My Remarks at the 2026 Mariana Islands Conservation Conference

I was invited to give the keynote talk at the 2026 Mariana Islands Conservation Conference. The organizers of the conference asked me to speak of my role in efforts to oppose deep sea mining near the Mariana Trench -- which I did -- but I also took the opportunity to talk about the history of the Mariana Trench marine national monument.

Conservation Tales from the Mariana Trench
Before I start I want to thank the board of Tano Tasi yan Todu for inviting me to speak today, and the organizers of this conference. I’ve watched this conference online over the years, and I’m very excited to participate for the first time. I also want to wish all of you a happy National Napping Day. Hopefully you won’t sleep through my talk.

I also want to thank everyone who participated in the deep sea mining RFI these last few months. Thank you to brave activisists who spoke up first and raised the alarm. Thank you to the environmental organizations and the government servants who quickly educated themselves on this topic and then pivoted to educate our community. Thank you to everyone who attended a workshop, or a community meeting, or a scientific presentation. And thank you to everyone who wrote a comment, signed a petition, or a letter. And also thank you to the people who may not have been opposed to deep sea mining – but took the time to listen to and talk with the people who are. I am hard pressed to think of another community where environmental issues have had this level of civic engagement, and I am proud to call the Marianas my home, and all of you my family and friends.

My name is Angelo Villagomez, and as always, I am grateful for the chance to stand with people who care deeply about the ocean. I’m honored to be with you—to be with family, mentors, and friends—in a conversation about home, and the ocean that has shaped our past and will define our future. Here’s a few fun photos.

Please allow me to introduce you to my grandparents. Ignacio and Ana Villagomez were born in Saipan in the early 1900s, survived World War II, and had 10 kids. Tom and Mary O’Connor were born in Worcester, Massachusetts around the same time, and had five kids.

My father, Ramon Garrido Villagomez, went to law school in the 1970s at Catholic University in Washington, DC, and would become one of the first Chamorro lawyers from what is now the CNMI. My mom was an undergrad across the street at Trinity College and traveled to Saipan on a Watson foundation scholarship – and became the first person to translate Chief Hurao’s speech into English. The rest is history. And that’s how I came into this world.

I was born on Guam a few years later, but most of my Chamorro family lives on Saipan. After college I went home for a few years and worked in conservation, but I have lived and worked in Washington, DC as a professional ocean advocate for the last 16 years. For many years I was one of only a handful of Pacific islanders working for the national conservation organizations in DC – and today I think I’m the only Pacific Islander who works for a DC think tank – if someone else out there works for one, let it be known that I want to be friends.

I’ve had a very privileged career, working at the intersection of science, policy, and community to designate marine protected areas, shark sanctuaries, help write and negotiate international agreements and advice, publish in the scientific literature, and generally travel around the world talking with people about ocean conservation and doing my best to be useful wherever ocean issues and Indigenous issues overlap.

Today, as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, my work explores how conservation, community engagement, and Indigenous governance can align to address global challenges such as habitat loss, declining fish populations, and the disproportionate impacts of climate change on island and coastal peoples. I serve on several advisory boards and as the ocean co-lead for the America the Beautiful for All Coalition, where I help elevate community-centered approaches to marine protection and access.

Today I hope to spark a conversation with all of you about how island communities—our communities—can lead the next era of ocean conservation in the United States.

My big idea for ocean conservation is that we should tap into the deep connections and love people already feel for the sea by celebrating and protecting what I call our “special ocean places.” These are the spots that shape us, move us, and remind us why the ocean matters. We often have memories of important times of our lives in these places, or remember the people who were there with us. For me, that place is the Maug Lagoon. I first visited it in 2009, and the experience marked me forever. Inside the ancient volcanic caldera, I watched sharks cruise through impossibly clear water, turtles rise lazily for air, tuna flash beneath the surface, and seabirds circle overhead. I saw living coral reefs thriving right next to active volcanic vents—an otherworldly meeting of fire and life. Maug became my special ocean place that day, and it’s the memory I return to when I think about why people protect the ocean: because somewhere out there is a place they love just as much.

I took this picture of our boat after climbing up to the edge of the rim of the volcano. To the north I could see the island of Uracas and to the south I could still see Asuncion. All of the waters surrounding me were now part of the Mariana Trench marine national monument – the waters of this monument were newly protected by George W. Bush. But the islands had been protected for most of my life.

On the screen is a snapshot of documents from the Second CNMI Constitutional Convention in 1985, which I think you can get a copy of either at the CNMI archives or HPO (Historic Preservation Office).

