Status Check: Assessing Stellwagen National Marine Sanctuary
A submerged extension of the sandy Cape tip, it is a big sandbar rising from the ocean floor to the height of an 11-story building, coming within 65 feet of the ocean surface. Currents swirl around it, lifting organic debris from the ocean bottom up into the sunlit surface waters, kick-starting the marine food chain with plankton blooms that feed grazers like herring and sand lance that are in turn preyed upon by larger fish, whales and seabirds. But, as a new report by the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary shows, human activities in the ocean continue to increase, putting greater pressure on wildlife and habitat within the sanctuary as humans create an increasingly industrialized ocean that is noisier, more contaminated and overfished. (overfished by whom?!)>click to read< 07:33
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