Presidential Document2021-22674
Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument
Primary source
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Published
October 15, 2021
Signed
October 8, 2021
Issuing agencies
Executive Office of the President
Full Text
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<title>Federal Register, Volume 86 Issue 197 (Friday, October 15, 2021)</title>
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[Federal Register Volume 86, Number 197 (Friday, October 15, 2021)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 57349-57353]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [<a href="http://www.gpo.gov">www.gpo.gov</a>]
[FR Doc No: 2021-22674]
Presidential Documents
Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 197 / Friday, October 15, 2021 /
Presidential Documents
[[Page 57349]]
Proclamation 10287 of October 8, 2021
Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National
Monument
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
On September 15, 2016, President Barack Obama issued
Proclamation 9496 (Northeast Canyons and Seamounts
Marine National Monument), which designated
approximately 4,913 square miles of waters and
submerged lands where the Atlantic Ocean meets the
continental shelf as the Northeast Canyons and
Seamounts Marine National Monument. This designation
represented the culmination of nearly a half-century of
conservation efforts to preserve the vulnerable deep
marine ecosystems of the Atlantic canyons and
seamounts, which are widely known as natural
laboratories for the long-term study of benthic ecology
due to their rich biodiversity of important deep-sea
corals, endangered whales, endangered and threatened
sea turtles, other marine mammals, and numerous fish
and invertebrate species.
The monument is composed of two units, the Canyons Unit
and the Seamounts Unit, each of which showcases unique
geological features that anchor vulnerable ecological
communities threatened by varied uses, climate change,
and related impacts. As described by Proclamation 9496,
the Canyons Unit includes three underwater canyons:
Oceanographer, Gilbert, and Lydonia. The canyons' hard
walls, which range from 200 meters to thousands of
meters deep, provide important habitats for, and
support the life cycles of, a diversity of ocean life,
including sponges, corals, and other invertebrates;
larger species such as squid, octopuses, skates,
flounders, and crabs; and highly migratory oceanic
species, including tuna, billfish, sharks, toothed
whales (such as the endangered sperm whale), and many
species of beaked whales. The larger Seamounts Unit is
home to four extinct undersea volcanoes--Bear,
Physalia, Retriever, and Mytilus--that form a portion
of an underwater chain of more than 30 extinct
volcanoes that runs from the southern side of the
Georges Bank to midway across the western Atlantic
Ocean. These extinct volcanoes were formed as the
Earth's crust passed over a stationary hot spot that
pushed magma up through the seafloor, and many of them
have flat tops that were created as ocean waves eroded
the cooling magma. Geographically isolated from the
continental platform and characterized by steep and
complex submarine topography that interrupts existing
ocean currents and provides a constant supply of
plankton and nutrients, the seamounts are biological
islands with various substrates that form ocean oases
and act as incubators for new life. All four seamounts
support highly diverse ecological communities,
including many rare and endemic species that are new to
science and are not known to live anywhere else on
Earth. Together, the monument's submarine canyons and
seamounts create the unique ecological conditions
necessary to support one of the Atlantic Ocean's most
biologically productive and important marine
environments and one of science's greatest oceanic
laboratories. Proclamation 9496 recognized the undersea
canyons and seamounts, the deep-sea, pelagic, and other
marine ecosystems they support, and the biodiversity
they contain as objects of historic and scientific
interest and dedicated the Federal lands and waters
within the monuments' boundaries to their protection.
To provide for the proper care and management of the
monument's objects of historic and scientific interest,
Proclamation 9496 directed the Secretary
[[Page 57350]]
of Commerce and the Secretary of the Interior
(Secretaries) to prepare a joint management plan and
promulgate implementing regulations, as appropriate. To
the extent consistent with domestic and international
law, Proclamation 9496 also directed the Secretaries to
prohibit certain activities within the monument,
including mineral exploration and development; the use
of poisons, electrical charges, or explosives to
collect or harvest monument resources; and drilling
into, anchoring, dredging, or otherwise altering
submerged lands. Proclamation 9496 also directed the
Secretaries to prohibit all commercial fishing within
the monument, but allowed the Secretaries to permit a
7-year phase-out for red crab and American lobster
commercial fishing.
Despite the monument's ecological importance, wealth of
objects of historic and scientific interest, and
potential for additional scientific discovery,
President Donald Trump issued Proclamation 10049
(Modifying the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine
National Monument) on June 5, 2020, to remove the
restrictions on commercial fishing. Multiple parties
challenged Proclamation 10049 in Federal court,
asserting that it exceeded the President's authority
under the Antiquities Act. Restoring the prohibition on
commercial fishing will ensure that the unique,
fragile, and largely pristine canyons and seamounts,
and the dynamic ocean systems and marine life they
support, identified in Proclamation 9496 as objects of
historic or scientific interest requiring protection
under the Antiquities Act, will be safeguarded and will
continue to provide an important venue for scientific
study and research.
