Editor’s Note: The Conservation Law Foundation has advised Saving Seafood that this event was free and open to the public, but is now sold out. Reports indicating that the event is private or “closed to the public” are inaccurate.
August 31, 2015 — National groups this week plan to call for sprawling areas in the Gulf of Maine and off Cape Cod and Rhode Island to be declared the first “marine national monument” on the eastern seaboard.
A January 2009 presidential proclamation established three Pacific Marine National Monuments – the Marianas Trench, Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll, which is on the Samoan archipelago 2,500 miles south of Hawaii and is the southernmost point belonging to the United States.
Now the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and partners like the National Geographic Society, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Natural Resources Defense Council are seeking protections for the Cashes Ledge Closed Area in the Gulf of Maine and the New England Canyons and Seamounts off the Cape – areas CLF describes as “deep sea treasures.”
A CLF official told the News Service Monday that the Cashes Ledge area covers 530 square nautical miles and the New England Canyons and Seamounts encompasses 4,117 square nautical miles, for a total of 4,647 square nautical miles of protected areas.