Dennis Chan and his Northern Islands

From Saipan Tribune editorialist Jaime Vergara:

Our Northern Islands is actually the title of a book produced collaboratively by Dennis Chan on text and Angelo Villagomez on editing, layout, graphics and publishing. The deft touch of the editor is obvious, but the youth and spirit of Dennis comes through. Subtitled The first expedition to the Mariana Trench National Monument, it chronicles a trip taken by Friends of the Monument after the declaration by GWBush of the surrounding area of Asuncion, Maug and Urucas-the northernmost islands of the Marianas chain-as a marine protected area.

One of the friends funded the trip with the caveat that a young person be chosen through an essay contest to experience the islands and return to tell of the experience to peers. Dennis Chan, 18-year-old Saipan born and bred, won the essay and this book is a coffee table conversation piece that chronicles the journey in words and pictures.

Dennis' staccato narrative from notes in a log/journal notebook handed him at the start of the trip, with the cadence and idiom of the classroom hallways, is given recognizable mainstream form by our erstwhile mayor of Saipan's watering holes, and Saipan's almost Matua with the Matachang service style of 2009 election, now within the beltway habitué of the nation's capital, Angelo Villagomez. The racy tone in the recollection like that of the two-day-old chaffy underwear is ordinary enough, but might in the telling have gotten an “R” rating from Hollywood's MPAA!

Not a few of the younger Chan siblings were in my class at SVES and their dad Norman is known for setting up refined gastronomic fan dian (restaurants, literally, rice shops). Dennis at the International School was once characterized as a “slick talker like a used-car salesman” (with no offense meant to the guys down the car lot, only to admire their marketing skills), and we did get the chance to see him perform in one of the island's debating events. He is an MHS grad.

What comes through loud and clear in the book is that Dennis is no country bumpkin. The urban comfort of globalized Saipan was not missed in his obvious upbringing and Dennis might know the principle of friction, but may not know how to kindle wood were he stuck on an island without any amenities, and his life depended on it.

A queasy stomach got him green by the gills as soon as the waves hit starboard on the navigatinal float Lady Carolina, and on the return from Maug and Uracus through Agrihan and Pagan, side-stepping the patty cakes on the ground and the buzz in the air from the bees and flies, our cosmopolitan dude bedrudgingly started fending for himself.

In one of the book's photos, Dennis holds a huge coconut crab with the mixed expression of “I would love to have this under my belly cooked and relished slowly, but do I have to hold this live one for a frigging picture?” His pose on Lady Carolina in Uracus from the southeast is priceless and would make an excellent resumé promo and an application supplement to an institution of higher education anywhere in the world!

Dennis is currently registered at the Northern Marianas College, our local and only community college. A colleague took exception to his remaining on island when his obvious talents could be challenged more thoroughly elsewhere. In a sense, the two-year associate liberal arts degree from NMC might not be a bad place for Dennis to exercise self-reliance and self-motivity in nurturing his own self-confidence for a larger field elsewhere.

Besides, the social networking that prestigious universities offer their studentry may be useful at spring break in one of the instant “student” towns, but only rarely, unless it is accompanied by aristocratic pedigree, does it lead to an apartment on Park Avenue, or a tenure at Cambridge.

On the other hand, Dennis should not be denied the resources to move elsewhere two years hence, should he so desires. SHEFA and the local Chamber of Commerce scholarship might not be a bad place to start. I would not recommend the poker house as an option!

The awe and wonder in Maug and the circumnavigation of the northernmost island Uracus (Farallon de Pajaros) is the heart of the trip: “There are so many places to see in the world, and I'm sure I'll always say I'll come back, but life, life's got so much to do and other places to go. I may never be in Pagan again or Maug or any of our Northern Islands. The thought is a sad one, but it makes the moment even more special” and the stopovers in Agrigan and Pagan, its humanness. “Pagan, the heights, the vistas, the beach, and all that beauty. I think beauty should be bought in the effort to see it, and so I did. I arrived at beauty; I roamed through it with blistered feet and sore groin.”

Youthful enthusiasm and neophyte adventure jumps out of pages of this book. Now, Angelo needs to get a sequel out from his adult and professional perspective (and encourage colleagues-two professional writers, a photographer, navigators and environmentalists-to produce their memories and recollections as well).

Our Northern Islands
The first expedition to the Northern Mariana Trench National Monument
Dennis Chan
www.AngeloVillagomez.com

Josh Reichert Editorial

This editorial has appeared in numerous publications across the nation.

With the stroke of a pen, President George W. Bush recently created three marine monuments in the Pacific Ocean, including one covering most of the famed Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth. Together with a monument established two years ago in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, this marks the end of an era in which humans have increasingly understood the need to conserve vanishing wild places on land but failed to comprehend the similar plight of our oceans. It comes none too soon.

