Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Named World's Largest Marine Sanctuary
Posted on June 15, 2006
President Bush has designated the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as the United States' 75th national monument. MSNBC.com reports that the move creates the world's largest marine protected area.
Bush said he drew inspiration from a documentary on the island chain's biological resources shown at the White House in April by Jean-Michel Cousteau, the marine explorer and filmmaker whose father was the late Jacques Cousteau. Over dinner that night, Bush said he also got "a pretty good lecture about life" from marine biologist Sylvia Earle, an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society.The National Geographic has a special feature on the Northwest Hawaiin Islands called "Hawaii's Outer Kingdom." The feature shows some of the beautiful wildlife found in this region. The National Geographic also says the marine area is home to over 7,000 species.The decision immediately sets aside 139,000 square miles of largely uninhabited islands, atolls, coral reef colonies and underwater peaks known as seamounts to be managed by federal and state agencies.
Conrad Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which will manage nearly all of it, said the new protected area would dwarf all others.
"It's the single-largest act of ocean conservation in history. It's a large milestone," Lautenbacher said. "It is a place to maintain biodiversity and to maintain basically the nurseries of the Pacific. It spawns a lot of the life that permeates the middle of the Pacific Ocean."