I urge ocean advocates to support the homegrown effort to expand our nation’s first marine national monument, Papahanaumokuakea.

Expansion is simple, yet commercial fishery interests incite fear and confusion. Expansion will not affect longliners beyond a minor inconvenience. Longliners are subject to catch quota. They now fish outside the proposed boundary 95 percent of the time.

Officials at the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council again mislead, obfuscate and skew by claiming no science — by calling benthic habitat nothing but ooze and worms — by ginning up fear that the industry will be devastated, poke will disappear, fish will be more expensive and other trumperies. We know better.

Expansion will benefit many industries, not just small-boat fishermen but everyone in tourism, for example.

I have long advocated policy change to protect ocean habitat and species — our ocean public trust — for people, plants, corals and wildlife who make up our reef communities, whose livelihoods are woven together.

For years the state has not listened or taken action, allowing severe decline in some species, like lobster, opihi, pipipi, monk seals, whales and yellow tangs, to name a few. Too much is no longer abundant, as it was just decades ago. Economists are clear that free market extraction will lead to over-harvesting every time. We see no sustainable harvesting options for over-harvested species.

Current extraction will impact ocean-related businesses throughout the state in perpetuity. We must take action now to protect vital habitat and species, including bigeye tuna, whose numbers are lower than ever.

The current path leads over the cliff, and many species are threatened, endangered or extinct. Hawaii state government exposes ocean wildlife and habitat to the “tragedy of the commons,” defined in Wikipedia:

The tragedy of the commons is an economic theory in a shared-resource system where individual users act independently on their own self-interest, behaving contrary to the common good of all users by depleting that resource through their collective action.

Opposition to Papaha- naumokuakea expansion fits this profile precisely.

Monument expansion would extend the boundary from 50 miles to 200 miles around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (except on the southeast side near Kauai and Niihau to address local fishermen concerns).

Expansion makes sense: Our oceans are crying out for care. Our survival is in the balance. Habitat and species are in decline like never before. Over-harvesting, habitat loss, ocean acidification, rising temperatures and sea levels and climate change are taking tolls we don’t yet comprehend, but changes are significant and getting worse.

Commercial interests would decimate pelagic fisheries as they’ve done to our near-shore reefs. One place of refuge, a puuhonua, can protect marine life and habitat. When they gin up the fear, we must respond with truth: Sea levels and temperatures are rising while species are declining.

The benefits of Marine National Monument expansion can abound. Vast natural resources, including new species of octopus and fish and the oldest living coral in the world, are in the area. We must protect them from seabed mining. Expansion is culturally vital to the Native Hawaiian community who initiated the expansion request.

The area is also the last resting place for 270 Americans and 2,500 Japanese sailors and airmen who died in the Battle of Midway, along with four aircraft carriers, other warships and hundreds of planes.

Timing is critical because large, remote, well-placed marine-protected areas assure fish and other marine resources can spawn and thrive. A place of refuge for marine wildlife will enhance local waters with a productive source of replenishment.

The time to act is now.

Robert Wintner, of Kihei, Maui, is president of Snorkel Bob’s Hawaii.