The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was designated in September 2016 after many individuals with the Ocean River Institute (4,974) and other organizations called on the government to act.
The real work has just begun. We must now guard pristine Atlantic Ocean habitats from oil, gas and mineral mining who are viewing the canyons and seamounts like stacks of coins on a roulette table beckoning for bids and immediate takings with no concern for the consequences.
Defend Atlantic Ocean continental shelf, canyons, offshore seamounts and the layered columns of sea water bodies (Surface Water, Shelf Water, Slope Water, Labrador Current and Gulf Stream).
Join ORI’s Deep Sea Canyon Rangers and Seamount Guardians to protect the Atlantic Ocean’s only national marine monument.
What’s the place?
This is a national park area nearly the size of Connecticut (4,913 sq miles), covering 1.5 percent of U.S. federal waters on the East Coast, the NE Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument has more pristine ocean ecosystems than any other similar sized ocean area. A cornucopia of places for foraging fulmars from the continental shelf of Georges Bank, to canyons that cascade steeply 10,000, to the Sohm Abyssal Plain, East to four uniquely distinctive towering seamounts that rise up thousands of feet to summit deep below the reach of daylight.
Our national ocean place needs guardians.
Join us to take a stand for deep sea canyons and ocean seamounts.
Why?
This is a national treasure worthy of our protection and stewardship. But being public waters, 150 miles and more SE of Massachusetts, it’s out of sight and off the radar of public interest.
Oil companies are applying for leases to drill in Lydonia Canyon. Mineral miners look to strip-mine the ferromanganese crusts of seamounts for the stuff of smartphones, high-tech minerals and rare-earth elements, today’s ubiquitous technology-critical materials such as tellurium.
Tellurium, a shiny silvery-white metalloid, is a rare-earth chemical element (Te) and is rarer in the Earth’s crust than platinum. Basalt rocks of seamounts have been soaking up tellurium from seawater like a sponge for forty million years. Tellurium further distinguished itself when a double bond formed with boron to become the heaviest main-group element to do so. Computer chips with transistors made with tellurium carry a current better than other materials.
In an alloy with cadmium, cadmium telluride, it is the only solar cell thin film element with lower costs than crystalline silicon and, thus, the shortest energy payback time. (Costs for destruction of seamounts and associated marine life habitats, not to mention actual lives, not included.)
Make ripples that become waves.
Defend the ocean. Stand up against the destruction of the realm of sperm whales, blue, fin, sei, humpback and North Atlantic right whales. Protect an area visited by orcas, pilot and beaked whales. Sojourn with fulmars, gannets, skua, petrels and shearwaters.
The Ocean River Institute is looking for a few hundred stalwart ocean rangers and sea life guardians to stand up against mineral mining, gas and oil drilling in America’s North Atlantic waters and in particular the NE Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