During the Second CNMI Constitutional Convention in 1985, several delegates played key roles in expanding constitutional protections for the northern islands of Uracus, Maug, and Asuncion. Although Maug had already been safeguarded under the original 1977 CNMI Constitution, President Herman T. Guerrero, Delegate Esteven M. King, and Delegate Ramon G. Villagomez—my dad—worked together to extend similar environmental and cultural protections to the remaining islands. Building on the precedent set for Maug, they supported proposals that recognized the ecological significance and cultural heritage of Uracus and Asuncion, ensuring that these islands would be preserved for future generations. Their advocacy helped embed these protections directly into our constitution, strengthening long-term conservation efforts across the northernmost islands of the Commonwealth.

In fact, the CNMI famously guarantees the right to a clean and healthful public environment in all areas, including the land, air, and water. And protected areas have been a part of guaranteeing that right from the beginning of our commonwealth.

I’ll also note at this point that the commonwealth and the CNMI constitution predate the exclusive economic zone or EEZ In 1983, President Ronald Reagan claimed control of all waters 200 miles off the coast of the United States. In the Pacific, the constellation of small territories overnight became vast ocean states. Today about 30% of all US waters are in the US Pacific territories. About 1 million square kilometers of that – about 10% of the total – surrounds the Marianas.

But that was dad’s story. My journey with the Mariana Trench started with this lady.

Cinta Matagolai Kaipat was my mentor, and in turn, many years before my father was hers. Like dad and myself, Cinta left the island for many years to pursue her education, starting in high school, through college, and ultimately law school. Cinta was the first Carolinian woman from the CNMI to become a lawyer, and she was the first lawyer to ever serve in the CNMI legislature. She was known for many other things, including singing, community activism, and art; she was also one of the pioneers of the environmental movement in the CNMI.

In January 2007 – almost 20 years ago – Cinta invited me to a meeting in her office on Capital Hill with a man named Jay Nelson from an organization I had heard of, but didn’t really know about. It was called the Pew Trusts. Mr. Nelson was from Alaska and had just recently worked on securing a large protected area in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. It was so successful, that Pew and its funders were looking for communities around the world that could model their ocean conservation after what had just happened in Hawaii. They were looking for places that were (1) large, (2) historically mostly unfished, (3) in a country with a history of conservation, and (4) with some hope of enforcement.

We met with Mr. Nelson for two hours that day. The waters around the Marianas are indeed large, at over 1 million square kilometers, and we haven’t had any large scale commercial fishing in our waters for many decades, and we are a territory owned by, but not part of the United States – so for the most part – the same laws apply to us as apply in Hawaii.

Cinta and I discussed this, and knowing what we know about our islands, suggested that back then – remember, this was 2007, a lot has happened since then – we thought that protecting the waters around our sanctuary islands seemed reasonable. We were very clear that we were only interested in the waters around the three far northern islands, and during the discussion I pointed out that the northern portion of the Mariana Trench extended to this area. We agreed that the name Mariana Trench marine national monument was a very good name, and we parted ways with a commitment to continue the discussion.

And that conversation continued over the next two years, mostly in the CNMI. Cinta and I, with the support of our networks and families, and yes, Pew, put together this proposal – a huge marine protected area taking up about one third of the US EEZ that would be off limits to industrial fishing, and only allow Indigneous fishing. Fishing is important to our culture, and it was important that our practices be allowed to continue.

We were joined by ocean advocates like Ike Cabrera, Laurie Peterka, Andrew Salas, Agnes MacPhetres, Tina Sablan, Ed Salas, Ed Propst, Wes Bogdan, Chuck Sayon, Ruth Tighe, Chailang Palacios, Harry Blalock, Mike Tripp, Aya and Willie Matsumoto, Marites Castillo, Mr. Horiguchi, Dave Sablan, Jane Mack, and many I am surely forgetting. These people came together to form the Friends of the Mariana Trench, who led the public engagement in the community from the summer of 2008 until the designation in 2009.

On the day of the monument’s designation, after a public campaign to build support, Governor Fitial, Senate President Reyes, and House Speaker Palacios announced their support for the designation of the monument. This was in large part due to the overwhelming local support at the time, and the intense public campaign.

There’s a much longer discussion about the monument to be had here – I’ve written and spoken about its strengths, weaknesses, and shortcomings at great length over the last 20 years. Today I’m happy that there are finally staff and an office on Saipan conducting programs with our community. There is a visitor contact station in Garapan. And a management plan was published in 2024 – and I had the honor to introduce the secretary of Interior when she made the announcement. But this is actually supposed to be a talk on deep sea mining, so I’m going to skip over many of those details and stories from that time.

