Product Description
This up-to-date electronic book on CD-ROM provides comprehensive information on over 100 marine species at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, with biological information and photographs of marine mammals, fish, birds, invertebrates, plants, reptiles, and more. Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, located about 110 miles off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, harbors the northernmost coral reefs in the continental United States and serves as a regional reservoir of shallow water Caribbean reef fishes and invertebrates. The coral reefs rise to within 55 feet of the surface and form the basis for a complex, yet balanced ecosystem. The Banks themselves are surface expressions of salt domes whose formation began 160 to 170 million years ago in what was a shallow sea, subject to evaporation. Today it has become a premier diving destination and attracts scientists from around the world. The National Marine Sanctuaries system is administered by NOAA. An environmental bill that focused on ocean health, the National Marine, Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, established a system of marine protected areas. This new system would be administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), established in 1970. The National Marine Sanctuaries Act - The purpose of this Act was to prevent "unregulated dumping of material into the oceans, coastal, and other waters" that endanger "human health, welfare, and amenities, and the marine environment, ecological systems and economic potentialities." Within this law, the transportation and dumping of radioactive, chemical, or biological substances were forbidden. However, this Act also included Title III, later called the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, which charged the Secretary of the Department of Commerce to identify, designate, and manage marine sites based on conservational, ecological, recreational, historical, aesthetic, scientific or educational value within significant national ocean and Great Lake waters. Under the newly created agency, NOAA began examining nationally significant marine areas for possible sanctuary designation. Two years after the Act was passed, the nation's first marine sanctuary was created to preserve the wreckage of the USS Monitor, a Civil War ironclad, resting in 240 feet of water off North Carolina, 16 miles off the coast of North Carolina. Over the next 25 years, eleven additional marine sanctuaries would be added. On the Pacific Ocean, Olympic Coast, Washington State and Monterey Bay, Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank in California joined the system and brought into it a rich diversity of marine ecosystems. The Flower Garden Banks, a coral oasis in a sea of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico was designated. In the Atlantic Ocean, Gray's Reef Stellwagen Bank, and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuaries protected precious coral reefs and rich fishing grounds, loggerhead turtles and right whales. In the Hawaiian Islands, a sanctuary protecting Humpback Whales was established to help preserve important breeding grounds of these vulnerable cetaceans. And the marine sanctuary farthest from the U.S. mainland was designated in Fagatale Bay, American Samoa in a fringing coral reef nestled within an eroded volcanic crater. In Fall 1999, the thirteenth sanctuary, and the first in the Great Lakes in Thunder Bay, Michigan, joined the system. This incredible CD-ROM is packed with over 16,000 pages reproduced using Adobe Acrobat PDF software - allowing direct viewing on Windows and Macintosh systems. The Acrobat cataloging technology adds enormous value and uncommon functionality to this impressive collection of government documents and material. Our news and educational discs are privately compiled collections of official public domain U.S. government files and documents - they are not produced by the federal government. They are designed to provide a convenient user-friendly reference work, utilizin