NOAA Monitor Sanctuary information

[Akyla]

If you operate anywhere near the coastal NC area you may be interested in taking a look at what I have posted in the NC Wreck Diver forum.

In the draft management plan for the presently small Monitor Marine Sanctuary, there is a provision to begin the process of expanding the sanctuary to include additional sites and potentially be a huge area. NOAA has been doing all the background work on this for several years and is now making it official.

The desire to expand this small sanctuary has many issues asociated with it, only one of them being the desire to preserve the shipwreck sites.

An expanded sanctuary will bring with it a number of restrictions, rules and regulations that may effectively prevent access or full use of the resources.

Many of you may already operate in or near a Marine Sanctuary and I would like to hear your thoughts about the good and bad of this. If you wish to make comments to NOAA about their draft plan, the methods to do so are linked to in my post on NC wreck diver forum.

 

[ComputerJoe]

In Thunder Bay we are also going thru an administrative expansion attempt. Here we have not had any wrecks restricted to diving, although they have not always released locations of new finds in a timely manner. If there is a mooring buoy present you can not hook into the wreck and must use the buoy. The fishermmen were happy to see that fishing was nothing that Sanctuaries devoted to cultrual artifacts wanted to regulate. No permits have been required and that was something we also got into the Management plan that created Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Up here we have 150 year old wooden schooners and steamers that still have their masts upright and look like they could be sailed away, something that is worth perserving from salvagers. And they are something that will be here for another 150 years. Years ago we wondered if we wanted large numbers of east coat wreckers here as salvaging was something in their blood. In the ocean a wreck that will be nothing but rust in 100 years they may well be saving a piece of history from oblivion by taking it, but here taking a piece from a wreck is stealing from future generations for hundreds of years.

I have started a discussion of the Thunder Bay expansion under the Great Lakes Wrecking Crew forum...go to Centeral US first