September 13, 2015 — Federal officials on Tuesday will present a proposal to permanently protect three deep-sea canyons and nearby underwater mountains off New England in a move that would create the first “marine national monument” on the eastern seaboard.

Although environmental groups and marine scientists have been pushing for the special designation for the area that starts about 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod at the edge of the Outer Continental Shelf, they say the current proposal under consideration by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration doesn’t go far enough.

At the upcoming Town Hall meeting in Providence, the groups’ focus won’t be so much on Oceanographer, Gilbert and Lydonia canyons and the seamounts that lie south of them but on other areas in the region that haven’t been included for protection in the plan.

At the top of the list for the Conservation Law Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Pew Charitable Trusts and others is Cashes Ledge, a swath of waters in the Gulf of Maine that they describe as a one-of-a-kind fish nursery and feeding ground for important species that range from cod to tuna to endangered North Atlantic right whales.

Read the full story from the Providence Journal