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US Vows 'Huge' Marine Protection

Soft corals and tropical fish share a paradise of habitat on the summit of an underwater volcano over 500 feet deep in the Mariana Island Arc, a 900-mile chain of volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean that includes the Northern Mariana Islands. These underwater volcanoes, some of which emerge as islands, rise almost 10,000 feet from the deep-sea floor just west of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth. (Image courtesy of the NOAA Submarine Ring of Fire 2004 Exploration and the NOAA Vents Program)

The US is to establish what it calls "the largest area of protected sea in the world" around its Pacific islands.

Commercial fishing and mining will be banned in the protected zones which include the Marianas Trench, the deepest area of ocean on the planet.

The area totals 500,000 sq km (190,000 sq miles) of sea and sea floor.

While welcoming the protection package, environmental activists said that without curbing climate change, the other measures would be meaningless.

Posted in conservation, Environment, global warming