The Canyons Unit and Seamounts Unit each contain
interconnected oceanographic, geologic, and biologic
features that create a unique oceanic system that
supports an abundant concentration of biodiversity.
These features' close proximity to each other results
in an interdependent whole that exceeds the sum of its
constituent parts.
In the case of the Canyons Unit, the monument boundary
closely corresponds to a contiguous continental shelf
break area around the heads of the three canyons, which
extend seaward from features that have not yet fully
taken on the distinctive canyon shape, to the walls and
valleys of the canyons themselves, and out to the start
of the outer shelf thousands of meters below. Within
this transitional region, the walls of the three
closely situated canyons combine with ocean currents,
temperature gradients, eddies, and fronts to create
significant and complex nutrient cycling and other
processes that result in a biologically rich and
distinct oceanic system. The Canyons Unit is sized to
correspond to and protect these large-scale oceanic
processes that provide the foundation for the distinct
habitat that supports numerous objects of scientific
interest. For example, the shallower depths of the
canyons include ecologically significant and vulnerable
habitat for tilefish, which function as ecosystem
engineers by creating ``pueblo'' habitat at depths of
100 to 300 meters in the monument's canyons, which in
turn supports a diversity of fish and invertebrate
species. The Canyons Unit also supports a great
abundance of marine mammals and other upper-trophic
level predators attracted to the prey abundance
fostered by the Canyons Unit's unique marine landscape.
Due to the close proximity of the three canyons to one
another, congregating marine mammals and pelagic fish
species routinely transit the inter-canyon areas while
foraging among the biologic abundance found there. This
is an example of the important ecological linkages that
connect the monument's various topographies, the
surrounding shelf, and the water column above them,
which necessitate protection of the entire interrelated
system.
In the case of the Seamounts Unit, the boundary
encompasses the four seamounts and the areas between
the edges of Bear and Retriever Seamounts on the north
side, Bear and Mytilus Seamounts on the south side, and
out to the boundary line of the Exclusive Economic Zone
on the east side. These four seamounts, rising
thousands of feet from the surrounding seafloor, are
the only seamounts located within U.S. Atlantic waters.
As with the Canyons Unit, the proximity of these
important geologic features to each
[[Page 57351]]
other influences the currents, upwelling,
stratification, and mixing that make the species and
habitat within the monument so diverse, abundant, and
unique. The seamounts function as oases in the open
ocean environment and feature distinct ecological
communities as they grade down from the relatively
shallow seamount peaks to the abyss below. They are
critical to protecting the ecosystem linkages that
transport nutrients to the surface through predator-
prey interactions and temperature-driven upwelling, and
transport organic carbon to deep-sea ecosystems (corals
and benthic communities) through plankton and fecal
detritus, downwelling materials, down-slope currents,
and animal migration and mortality.
The boundaries of the monument reflect the need to
protect the canyons, seamounts, and the attendant deep-
sea, pelagic, and other marine ecosystems, which are
themselves objects of historic and scientific interest,
as well as the complex geologic, oceanographic, and
biologic characteristics in the Canyons Unit and
Seamounts Unit. The monument ensures these vulnerable
marine ecosystems are safeguarded and will remain the
great ocean laboratories recognized in Proclamation
9496. The boundaries are closely hewn to prominent
geologic objects that form the foundation of closely
linked habitats, which support the monument's great
abundance and diversity of life. The boundaries are
scaled to avoid cascading negative effects from failing
to protect parts of these complex and interconnected
marine environments and their unique oceanographic
processes. In order to ensure effective management and
protection of the objects of historic and scientific
interest, straight-line coordinates are used where
possible to provide clear and enforceable demarcation
of this open-ocean monument. For these reasons,
Proclamation 9496 found that the lands owned or
controlled by the Federal Government within the
monument's boundaries were the smallest area compatible
with the proper care and management of the objects of
historic and scientific interest designated for
protection.
Commercial fishing activity has the potential to
significantly degrade the monument's objects of
historic and scientific interest. Bottom-contact
fishing gear and fixed fishing gear (for example,
traps, gillnets, and bottom and pelagic long-line gear)
with buoys, submerged lines, and associated traps,
mesh, or hooks, all pose threats to the canyons and
seamounts, the ecosystem, and the deep-sea, pelagic,
and other marine life they support, as well as the
additional objects of historic and scientific interest
contained therein. Although statutes such as the
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management
Act, 16 U.S.C. 1801 et seq., the Endangered Species
Act, 16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq., the Migratory Bird Treaty
Act, 16 U.S.C. 703-712, the National Wildlife Refuge
System Administration Act, 16 U.S.C. 668dd-668ee, the
Refuge Recreation Act, 16 U.S.C. 460k et seq., the
Marine Mammal Protection Act, 16 U.S.C. 1361 et seq.,
the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq., the Oil
Pollution Act, 33 U.S.C. 2701 et seq., the National
Marine Sanctuaries Act, 16 U.S.C. 1431 et seq., and
Title I of the Marine Protection, Research and
Sanctuaries Act (Ocean Dumping Act), 33 U.S.C. 1401 et
seq., provide important safeguards that did not exist
prior to the Antiquities Act's passage, these laws do
not adequately address the threats facing the canyons
and seamounts and their surrounding ecosystem. The
prohibition on commercial fishing confers necessary,
additional, and lasting protections for the objects of
historic and scientific interest in the Northeast
Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument for
current and future generations.
