US acts to save marine treasures

Published on Tuesday 6 January 2009 20:49

THE home of a giant land crab, a sunken island ringed by pink coral and equatorial waters teeming with sharks are being declared national marine monuments by the United States in the largest marine conservation effort in history.

The three areas, which total nearly 200,000 square miles, include the Mariana Trench and the waters and corals surrounding three uninhabited islands in the Northern Mariana Islands, Rose Atoll in American Samoa and seven islands strung along the equator in the central Pacific Ocean.

Each place has unique species and some of the Earth's rarest geological formations. There is a bird that incubates its eggs in the heat of underwater volcanoes. There is also a sulphur pool, one of only two in the solar system (the other is on Jupiter's moon, Io).

All will be protected as national monuments – the same status afforded to statues and cultural sites – under the 1906 Antiquities Act. The law allows the government to act immediately to phase out commercial fishing and block oil or gas extraction.

Recreational fishing, tourism and scientific research with a permit could still go on.