On June 5, the Biden-Harris Administration designated a 1,722-square-mile area in eastern Lake Ontario as America’s 16th national marine sanctuary. Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary — adjacent to New York’s Jefferson, Oswego, Cayuga and Wayne counties — will celebrate the region’s maritime cultural history and provide new opportunities for research, education, recreation and maritime heritage-related tourism in local coastal communities and the broader Great Lakes region.
The new sanctuary features historic lighthouses like the Tibbetts Point Lighthouse, 41 known shipwrecks and one known submerged aircraft. The shipwrecks include St. Peter, a three-masted schooner that was loaded with coal when it was lost in a storm in 1898.
NOAA and the state of New York will co-manage the sanctuary, the third to be designated in the Great Lakes. NOAA and its local and state partners will host a community celebration for the new sanctuary on September 6 in Oswego, New York.
NOAA
