We have our public service announcement on the radio and television inviting people to stop by this blog for information. If you are one of the people responding to those PSAs, please look around the blog. There are many posts with lots of information.
I'd also encourage everyone to check out the post on Lil Hammerhead's blog that discusses some of the important scientific evidence about the need for marine "no take" zones.
At the public meeting with federal officials, one of the things I heard from people questioning the idea of a marine sanctuary/monument here is that our waters are in good shape, our marine environment hasn't been deleteriously effected, our marine resources are being adequately managed.
The reality is different, though. If you talk with people who've been here a long time, people who spend time in the water, they can tell you that fishing was better in the past--the fish were bigger, there were more of them, they were closer to us. Now it's getting hard to find some species, and the fishermen are going further out to do it.
We don't live in isolation from the rest of the world. Our ocean touches Asia, Australia, North America and South America. The marine animals we see here, especially the large marine mammals, may have traveled from those places. We are not immune from the pollution and over-fishing that is depleting our ocean resources at an alarming rate.
We need this marine national monument to protect our marine life while we still have it.
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