Obama: The Ocean President
In August 1961, Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, thousands of miles from the American mainland. He spent 14 of his first 18 years on those islands, bodysurfing off Sandy Beach Park, surrounded by the expansive blue of the Pacific. He later moved inland, to Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and eventually the White House. But he never lost his childhood connection to the sea.
When he leaves the Oval Office this month, he will have safeguarded more of the ocean than any other president, and increased the amount of protected waters around the U.S. by four times.* His administration has also worked to improve American fisheries, clamp down on illegal fishing, and create national policies for protecting the oceans.
Such measures are vital at a time when the oceans are imperiled by many threats, including overfishing, acidification, pollution, and climate change. “We don’t see the effects of climate change every single day with our own eyes,” Obama said last September, . “We just see this great, big ocean—we assume that it’s too big to
