Sanctuary
The sanctuary encompasses 1,400 square miles (3,600 km2) in the islands' waters. It was designated by United States Congress on November 4, 1992, as a National Marine Sanctuary to protect the endangered North Pacific humpback whale and its habitat The sanctuary promotes management, research, education and long-term monitoring.
With its boundaries including waters from the shoreline to depths of 600 feet (180 m) in many areas, the sanctuary encompasses a variety of marine ecosystems, including seagrass beds and coral reefs. Much of the sanctuary has fringing coral reefs close to shore and deeper coral reefs offshore. Hawaii's coral reefs are noted for their isolation. Over 25% of all Hawaii's reef animals are endemic, found nowhere else on Earth.
The Hawaii sanctuary is unlike any other National Marine Sanctuary in that it targets a single species, relies entirely on other agencies for enforcement, and has no protective rules such as no-go zones or no-wake zones or no-take zones that are specific to the sanctuary. It even allows permitted dumping of ship waste within its borders.
Read more about this topic: Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary
Famous quotes containing the word sanctuary:
“He took the props down used for propping open,
And set them up again for propping shut,
The widespread double doors two stories high.
The advantage-disadvantage of these doors
Was that tramp taking sanctuary there
Must leave them unlocked to betray his presence.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“If the veil were withdrawn from the sanctuary of domestic life, and man could look upon the fear, the loathing, the detestations which his tyranny and reckless gratification of self has caused to take the place of confiding love, which placed a woman in his power, he would shudder at the hideous wrong of the present regulations of the domestic abode.”
—Lydia Jane Pierson, U.S. women’s rights activist and corresponding editor of The Woman’s Advocate. The Woman’s Advocate, represented in The Lily, pp. 117-8 (1855-1858 or 1860)
“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)