be curtailed. Anote Tong, the President of Kiribati and a graduate of the London School of Economics, the island nation that includes the Pho
