Environment Minister Alex Attwood said the sites were important for their "marine habitats and biodiversity".
Ecosystem services provided by coastal and marine habitats are of crucial importance for food security and poverty eradication, as well as many of the sectors currently driving the economies of coastal nations.
Other resources include the Blueprint for Ocean and Coastal Sustainability, an inter-agency document which puts forward 10 proposals to protect marine habitats, a key resource for the future of the planet.
For nature lovers, Atlantis offers the world's largest collection of outdoor marine habitats (11 lagoons, including ones with hammerheads, stingrays or turtles) and walk-in aquariums in which quests can watch marine life from glassed-in tunnels.
The core area of this site is of great value in the protection of marine ecosystems and the habitats of various important plant and animal species.
For one thing, this action would violate the Treaty's environmental obligations to protect marine life and its habitats, obligations whose sweep makes those of the Kyoto Treaty seem modest by comparison.
Conservationists would also like to see Turkey adopting the idea of marine protection areas to care for underwater habitats such as the important Posidonia sea grass meadows, as well as its sealife and sunken ruins.
"As this is a new technology, we do not know its full environmental impacts, for example on large marine animals like seals and cetaceans, and seabed species and habitats located downstream of the proposal in the lough, " she said.
BBC: NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Sea power to provide electricity
The ultimate aim is to create an "ecologically coherent" network of protected areas around all UK coasts, safeguarding important natural habitats while allowing other activities such as recreational angling, commercial fishing, surfing and marine energy to go ahead.
Marine biologists at Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University report the cable could cross deep water mud habitats.
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