Cook Islands: manager of world's biggest marine park says she lost job for backing sea mining moratorium

Environmentalist Jacqueline Evans says she was dismissed from the Marae Moana for urging caution on deep-sea mining

The public champion of the world's largest marine reserve - the Cook Islands' Marae Moana - has said she lost her job managing it because she supported a moratorium on seabed mining in the Pacific.

Six months ago, Jacqueline Evans won the Goldman Environmental prize - the world's foremost environmental award - for her work establishing Marae Moana (meaning "sacred ocean"), which covers the Cook Islands' entire exclusive economic zone of more than 1.9m sq km.