Woods Hole

Angelo has reported that Woods Hole is now conducting its deep sea investigation at the Marianas Trench.

You can follow the reporting real-time on Twitter.

Friends of the Monument on ABC

In April the Friends of the Monument were on NBC. This month we're on ABC, that's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The interview is about what else in this interview? The Marianas Trench Marine National Monument.

Angelo Villagomez was interviewed for the program and it played on the Pacific Beat program on May 19. It may or may not play on the local NPR, but anyone anywhere in the world can listen to the program online.

Click HERE to listen to the interview.

You can listen to the entire 19 minute podcast to hear how it sounded on the radio. It is the last story, starting at about 17 minutes.

A longer, less edited version of Angelo Villagomez' interview can be found HERE. It is 3:34 minutes long and does not include the lead in to the story.

New Merchandise

I ordered some Marianas Trench Monument merchandise on Cafepress.com yesterday. This golf shirt is $17.99.

This baseball jersey is also $17.99.

Cafepress.com mailed it out today and it should arrive in a few days.

Nominate an Ocean Hero

I can think of a few people living on Saipan that would make good candidates for Oceana's Ocean Hero award. From their website:

Oceana is accepting nominees for its first Ocean Heroes Award. This award was created in honor of a recent action by the United Nations recognizing June 8 as World Oceans Day.

Seventeen years and thousands of petition signatures after it was originally proposed, World Oceans Day will now and forever be a day to celebrate our oceans. We hope to pay tribute to the passionate, dedicated fish-huggers disguised as normal civilians and we need your assistance to expose their true identity. Please help us find our inaugural Ocean Hero.

See a full description of Oceana's Ocean Hero Award here.

Click HERE to nominate an ocean hero

Carnival of the Blue 24

Carnival of the Blue 24 is now live at Sea Notes, the blog of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This month's carnival features the best in ocean blogging from across the globe.

My contribution this month is the NBC Nightly News story on the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument from two weeks ago.

MINA Annual Meeting

The 2009 MINA general membership meeting will be held on Thursday, May 7, 2009 from 5:00PM to 8:00PM at the 13 Fishermen's Pavilion on Beach Road in Garapan. We would like to invite all of our members as well as the general public to join us, and learn about the opportunities and challenges facing MINA in 2009, as well as our accomplishments in 2008.

Join the USFWS Marianas Trench Marine Monument List

I'm posting this news from Angelo:

US Fish & Wildlife Service is the federal agency charged with managing the Marianas Trench Marine Monument. In order to help them with their initial local outreach during the upcoming scoping period, they are trying to build a contact list of interested residents.

If you are interested, the US Fish & Wildlife Service will add you to their contact list and will keep you up to date with news from the USFWS concerning the Marianas Trench Marine Monument. Send them an email at mtmnm@fws.gov and include your name, email, phone number, and mailing address.