Now, 137 years after the creation of America's first national park in Yellowstone, in 1872, we're finally recognizing that unique areas of the world's oceans deserve the same kind of protection. Industrial fishing, drilling, pollution, and now climate change, are rapidly transforming the world's marine domain.

An ever-dwindling number of places, many of which are remarkably fragile, have not been affected by people. If not protected soon, they will become part of the large toll that nature has suffered in the wake of human settlement and development.

The new monument designations encompass Rose Atoll in American Samoa, most of the Equatorial or Line Islands in the central Pacific and portions of the Mariana Islands. Covering almost 200,000 square miles, these three new monuments roughly equal the size of Spain.

Together with the earlier reserve in Hawaii, this president has protected more of the oceans' unique places than any other person in history.

The importance of these ecosystems cannot be emphasized enough. In the Marianas, perhaps the most significant of the monuments, coral reefs overlap with some of the world's most exceptional geology, creating the greatest diversity of seamount and hydrothermal vent life known to science.

It's the sole place on Earth with huge, active mud volcanoes, one more than 31 miles across, which are believed to harbor some of the oldest known life on the DNA tree. The second boiling pool of liquid sulfur ever discovered (the first is on Io, one of Jupiter's moons) lies within its waters, along with the only bird known to use volcanic heat to incubate its eggs, and the giant coconut crab — the largest land-living arthropod in the world.

The other monuments also harbor a remarkable array of life. Rose Atoll contains the highest percentage of live coral cover of any place on Earth, while the Equatorial Islands host some of the largest populations of apex predators found in the oceans.

The remoteness of these places might seem to offer them protection enough, but the march of human society is steadily opening up areas long considered to be impenetrable or simply not worth the trouble. In 1857 the leader of a War Department expedition described the Grand Canyon as ''altogether valueless,'' adding that ''after entering it there is nothing to do but leave.''

Fortunately, President Theodore Roosevelt thought otherwise. Designating it a monument in 1908, he called it ''a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world.''

''Leave it as it is,'' Roosevelt urged. ''You cannot improve on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you.''

The same rings true for these unique areas of the oceans protected by President Bush today. In weighing the long-term benefits to the marine environment and to the American people of protecting these places before they are ruined, the president decided they are worth more intact than whatever commercial benefits might be derived from fishing, drilling or mining them.

The president's decision is a tribute to common sense. We will gain immeasurably more from having these places kept safe than we would from plundering in the short term whatever commercial resources they might contain. Moreover, there is an inherent value in wild places that transcends their importance for science, education, recreation and the ecosystem services they provide — although these are reason enough to leave them be.

We value them precisely because they have not been shaped by us, but reflect the natural world when left to its own devices. Thankfully, this president, and most Americans, want to see some places on Earth remain this way.

Joshua Reichert is the managing director of the Pew Environment Group.

Saipan Tribune Editorial

Compromise on marine monument plan

Despite its tentative nature, recent reports of Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and legislative leaders being more open to the idea of a national marine monument in the northernmost islands of the Marianas chain is welcome news, at least in so far as advancing the dialog on the issue is concerned.

Dialog, after all, is what should have been happening in the first place. The proposal was intended to draw people to the table so everyone can weigh the relevant issues and make decisions based on the merits of the plan. Instead, the issue has created battlegrounds, pitting people against one another and escalating the whole subject into epic proportions on the scale of a Mahabharata battle between the forces of good and evil.

Worse, people have been content to play along as two-dimensional caricatures of themselves, painting each other in the most unflattering of lights and refusing to listen to each other in the belief that they alone are right, or taking umbrage at imagined slights to their inalienable rights. Lost in all the noise, confusion, and animosity was the ability to imagine that there might be a third or a fourth alternative, a common ground where people can come together in the name of conservation and national patrimony.

The suggestion by White House Council on Environmental Quality chief James Connaughton that further talks about the monument plan may result in an agreement to restore the CNMI’s control over "submerged lands" is the cold dash of water needed to snap everyone out of their hysteria and restore some semblance of calm, and the local leadership’s statement about being more receptive to the monument proposal is exactly what everyone needs to hear.

A compromise on the matter is being offered and this time, it must be evaluated with a level head. The submerged lands issue is no small potatoes and for the CNMI to regain what has been stripped from it would be a great boon to the Commonwealth, not just economically but also historically. The loss of the submerged lands was never imagined nor contemplated by our Covenant negotiators and the fact that we lost our right to those resources because of the Covenant was a bitter pill to swallow. Regaining the submerged lands now would remedy this unintended consequence.

At the same time, it would allow the Commonwealth to explore all potential economic benefits these underwater resources may have-natural riches that are currently off limits to the CNMI because they do not belong to our exclusive economic zone. If we regain the right to manage these resources, this will have a more direct-and immediate-impact on the local economy since they are closer to the populated islands and not located hundreds of miles away where the only visitors are illegal fishermen from other countries. (Saipan Tribune)