A reviewer shouldn’t recommend a movie without having seen it, but we’ll break the rule here to talk up a thing of beauty we’ve never laid our eyes on: The Hudson Canyon. A hundred miles to New York City’s southeast, seven Empire State Buildings deep in the Atlantic, is the largest submarine canyon on the East Coast, home to deep-sea corals that feed and shelter sharks, sea turtles, whales, tunas, swordfish and countless undiscovered mysteries.
The people of Gotham, who’ve done their share of shouting at the oceans of late as the sea levels rise and storms flood our tunnels, must never forget how constructively entwined our fate is with those of the waters that surround us. We not only eat what they produce and swim in them and work in them; our ecosystems are inextricable from theirs. Even if they weren’t, as a great governor and president made clear more than a century ago, precious and endangered natural wonders should be conserved for their own sake, not merely for what they happen to provide us.
Last week, President Biden proposed making the Hudson Canyon the newest national marine sanctuary, giving Washington more power to protect the wildlife under the waves from oil, gas and mineral exploration and other development. We are enthusiasts of offshore wind farms and would never rule out intelligent resource extraction in some parts of the ocean, but we proudly carry water for this idea.