Although we did not discuss it much during the recent RFI process, the Mariana Trench monument is relevant to the new threats of deep sea mining. While the Friends of the Mariana Trench had asked for a huge monument – 300 thousand square kilometers – that restrictied industrial commercial fishing around the three northern islands, the Bush administration ultimately decided on something else.

The Bush administration protected about 50 thousand square kilometers of waters around the three northern islands from industrial commercial fishing – with allowances for several types of small scale fishing as the Friends of the Mariana Trench had requested. This area is called the “Islands Unit” of the Mariana Trench monument. It makes up about 5% of the US EEZ around our islands.

But Bush also created a protected area for the seafloor in the Mariana Trench almost 1000 nautical miles long, extending north of Uracus and south of Guam. This area bans deep sea mining in an area of about 200,000 square kilometers, about 20% of the US EEZ around our waters.

And it is due to the Mariana Trench monument that the proposed deep sea mining is restricted to the far eastern edge of our ocean. Let me say that again to be clear, about 25 percent of the waters surrounding our islands are off limits to deep sea mining because of the Mariana Trench monument.

But the monument does not protect the other 75% of the waters around our islands. Thankfully, across the Marianas, a new generation of ocean stewards has stepped up to lead our people. They were some of the first to raise the alarm about the threats of deep sea mining imposed by the Trump administration.

Until last year I personally never thought deep sea mining would be a threat in our waters. It’s an unproven technology, and it has been science fiction since the 1950s. I remember a few years after the monument was designated a geologist came out to Saipan to talk about deep sea mining and he gave a presentation to our government agencies and community. He said that if there ever was deep sea mining, the market could probably only handle one deep sea mine – because too many mines would flood the market with products and drive down the price. I also always assumed the environmental laws of the United States would make our waters unattractive to extractive industries that prefer to work in corrupt countries where they can buy off officials to avoid environmental laws.

Now, apologies to some of you for getting political here – but the United States is now one of those corrupt countries thanks to President Donald Trump. Trump campaigned on drill, baby, drill, and is committed to selling off American natural resources to corporations and billionaires. This isn’t liberal hyperbole, there are processes happening right now that would sell oil drilling rights off the coast of Florida, California, and Alaska, there is talk of selling off public lands to build data centers, and they are pushing deep sea mining in American Samoa, the Marianas, and now Alaska. And the United States has overturned or walked away from nearly every domestic or international climate and environment commitment made in the last century.

This talk will be followed by an hour long discussion on the recent 60 day RFI for deep sea mining, and I want to be very careful that I do not speak on behalf of any of the organizations and efforts that led that effort locally, but please allow me to discuss how I experienced it from Washignton, DC.

On November 11, virtually no one in the Mariana Islands had heard of deep‑sea mining. The next day, the Trump administration announced a 30‑day plan to begin the process that could open areas near the Mariana Trench to industrial extraction. The timeline was abrupt, the issue was unfamiliar, and our community was completely unprepared for it. With no resources, no prepared messaging, and no existing coalitions, we had to build a comprehensive campaign from scratch—and we had to do it quickly.

One of the most important lessons from this effort is that even under intense pressure, it is critical to take time at the beginning to frame the issue correctly. Before collecting signatures, before building a petition, and before mobilizing the public, we gathered allies, both locally and nationally, consolidated our understanding of the threat, and created shared language that the community could use.

One way to think about this threat is through a framework I learned as a science communicator. It is a simple risk communication structure—called Hazard, Impact, Action. The hazard for us was defined clearly: the federal government intended to mine the deep sea near our islands. The impact was broadened beyond environmental consequences to include economic concerns and questions of sovereignty. For many, this proposal represented a continuation of historical patterns of decisions imposed by outside actors without local input. And the action was straightforward: submit public comments, letters, and petitions to the federal register.

As a Board Member with the Friends of the Mariana Trench, in support of this risk communication structure we created and continuously updated an educational document that lived on Google Docs. It became the central resource for our efforts – and we recognize there were other parallel efforts. We shared it widely on social media, discussed it on local radio, and directed community partners to use it as the basis for their own outreach.

Our messaging was organized across three frames because different segments of the population connect to different rationales. First, we communicated the environmental risks using the best available science. Second, we made clear that the economic benefits would not accrue to the island communities, but to distant companies and individual investors. Third, we addressed the issue as a matter of Indigenous sovereignty and neo‑colonialism, including concerns about military expansion. Effective risk communication requires meeting people where they are, not expecting them to change their values to match your argument.

