In his letter to Bush Sanford called the reef a “national treasure” and compared it to Yosemite National Park or parts of Hawaii. It is fact that South Carolina’s reef is about 1,000 feet deep in an area that gets virtually no sunlight. It attracts many species of fish people never see, but also is frequented by commercial species such as the wreck fish.
The reef stretches more than 60 miles off South Carolina and is part of a reef system that extends from North Carolina to Florida. The conservation group Environmental Defense told that the protection of the area as a marine national monument would not likely affect current commercial fishing, but could limit or prohibit future endeavors to catch deep-water species.
It is said that the designation off South Carolina also could limit offshore energy exploration if the work threatened to damage the reef. According to Sanford the fragile nature of these slow-growing and long-lived corals makes them highly vulnerable to disturbance. He continued saying that the deep-water coral ecosystems offshore from South Carolina, along with the coral ecosystems adjacent to the other Southeast states, are in need of your attention and leadership.
Environmental Defense officials praised Sanford for his efforts saying that the reef is so deep that it has likely never been disturbed by humans. Steve Ross, a researcher at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, said that the greatest concentration of deep-water corals is believed to lie off the South Atlantic coast. The area of proposed protection would include the “Charleston Bump,” a popular offshore fishing spot.
