“Health to the ocean means health for us,” oceanographer and explorer Sylvia Earle has said.
The ocean covers almost three-quarters of Earth’s surface and contains about 97 percent of the planet’s water. The ocean is home to an almost otherworldly array of rainbow-colored fish, exotic plants, large-winged seabirds, powerful marine mammals, living corals and vital microorganisms. We are just beginning to understand how those ocean creatures are interconnected with one another and with us.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is partnering with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, state and territorial governments and others to conserve the ocean and remote islands and atolls in it. The two federal agencies cooperatively manage four marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean and one in the Atlantic.
Earle has called the marine national monuments “hope spots” for ocean health.
Hope Spots
The oldest refuge in the Pacific, Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge (forerunner of Hawaiian Islands Bird Reservation created on February 3, 1909), represents some of the country’s earliest wildlife protection efforts. This Federal designation occurred quickly based on a turn of the century Smithsonian field report describing observations of piles of dead birds from feather harvesting activity.
About the Refuge