From an Associated Press Report by Cain Burdeau of November 8, 2008

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — President Bush’s proposal to create a string of marine sanctuaries in the Gulf of Mexico, known as the “Islands in the Stream,” has died at least for now after Republican senators opposed it, a sanctuary official said.

The sanctuaries would have restricted fishing and oil drilling in nine coral banks and hard-bottom areas in a large loop around the Gulf from Texas to Florida. Ecologically, the idea dovetails with research showing that the Gulf marine ecosystem relies on a ring of deep-water reefs and banks connected by the clockwise motion of ocean currents extending in a loop from Belize to the Florida Keys.

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