Reimaanlok Community-Led Marine Protection — Bikar & Bokak Atolls Sanctuary (Marshall Islands)

Reimaanlok is the Republic of the Marshall Islands' national framework for community-based conservation-area planning, developed in the mid-2000s to embed customary reef and land tenure and traditional knowledge into an eight-step process for designing, legislating and monitoring protected areas; it has since been mainstreamed into the RMI Protected Area Network.

In 2023, scientists from National Geographic Pristine Seas conducted 452 dives (about 643 hours underwater) around the uninhabited, ecologically isolated Bikar and Bokak atolls in the Ratak Chain. The survey recorded the highest coral cover and highest reef-fish biomass documented anywhere in the central and western Pacific, alongside the Marshall Islands' largest green sea turtle nesting colony, healthy reef and deep-sea shark populations, and rare Napoleon wrasse and bumphead parrotfish. These findings directly informed the government's designation, on 28 January 2025, of an 18,500 sq mi (48,000 km²) fully protected marine sanctuary around the two atolls, administered by MIMRA under the Reimaanlok framework and publicly framed by President Hilda Heine as an application of look-toward-the-future stewardship.

Because the atolls are remote and uninhabited, benefits are expected chiefly through spillover to surrounding fisheries and long-term reef resilience rather than direct local livelihoods; quantified socio-economic outcomes had not been published as of the sources reviewed, and this practice is evidenced on baseline ecological condition and governance design rather than post-designation trend data.

Read the full analysis: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-new-marine-protected-area-in-the-marshall-islands-is-brimming-with-life-like-a-time-machine-to-oceans-long-ago-180985936/