Marine Conservation is becoming more and more demanding around the world. There are Marine Conservations in what seems to be every inch of the planet. According to Dr. Lance Morgan, president of The Marine Conservation Institute, which is based in Irvine Calif., the need for Marine Conservations is real. The world needs more of them to regulate laws, create new laws, and to keep the oceans clean.

“They identify the most important areas of the ocean and wild life refuges, they maintain laws, and make sure that the refuges are well managed,” stated Morgan. “If everyone on this planet does not change their ways, things are only going to get worse. We need to get more areas where marine life are healthy, and protect them. We also need to find potential areas where marine life has a chance, and give them that chance.”

“We are trying to designate protected areas, no fishing zones, in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.” stated Morgan. The Marine Conservation Institute was working with President Obama to create the world’s largest fully protected marine reserve in the Central Pacific Ocean.

Whitehouse.gov stated that the National Climate Assessment confirmed that climate change is causing sea levels and ocean temperatures to rise. Changing temperatures can harm coral reefs and force certain species to migrate. In addition, carbon pollution is being absorbed by the oceans, causing them to acidify, which can damage coastal shellfish beds and reefs, altering entire marine ecosystems. To date, the acidity of our ocean is changing 50 times faster than any known change in millions of years.

According to the "Washington Post," by broadening the Pacific Remote Islands National Marine Monument from almost 87,000 square miles to more than 490,000 square miles, Obama has protected more acres of federal land and sea by executive power than any other president in at least 50 years and makes the area off-limits to commercial fishing. Obama has protected 297 million acres of federal lands and waters through executive action, surpassing George W. Bush, who safeguarded 211 million acres. The expansion of the reserve will make it three times larger than California.

The expanded monument will include over 130 newly protected sea mounts, which are hot spots of biodiversity that harbor uncounted numbers of new and unique marine species. The expansion will better protect the habitat of animals with large migration and foraging ranges that stretch throughout the area, including sea turtles, marine mammals, and manta rays, according to Whitehouse.gov.

According to globaloceanrefuge.org, the world’s oceans contain less than 2 percent of marine conservations today, and many leading marine scientists have just signed a scientist letter to the president, calling all leaders to increase that to 20 percent of representative places in the coming decade. A scientist letter is where the scientists trying to get this approved lay out all of the facts and their professional opinions in a letter for the president to read, and ultimately make a decision.

According to "National Geographic," environmentalists, preservationists, and conservation groups that had pushed for the expansion called President Barack Obama's designation a historic victory, in their efforts to limit the impact of fishing, drilling, and other activities that threaten some of the world's most species-rich waters. The expanded monument will help ensure that there are some places that are pristine as possible for as long as possible.

Referring to the three adjacent areas that will now have more restricted activities, the presidential proclamation states, “These adjacent areas hold a large number of undersea mountains (‘seamounts’) that may provide habitat for colonies of deepwater corals many thousands of years old,” adding that their “pelagic environment provides habitat and forage for tunas, turtles, manta rays, sharks, cetaceans and seabirds that have evolved with a foraging technique that depends on large marine predators,” according to the "Washington Post."

In Australia, they are doing similar things to protect Marine life. The Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) said that the report highlighted the damage that dredging and dumping has on Reef health and validated the need to ban dumping in all the Reef’s waters. Felicity Wishart, the AMCS Great Barrier Reef campaign director said the Federal Government plans to ban capital dredge spoil dumping in the Marine Park did not go far enough and the ban should be extended across the entire Reef’s waters.

“Dredging and dumping anywhere in the Reef’s waters are clearly damaging practices that harm seagrass beds, risk wildlife such as turtles and cause sediment plumes that travel long distances and smother corals. We should not be further deteriorating water quality with these arcane practices whenever they can be avoided,” stated Wishart.

Throughout the world, it seems that every country has its own way of protecting marine life and the oceans that they inhabit. There are many ways we can help protect our marine life and the environment.

According to "National Geographic," some things you can do to help protect marine life are reducing energy consumption, making safe sustainable seafood choices, using fewer plastics products, helping take care of the beach, not buying items that exploit marine life, such as coral jewelry, being an ocean friendly pet owner, supporting organizations that protect our marine life and oceans, influencing change in your community, and educating yourself about oceans and marine life.

We fear that when people realize oceans are vital to our survival, it will be too late. So take the initiative to go out there and help protect marine life and their homes.