Protection of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts as a
marine national monument preserves significant
geological features, marine biota, and deep-sea,
pelagic, and other marine ecosystems that the canyons
and seamounts create and support as they interact with
ocean currents, ensuring that the natural and
scientific values of this area are maintained for the
benefit of all Americans and for the discovery of new
information about living marine resources for years to
come.
[[Page 57352]]
WHEREAS, section 320301 of title 54, United States Code
(the ``Antiquities Act'') authorizes the President, in
his discretion, to declare by public proclamation
historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric
structures, and other objects of historic or scientific
interest that are situated upon the lands owned or
controlled by the Federal Government to be national
monuments, and to reserve as a part thereof parcels of
land, the limits of which shall be confined to the
smallest area compatible with the proper care and
management of the objects to be protected; and
WHEREAS, Proclamation 9496 designated the Northeast
Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the
Atlantic Ocean and reserved approximately 4,913 square
miles of water and submerged lands in and around
certain deep-sea canyons and seamounts situated upon
lands and interests in lands owned or controlled by the
Federal Government as the smallest area compatible with
the proper care and management of objects of historic
and scientific interest; and
WHEREAS, Proclamation 10049 modified the conditions of
the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National
Monument to allow commercial fishing activities, which
could impact monument objects; and
WHEREAS, I find that the resources identified above and
in Proclamation 9496 are objects of historic or
scientific interest in need of protection under the
Antiquities Act; and
WHEREAS, I find that the unique nature of the waters
and submerged lands that make up the marine environment
in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts area and the
collection of objects and resources therein make the
entire area within the boundaries of the monument an
object of historic and scientific interest in need of
protection under the Antiquities Act; and
WHEREAS, I find that there are documented threats to
the objects identified above and in Proclamation 9496;
and
WHEREAS, I find that the objects identified above and
in Proclamation 9496 are not adequately protected by
applicable law and other administrative designations;
and
WHEREAS, I find that the boundaries of the monument
reserved by Proclamation 9496 represent the smallest
area compatible with the proper care and management of
the objects of historic or scientific interest; and
WHEREAS, it is in the public interest to ensure the
preservation and protection of the objects of historic
and scientific interest in the Northeast Canyons and
Seamounts Marine National Monument;
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of
the United States of America, by the authority vested
in me by section 320301 of title 54, United States
Code, hereby proclaim that, in order to provide for the
proper care and management of the objects identified
above and in Proclamation 9496, management of lands and
interests in lands owned or controlled by the Federal
Government within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts
Marine National Monument shall be governed by the
management provisions of Proclamation 9496. Such
provisions include paragraph 6 in the section entitled
``Prohibited Activities'' and paragraph 5 in the
section entitled ``Regulated Activities,'' which
provide for the prohibition of all commercial fishing
in the monument, except for red crab and American
lobster commercial fishing, which may be permitted
until September 15, 2023.
The Secretary of Commerce, through the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, and the Secretary of
the Interior, through the United States Fish and
Wildlife Service, share management responsibility for
the monument, as prescribed in Proclamation 9496.
Within their respective authorities, the Secretaries
shall prepare a joint management plan for the monument
by September 15, 2023, and, as appropriate, shall
promulgate implementing regulations that address any
further specific actions necessary for the proper care
and management of the objects and area identified above
and in Proclamation 9496.
[[Page 57353]]
To the extent any provision of Proclamation 10049 is
inconsistent with this proclamation or Proclamation
9496, the terms of this proclamation and Proclamation
9496 shall govern.
Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not
to appropriate, excavate, injure, destroy, or remove
any feature of this monument and not to locate or
settle upon any lands thereof.
If any provision of this proclamation, including its
application to a particular parcel of land, is held to
be invalid, the remainder of this proclamation and its
application to other parcels of land shall not be
affected thereby.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
eighth day of October, in the year of our Lord two
thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the
United States of America the two hundred and forty-
sixth.
<GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT>
(Presidential Sig.)
[FR Doc. 2021-22674
Filed 10-14-21; 8:45 am]
Billing code 3395-F2-P
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</html>Indexed from Federal Register on October 15, 2021.
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