The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) was designated in 1990 and encompasses 2,800 square nautical miles surrounding the Florida Keys archipelago. The region is known world wide for its extensive offshore coral reefs.

Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary is one of the largest near-shore sandstone reefs in the southeastern United States. The series of rock ledges and sand expanses has produced a complex habitat of caves, burrows, troughs, and overhangs that provide a solid base for the abundant sessile invertebrates to attach and grow.

The Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary is home to a rich and diverse community of marine life. The shoreline topography and currents in this region facilitate mixing of cool, nutrient rich waters from the north with warmer waters from the south, creating a biologic transition zone that brims with life.

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary includes our nation's largest kelp forest, one of North America's largest underwater canyons and the closest-to-shore deep ocean environment in the continental United States. It is home to one of the most diverse marine ecosystems in the world, including 33 species of marine mammals, 94 species of seabirds, 345 species of fishes, and numerous invertebrates and plants.

Approximately 50 miles northwest of the Golden Gate Bridge, Cordell Bank rises from the edge of California's continental shelf. Although a few of this submerged island's ridges and pinnacles stretch to within 120 feet of the ocean surface, most of the bank is about 200 feet deep. Here, upwellings of nutrient rich ocean waters and the bank's topography create one of the most biologically productive areas on the West Coast.

Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, located about 110 miles off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, harbors the northernmost coral reefs in the United States and serves as a regional reservoir of shallow water Caribbean reef fishes and invertebrates.

Dozens of tiny islands, atolls and shoals, spanning more than 1,200 miles of the world’s largest ocean, are slowly, quietly slipping into the sea, destined to become seamounts. Hundreds of miles north of Kaua‘i, places like Nihoa, Laysan, Pearl and Hermes and Kure comprise the little known, rarely visited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary is the only place in the U.S. where humpback whales breed, calve, and nurse their young. The sanctuary is also home to a fascinating array of marine animals, corals and plants, some of which are found nowhere else on Earth. Its cultural heritage includes Native Hawaiian traditions of living in harmony with the sea.