The Pacific Northwest is renowned for its natural resources, with Mount Rainier on one side and the Puget Sound and Pacific Ocean on the other. Many Seattleites pride themselves on being environmental activists.

Additionally, the waters of the Sound are host to many rare species, like Orca whales, that are found in few other places on earth.

For these reasons, Washington state should be following in California's footsteps in adopting strict new ocean conservation regulations.

In what The Seattle Times calls "one of the nation's most ambitious plans to protect marine life," California is in the process of establishing a network of marine areas, which are spaces of ocean water where commercial and recreation fishing is either strictly limited or banned entirely.

Beginning stages of this plan will take effect early in 2007. The marine areas are designed to protect stationary species like shellfish and abalone, rather than migratory fish like salmon. A regeneration of shellfish species will likely have a positive impact on marine mammals, too, so California's plan will benefit an entire ecosystem.

The new restrictions have been met with criticism from local fishermen, who claim this new bout of government regulations only places more stress on their livelihoods.

Yet, with almost a third of the world's seafood species in collapse, according to a report in Science, it is clear we are not doing enough to protect the oceans.

One person quoted in The Seattle Times article compares California's groundbreaking plan to former President Teddy Roosevelt's creation of national parks and forests. The oceans should therefore be offered equal government protection.

Marine resource preservation is something even President Bush supports. This past summer, Bush created the world's largest protected marine area in the Hawaiian Islands where commercial fishing will be eliminated over the course of a five-year period.

We see real wisdom in Washington implementing a program similar to California's in order to protect our ocean resources.