The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council Scientific and Statistical Committee overstates the case when it writes:  "There is no scientific or conservation justification to support monument expansion."  The Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, in his recent book Half-Earth, provides the scientific and conservation justification for putting 50% of the earth in natural preserves.  The WPFMC Committee might disagree with Wilson's justification, and that would be their prerogative as scientists, but it is simply incorrect to say that there "is no scientific or conservation justification".