Cobble Field Photograph by Dann Blackwood and Page Valentine, USGS
	Location Off Massachusetts—25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Boston, 3 miles (5 kilometers) southeast of Cape Ann, and 3 miles (5 kilometers) north of Provincetown Protected Area 842 square miles (2,181 square kilometers) Date Designated November 1992 Habitats • Sand and gravel bank • Muddy basins • Boulder fields • Rocky ledges Key Species • Northern right whale • Humpback whale • White-sided dolphin • Storm-petrel • Northern gannet • Bluefin tuna • Atlantic cod • Winter flounder • Sea scallop • Northern lobster Cultural Resources • 1898 wreck of the steamer Portland • Middle Bank fishing area, a popular fishing ground since the earliest days of European settlement

At the end of the last ice age retreating glaciers formed a now submerged sand and gravel bank, which stretches across the entrance to Massachusetts Bay from Cape Ann to Cape Cod. Nutrient-laden currents flowing up the sunlit slopes of the bank nourish one of the region’s most productive marine environments.

The dense growths of algae that make the Stellwagen Bank sanctuary waters appear a murky green sustain vast quantities of zooplankton. The fish and crustaceans that feed on this rich New England “soup” are part of a complex food web that also includes leatherback sea turtles, dolphins, seals, 40 species of seabirds, and the rare and endangered northern right whale. Underneath the busy Boston shipping lanes that traverse the sanctuary, wolffish lurk in the boulder fields scattered across the seafloor, lobsters clamber around mud holes, and the bones of mammoths and mastodons that once roamed the bank lie waiting to be discovered.

For more information,
check out NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank profile:
http://www.sanctuaries.nos.noaa.gov/oms/
omsstellwagen/omsstellwagen.html

Address
Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary
175 Edward Foster Road
Scituate, MA 02066

Communication
Tel: +1 781 545 8026
Fax: +1 781 545 8036
E-mail: stellwagen@nms.noaa.gov
Sanctuary Web site: http://vineyard.er.usgs.gov/