Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary

The Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary is a reserve area off the Pacific coast of the United States, near California.

Established in 1980, the sanctuary in the Santa Barbara Channel is an area of national significance because of its exceptional natural beauty and resources. It has an area of 1,470 square miles (3,800 km2). It encompasses the waters that surround Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel and Santa Barbara Islands (five of the eight Channel Islands of California), extending from mean high tide to 6 nautical miles (11 km) offshore around each of the five islands. The sanctuary's primary goal is the protection of the natural and cultural resources contained within its boundaries.

The National Marine Sanctuary program is run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Famous quotes containing the words channel, islands, national, marine and/or sanctuary:

    How old the world is! I walk between two eternities.... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don’t want to die!
    Denis Diderot (1713–1784)

    we are so many
    and many within themselves
    travel to far islands but no one
    asks for their story....
    Denise Levertov (b. 1923)

    I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours.
    Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)

    There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defence-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.
    Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)