A recently-proposed rule by the National Marine Fisheries Service seeks to designate coral critical habitats. This may sound fascinating for those who seek to protect natural resources, but there's much more to it.

The island's lawmakers and the Guam Department of Agriculture submitted comments in response to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service proposed rule to designate coral critical habitat around all of Guam's territorial waters. Critical habitat was created by Congress to protect identified endangered species.

However, as DOAG Director Chelsa Muna Brecht explains, the NMFS didn't predict coral would end up on that list, telling KUAM News, "Of those species were actually listed 7 of them were found in American Samoa's waters Guam's waters and CNMI's waters."

Altogether, the seven only make up 2% of the worldwide endangered species population, and only three of endangered species are found in Guam's waters. NMFS was later sued by a larger non-profit organization for failing to designate critical coral habitats.

Muna Brecht explained that as a result of that lawsuit, they kind of "jumped the gun on doing it for Guam, the CNMI, and America Samoa. They said all of the military jurisdictions are excluded are exempted from this designation and everywhere else was painted in purple," she added, meaning all of Guam's territorial waters outside of Navy and Andersen Air Force Base would be considered coral critical habitat.

This means that any federal agency or federally-funded project that would be working in an area deemed as critical coral habitat would be required to go through a permitting process through NMFS. Additionally, when NMFS designated these coral habitats, they didn't consult any of the state agencies

Muna Brecht said, "It took all of us by surprise they announced it during one of our WESTPAC fisheries meetings and they had made they posted or published the notice on the federal register like the day after Thanksgiving when most people are on vacation. They weren't even gonna have public hearings and it was only when we requested that they do that that they had two virtual public hearings one for Guam, CNMI, and one for America Samoa."

Governor Lou Leon Guerrero, senators and the DOAG each call out NMFS for using what they termed "not the best available science" in proposing the designation. With respect to Guam, NFMS used one or two personal communications as part of their "facts" for establishing critical habitat.

"A researcher saying that he was doing coral monitoring and he thought that he might've seen these coral out in Guam's waters, but then he said he wasn't completely sure because they look like a lot of other coral," she said.

There are over 400 species of coral in Guam's waters, many of which look extremely similar and the only way to differentiate is by genetic testing. NMFS, however, did not genetically test any of Guam's coral.

Guam, CNMI, and America Samoa are now awaiting the final decision from NOAA NMFS.