President Bush on Monday signaled his intention to protect some of the Pacific Ocean's most remote and unspoiled islands, atolls and coral reefs from fishing and deep-sea mining.
In a memo to three Cabinet secretaries, the president asked for a plan that would protect parts of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on the planet, as well as waters around Rose Atoll in American Samoa and various islands and reefs in the central Pacific that are under U.S. jurisdiction.
The proposal, expected to be finalized before Bush leaves office, could establish marine sanctuaries or national monuments extending as far as 200 miles from each island or emergent reef that breaks the surface of the water.
Bush wrote in the memo that James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, has advised him that these waters contain "objects of historic and scientific interest . . . that may be appropriate for recognition, protection or improved conservation and management" under various existing laws.
The memo lays out several legal alternatives for extending federal protections, including the Antiquities Act, which the Bush administration employed several years ago to establish the world's largest protected marine area -- a swath that encircles the northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
The White House memo has unleashed a scramble among officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as the Interior and Defense departments, to gather information and make recommendations to meet the president's timeline to finalize plans in the next few months.
Interagency memos began flying days before the official announcement, dispatching instructions to NOAA and Interior Department staff members to quickly write up analyses of no more than 15 pages on the various areas that might be included.
"When evaluating the information to be included please remember we are looking to identify significant 'historic or scientific qualities' that make these areas special, unique and worthy of additional protection or recognition," one memo said. "To put it in more simplistic terms, we are looking [to] identify the 'wow factor' for each of these sites."
One place with an easily identifiable "wow factor" is the Mariana Trench, an ocean canyon so deep it could hold Mt. Everest. Other areas slated for protection include Palmyra Atoll, Kingman Reef, Johnston Atoll, Jarvis Island, Howland Island, Baker Island and Wake Island.