We also emphasized procedural justice. The public comment period overlapped Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s—a timeline that made meaningful participation difficult and which we repeatedly highlighted as an example of an unfair process. We even criticized the decision to extend the comment period because it was too short and the timeline was not controlled locally.

Although the request for information process began on November 12, we did not start collecting petition signatures until November 20. The science letter started by Tano Tasi yan Todu, which we supported, was opened to signatures on November 24. This deliberate pacing allowed us to strengthen the message before amplifying it. This also gave us the time to ensure key allies were on board. Our loose coalition had multiple captains rowing in different boats, each with their own style. But with a little coordination we managed to at least row our collective armada in the same direction.

The results demonstrate the effectiveness of these strategies. The 30‑day comment period was extended to 60 days, and by the end, the national and local coalition partners submitted 60,000 comments, letters, and petitions. We went from no awareness to a mass mobilization in a short period, not by overwhelming people with information, but by communicating risk in a way that was structured, accessible, and relevant.

This was not the first time, and it will not be the last time, that our community has to deal with outside forces trying to tell us what to do with our ocean.

Science has given this twenty‑first‑century reality a name: the Blue Acceleration – work led by Jean-Baptiste Jouffray. Researchers describe it as a global race among competing interests all clamoring for food, material, and space from the sea, at a scale and pace humanity has never experienced before.

If you look around the world, the pattern repeats. Fishing communities are fighting to maintain access to traditional grounds. Sanctuaries and protected areas spark debate over conservation versus livelihoods. Deep‑sea mining companies want to tap the seabed for minerals. Offshore wind developers are staking out vast swaths of ocean for turbines. And agencies grapple with designating critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act. Each of these issues may seem distinct, but they’re all drawing from the same limited resource: ocean space.

This unprecedented competition echoes exactly what the Blue Acceleration research warns about—the rapid expansion and industrialization of ocean uses, from aquaculture and bioprospecting to offshore energy and seabed mining. Scientists have shown that today’s aspirations for the ocean are more extensive, intense, and diverse than at any point in human history. As demand grows, pressures multiply. And communities—especially small islands and Indigenous peoples—are often the ones left to navigate the consequences.

What’s striking is that no generation before ours has had to contend with this sheer density of competing uses. The Blue Acceleration is a uniquely twenty‑first‑century challenge. Just a few decades ago, many of today’s industries—deep‑sea mining, offshore wind, high‑seas bioprospecting—were barely imaginable. But technological advances and declining land‑based resources have pushed more and more human activity out to sea.

Communities everywhere now find themselves on the front lines of decisions that pit jobs against conservation, energy development against cultural values, and national economic ambitions against local ways of life.

The challenge before us isn’t just balancing one ocean use against another. It’s learning how to govern a marine world where everything is happening at once, faster than ever before. The Blue Acceleration framework helps us see that our local debates—whether about fishing, protected areas, endangered species habitat, offshore wind, or deep‑sea mining—are part of a much larger global story.

So here’s where I want to leave you tonight (or this morning for those of you back at home):

The forces shaping our ocean future are big, fast, and global—but the decisions about what happens in our waters should be made by our people, not in some distant capital. Not by government bureacrats that can’t pronounce our names, who don’t know our stories, or our history. It needs to be the people of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands setting the agenda for these big ocean ideas.

Are we going to allow deep‑sea mining?

God, I hope not. But if we decide that’s our path, then we must demand a system that ensures the benefits flow to our communities, not outsiders who take the wealth and leave us with the risk.

Are we going to set aside iconic special ocean places—our seamounts, our reefs, our ancestral ocean spaces—as off limits to industrial fishing or deep‑sea mining?

I hope so. But then we need real plans, real policies, and real accountability on the people who pull the levers of power in Washington, DC. And the benefits need to flow to our conservation organizations, our scientists, and our communities, not only benefit those far away.

I will finish my talk in the same place I started. One of the things we realized when we visited Maug is that we never left our home. The youngest member of our crew, 18 year old Dennis Chan wrote of our trip, “I never really left home, did I? I traveled for nearly two days nonstop to reach Maug and when I arrived I was still home. I was still in the Marianas.”

Those of us who call the Marianas home are the proud stewards of 10% of all US waters. We are not just island communities—we are ocean people. We are navigators. We are stewards. Our ancestors read the waves, understood the currents, and built societies that thrived because they respected the sea.

Now it’s our turn.

This is our chance to show the world what true ocean leadership looks like—leadership rooted in community, culture, and courage. Everyone in a canoe, rowing in the same direction. Let’s be good ancestors and make decisions that our grandchildren will thank us for.

Thank you, god bless all of you, god bless Guam, and god bless the Northern Mariana Islands.