Shallow Coral Reefs as Essential Fish Habitat: How the Law Protects Pacific Reefs

Shallow coral reefs break the force of waves, storms and floods before they reach the shore. They shelter many of the fish caught for food, for sale and for sport, and they are where people surf, sail, snorkel, dive and fish. They are also a "medicine cabinet": their plants and animals are studied for new drugs against cancer, arthritis and infections. Under U.S. law, they are essential fish habitat (EFH), the places federally managed fish and other species need in order to reproduce and survive.

How much reef

The U.S. Pacific Islands hold more than 22,000 square kilometers of shallow reef, with tens of thousands of species, over a thousand of them reef fish. The reefs surround Hawaiʻi, American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, as well as the scattered atolls and islands of the Pacific Remote Islands Area, such as Wake, Johnston, Baker and Jarvis.

Trevally, damselfish, butterflyfish and surgeonfish around several kinds of coral. NOAA Fisheries.

They are worth a great deal. Counting recreation, coastal amenity, fisheries and biodiversity, Hawaiʻi's reefs alone were estimated to bring about $455 million in direct benefits in 2012, and Guam's about $68 million a year.

Purple queen anthias among plating rice coral and branching cauliflower coral, Swains Island, American Samoa. NOAA Fisheries.

Threats and protections

Climate change, overfishing and pollution all threaten the reefs. In recent years, unusually hot water has caused mass bleaching in Hawaiʻi, American Samoa and elsewhere in the Pacific, killing a great deal of coral.

Several laws push back. The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages fisheries in the region's federal waters (the rest of the reef lies in state and territory waters), banned bottom trawls and other destructive, unselective gear from those fisheries in 1986. In 2014, NOAA Fisheries listed 14 species of Indo-Pacific coral as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, protecting them from harm and collection.

Less well known is the protection that EFH gives reefs against harm from activities other than fishing. NOAA Fisheries' assistant regional administrator for habitat conservation in the Pacific Islands called it "one of those untold treasures."

How EFH works

The Magnuson-Stevens Act, first passed in 1976, is the nation's framework for sustainable fisheries: preventing overfishing and rebuilding stocks that have been overfished. In 1996, Congress amended it to require that essential fish habitat be identified and conserved for every federally managed species.

A lizardfish hides among finger coral. NOAA Fisheries.

In the Pacific Islands, "EFH is everywhere," as a former EFH coordinator put it: every coral reef counts as essential habitat for many managed species. In Hawaiʻi, lobe and finger corals, the commonest reef builders, are home to surgeonfish, damselfish, triggerfish, goatfish and snappers; in American Samoa, table coral feeds and shelters butterflyfish such as the chevron butterflyfish.

Surgeonfish around lobe coral at Keʻei reef, Island of Hawaiʻi. NOAA Fisheries.

An EFH designation does not ban fishing, boating or other activities on or near a reef. What it does is make sure that projects the federal government funds, permits or carries out go ahead with as little harm to fish habitat as possible. Before such a project, the agency must consult NOAA Fisheries on its likely effects on the habitat, the managed species and their prey, and on ways to offset them, such as planting seagrass or moving corals out of the way.

NOAA Fisheries handles about 200 consultations a year in the Pacific Islands, according to an EFH coordinator there, most of them ending in recommendations to protect reefs; together they have saved hundreds of thousands of coral colonies.

Researchers survey a reef to judge its health. NOAA Fisheries.

The consultations were not always welcome, since agencies are under pressure to finish projects on time. Over the years, though, agencies have found that talking early saves time and money and makes for a better project, and that the aim is not to block development but to protect the habitat behind the region's commercial, recreational and tribal fisheries. "We're trying very hard to maintain that resource as best as we can, recognizing we need a healthy and viable economy," the habitat administrator said.

Sources

• NOAA Fisheries, "Shallow Coral Reefs — Essential Fish Habitat of the Pacific Islands"; rewritten in hubnx's own words. Photographs: NOAA Fisheries. A personal photograph of an official is not reproduced here.