MONTEREY — As the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary turns 30 this year, it will be celebrated by the United States Postal Service, which will feature it on a postal stamp.
The stamp will be one of 16 representing the National Marine Sanctuary System, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Marine Sanctuary System, the stamps feature photography of the abundant wildlife and diverse ecosystems that can be found in the waters of America’s national marine sanctuaries and marine national monuments.
“I think it’s incredible,” said Lisa Uttal, an education and outreach specialist with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. “We often do think about national parks, the sanctuaries are your underwater national forests.”
The Monterey Bay sanctuary will be represented with a sea otter stamp. Other images include a breaching humpback whale in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary in Massachusetts and sea lions in Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary in Southern California.
A map of the National Marine Sanctuary System is printed on the back of the sheet. The Office of National Marine Sanctuaries serves as the trustee for a network of ocean parks encompassing more than 620,000 square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters, an area nearly the size of Alaska. The network includes a system of 15 national marine sanctuaries and two marine national monuments, including Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, that conserve areas with special ecological, cultural and historical significance. The National Marine Sanctuary System turns 50 on Oct. 23.
The stamps come in a sheet of 16 for $9.60 and preorders can be made online at usps.com/stamps. They will be released Friday, with a free U.S. Postal Service event at 10 a.m. at the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center, 35 Pacific Ave. in Santa Cruz.
The stamps include photographs taken by Daryl Duda, Michael Durham, Mark Sullivan, Peter Turcik, Norbert Wu, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees Wendy Cover, Jeff Harris, Elliott Hazen, Joseph Hoyt, Ed Lyman, Greg McFall, Matt McIntosh, G. P. Schmahl and Kate Thompson.
According to David Rupert, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service, this is the first series to solely concentrate on national marine sanctuaries.
“The Citizens Stamp Advisory committee receives as many as 30,000 suggestions a year,” he said in an email. “They narrow these down to just a few dozen stamp subjects to release each year.”
While the series is the first to solely concentrate on national marine sanctuaries, many stamps have featured images from the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and the surrounding area. Most recently, a photo taken by a Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute scientist of a deep sea worm from the Monterey Canyon was featured in a Bioluminescent Life stamp series in 2018. In 2012, an illustration of the Carmel Mission appeared on a stamp.
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