Obama established three Pacific Marine National Monuments in 2009, but the Atlantic Ocean does not yet have similarly protected areas.
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On Thursday – at the 3rd Our Ocean Conference President Obama announced the creation of the first Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s called the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument and lies about 150 miles southeast of the coast of Cape Cod, and contains over 4,900 square-miles of ocean.
“Today President Obama has declared the first marine monument in the Atlantic ocean”, Reid said.
“If we are going to leave our children with oceans like the ones that were left to us, then we’re gonna have to act and we are going to have to act boldly”, President Obama said at the Our Ocean Conference at the State Department on Thursday.
“We will build on those achievements by announcing over 120 significant ocean conservation projects, including nearly $2 billion in new pledges and commitments to protect more than two million square kilometers in new or expanded marine protected areas”.
“The proposed National Marine Monument designation is inconsistent with and contrary to the process and principles of the ongoing regional ocean planning initiative”, the governor wrote.
Commercial fishing will be restricted in the area, where scientists have warned that warming ocean temperatures are a threat to stocks of salmon, lobster and scallops.
“We’re protecting fragile ecosystems off the coast of New England”, he said. Fishermen worry it will become harder for them to earn a living as a result of Obama’s move.
The conference will emphasize the urgent need to combat illegal fishing, pollution from plastic debris, and the acidification of the ocean, which is destroying coral reefs and shellfish, said Catherine Novelli, the USA undersecretary for economic growth, energy, and the environment at the State Department.
Jon Williams, president of the Atlantic Red Crab Company in New Bedford, Massachusetts, said his company will survive, but the changes created to address some of the industry’s concerns don’t sway him about the merits of the monument.
“I think the entire New England fishery is upside down over this”, he said.
“I know that in a contest between us and the oceans, eventually the oceans will win one way or the other”, he said.
The area designated by Obama includes canyons as deep as the Grand Canyon in Arizona and underwater mountains higher than any in the United States east of the Rockies, according to Environment America, a federation of state-based environmental advocacy organisations.
The designation will provide protection for ecological resources and marine species, including deep-sea coral and endangered whales and sea turtles. Expeditions also have found species of coral found nowhere else on Earth.
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Environmental groups pushed the effort to designate the new monument and sought to make the case it was as important to be good stewards of the ocean as it was the land and air. “Not the other way around”, the president said while adding he remains optimistic that those in the room could rise to the challenge because “these are problems we can solve”.
