I don't know if there is actually a new focus on ocean conservation, as is declared by the New York Times Green Inc. blog title (but not really the post), or if we just want there to be (I know I do). And while it might be true that "the most growth in protected areas has occurred in the ocean" -- at less than 1% of the ocean closed to fishing, we still have a long way to go to meet the goal of having at least 10% of each of the world's ecological regions effectively conserved by 2010 as outlined by the Convention on Biological Diversity (interestingly, the Christian Book Distributors outranks the Convention in a Google search of "CBD"). So if there isn't a new focus on ocean conservation, there definitely should be...
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since this article was referring to the United States you should know that 150,000 square miles of the 4.38 million square miles that the US controls are Marine Protected Areas, which come out to about 3.4%. My hope is that Obama gets us to 5% in his term. GO USA!
There's a long way to go before the consumers in the markets become aware of the impact of their purchases on the global environment. Many, many people I speak to are 100% certain that it's the trees alone that take in the carbon dioxide and are equally sure that the open oceans are populated by the same amount of life as the coastal shelves. Don't even get me started on what the South East Asian countries think is sustainable! More information is getting to them though, films and documentaries are slowly filtering down. Let's hope the moment of real awakening to what's going on doesn't come too late.
since this article was referring to the United States you should know that 150,000 square miles of the 4.38 million square miles that the US controls are Marine Protected Areas, which come out to about 3.4%. My hope is that Obama gets us to 5% in his term