FYI: news (Fwd)

[Ray Keefer <Ray.Keefer@eng.Sun.COM>]

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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 09:08:01 -0700
From: "Jeff Wang" <jwang@livingston.com>
Subject: news
To: ba_diving@lists.best.com

Since looking at the stock market was depressing after a great day
yesterday, I'd thought I look at something else, and I thought y'all may
find this interesting:

Twelve U.S. marine parks get attention

By ARIES KECK UPI Science News 

WASHINGTON, April 23 (UPI) _ Twelve U.S. marine sancturies will be getting
additional attention in the form of a
one-person submarine and other submersibles in the first sustained effort
to study the deepest sections of those
underwater preserves. 

The $6 million project, announced at the National Geographic Society in
Washington Thursday, will probe these national
marine sancturaries: 

_American Samoa: Fagatele Bay. Featuring a quarter-mile (0.4 kilometers) of
nearly 200 species of coral, it's nestled
inside an eroded volcanic crater. 

_California: Channel Islands. An area about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south
of Santa Barbara, these Pacific Islands have
a blend of warm southern and cold northern currents. The islands are key
nesting sites for endangered brown pelicans,
and more than 20 kinds of sharks roam the waters, drawn there by a feast of
one of the world's outstanding
concentrations of sea lions. 

_California: Cordell Bank. On the very edge of the continental shelf, it
stretches 20 miles (32 kilometers) offshore of the
northern California coast. 

_California: Monterey Bay. The largest marine sanctuary, it spans 350 miles
(563 kilometers) with it's northernmost tip
off the coast of San Francisco. It holds the nation's greatest diversity of
marine life. One of America's largest ocean
canyons _ a crevasse more than two miles deep (3.2 kilometers). 

_California: Farallon Islands. North of San Francisco, just 30 miles (48
kilometers) beyond the Golden Gate Bridge, it
hosts the largest concentration of breeding sea birds in the continental
United States. 

_Florida: Florida Keys. It encompasses over 3,600 square miles (932, 395
hectacres) of water that surround the Keys.
It also includes America's very first underwater park, the John Pennekamp
Coral Reef State Park, established in 1960
near Key Largo. The Key park features many different types of ocean
terrain, from coral reefs and mangrove swamps,
to sand flats and seagrass meadows. 

_Georgia: Gray's Reef. The sanctuary covers 23-square-mile (37 kilometers),
20 miles (32 kilometers) off the coast of
Georgia. It's a feeding place for loggerhead sea turtles. 

_Hawaii: Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale. This marine sanctuary protects
1,300 square miles (336,698 hectacres) of
warm, shallow waters around the islands. Scientists figure that two-thirds
of the estimated 8,000 North Pacific
humpbacks mate and calve here. 

_Massachusetts: Stellwagen Bank. The 800-square-mile (2,072 square-
kilometer) sanctuary is located in the
Massachusetts Bay. 

_North Carolina: Monitor. This one-square-mile of water (2.59 square
kilometers) contains the wreck of a Civil War
ironclad vessel the Monitor. The ship, lies in 230 feet (70 meters) of
water off Cape Hatteras and is now home to
dolphins. This was the first sanctuary designated in 1975. 

_Texas/Louisiana: Flower Garden Banks. In this sanctuary is 100 miles
(160,930 meters) off the coasts of Texas and
Louisiana, a coral reef rises like an oasis in the ocean. The park
encompasses 56 square miles (145 square kilometers) of
the reef. 

_Washington: Olympic Coast. It's north of the bay town of Aberdeen,
covering more than 3,300 square miles (8,546
square kilometers) of the Pacific Ocean. It's one of the premier areas of
open ocean in the National Marine Sanctuary
system and also showcases Native American artifacts, and shipwrecks off the
coast of Washington state. The park is
also part of a major thoroughfare for massive oil tankers. 

***  BA_DIVING Web Page: http://www.best.com/~kylem  ***
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