Rebreather World - View Single Post - Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary

NEwreckdiver · 2nd April 2008, 12:39

Hello All -

There have been a few posts related to this here, but I wanted to take a moment to give a bit more background and start a thread that relates to the NOAA sanctuary "Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary" (SBNMS). SBNMS is one of 13 national marine sanctuaries under NOAA management. Over the past several years, SBNMS has been in the process of revising it's management plan, which began with public scoping, development of an Action Plan that would guide NOAA in creating the management plan, an assessment of the condition of the sanctuary and finally release of a draft management plan that would be amended/finalized after a 90 day public review period. For those of you who have followed this since 2005 when we first undertook this project, you will know that NOAA has sought to create a highly restrictive structure for how diving in the sanctuary would be allowed. Many of us have fought against this to pro-actively criticize the Action Plan in the hope it would influence the draft management plan (DMP). There was some progress made - changes to the NOAA SBNMS website with more information regarding diving, and most notably the creation of a Diving member seat on the Sanctuary Advisory Council (SAC). However, the story is not finished and no battles can claim to have been won. The DMP is finally scheduled for release on May 6. At that time a 90 day public commenting period begins. We as the dive community need to pull together and ensure our voice has been heard and everything that can be done, is done, in order to make sure that the management plan ultimately contains something we can live with. Since the sanctuary is in federal waters and is one of 13 sanctuaries - this does apply to all of us, especially since other sanctuaries will look at what is done across them all when considering updates to their own management plans. So, even if you do not live in New England, this should concern you. Please visit Shipwreck Divers - http://www.shipwreckdivers.org - a website aimed to making information and updates available. Currently it contains an online petition - feel free to comment now. When the DMP is available, there will be additional methods published to provide comments on the DMP itself and we'll ask everyone to comment specifically on the DMP at that time. We need the support of everyone. Thanks for reading this long note!

Cheers
Heather Knowles
SAC Diving Representative

2nd April 2008, 12:39	#1 (permalink)
NEwreckdiver New Member Current Rebreather/s: Prism Topaz Other Rebreather/s: Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Boston MA Posts: 48	Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Hello All - There have been a few posts related to this here, but I wanted to take a moment to give a bit more background and start a thread that relates to the NOAA sanctuary "Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary" (SBNMS). SBNMS is one of 13 national marine sanctuaries under NOAA management. Over the past several years, SBNMS has been in the process of revising it's management plan, which began with public scoping, development of an Action Plan that would guide NOAA in creating the management plan, an assessment of the condition of the sanctuary and finally release of a draft management plan that would be amended/finalized after a 90 day public review period. For those of you who have followed this since 2005 when we first undertook this project, you will know that NOAA has sought to create a highly restrictive structure for how diving in the sanctuary would be allowed. Many of us have fought against this to pro-actively criticize the Action Plan in the hope it would influence the draft management plan (DMP). There was some progress made - changes to the NOAA SBNMS website with more information regarding diving, and most notably the creation of a Diving member seat on the Sanctuary Advisory Council (SAC). However, the story is not finished and no battles can claim to have been won. The DMP is finally scheduled for release on May 6. At that time a 90 day public commenting period begins. We as the dive community need to pull together and ensure our voice has been heard and everything that can be done, is done, in order to make sure that the management plan ultimately contains something we can live with. Since the sanctuary is in federal waters and is one of 13 sanctuaries - this does apply to all of us, especially since other sanctuaries will look at what is done across them all when considering updates to their own management plans. So, even if you do not live in New England, this should concern you. Please visit Shipwreck Divers - http://www.shipwreckdivers.org - a website aimed to making information and updates available. Currently it contains an online petition - feel free to comment now. When the DMP is available, there will be additional methods published to provide comments on the DMP itself and we'll ask everyone to comment specifically on the DMP at that time. We need the support of everyone. Thanks for reading this long note! Cheers Heather Knowles SAC Diving Representative
(Offline)