SEAFOODNEWS.COM By Peggy Parker - September 17, 2015
NGOs in the US have been increasingly eyeing executive action to create national monuments and marine sanctuaries as a way to achieve one-sided conservation goals that they cannot achieve through the US Fishery Management Process. Often they claim no other protection mechanisms exist. Yet, this argument is demonstrably false. In Alaska, there are 45 Marine Protected Areas, most with highly thought out determinations as to what is protected and why. In New England, where there is a current push to declare portions of Georges Bank a national monument though executive action, the New England Council is adressing habitat concerns and has closed one of the areas in queston to trawling since 2002. Peggy Parker writes here about Marine Protected Areas, and how widespread they are under the current framework of fishery management.
It has been nearly a year since President Obama expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument northwest of Hawaii, by more than six times its previous size to 370,000 square nautical miles. Papahanaumokuakea, now about the size of Germany, became the largest marine protected area in the United States, and one of the largest in the world.
Obama's September 25, 2014 action fueled hopes long held by conservation groups to put more of U.S. coastal waters under protected status, and perhaps going so far as to ultimately prohibit any activities within the areas beyond research.
One of the first applications to reach the White House after PMNM, was for an Aleutian Islands National Marine Sanctuary...