New Marine National Monument in Atlantic

President Obama has declared the first fully protected area in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean, designating 4,913 square miles off the New England coastline as a new marine national monument.

The President’s previous marine conservation declarations have focused on some of the most remote waters under U.S. jurisdiction, including last month’s expansion of a massive protected area in Hawaii. But the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is more accessible, lying 130 miles off the southeast coast of Cape Cod.

President Obama has now declared 553,000,000 acres of new national monuments, the most by any president.  The previous high was George W. Bush’s 214, 800,000.

Click here for a Washington Post article on this new marine national monument.