With a microscopic record of accomplishments in environmental protection, the Bush administration hopes designation of a Texas-size sprawl of marine monuments in the Pacific Ocean will balance its account.

After eight years of assaults on environmental law, neglect in enforcing preventive regulation and dismissing scientific research on pollution issues, President Bush will exit the White House having set aside a total of 335,000 square miles of ocean for protection.

Included in that span is the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, established in 2006 in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which Bush also has nominated as a United Nations World Heritage Center.

The administration needed something notable to counter its shabby environmental performance. The designation of three new ocean monuments that had no chance of alienating Bush's allies in resource-extractive industries was the extravagant instrument.

The attempt at image correction, however, doesn't diminish the importance of the monuments. They are the Marianas Marine National Monument, covering the three northernmost islands in the chain; the Pacific Remote Islands National Monument, which includes Johnston and Palmyra atolls; and the Rose Atoll monument, known for its exotic multicolored corals, near American Samoa.

Advocates for the monuments had hoped protections would extend to the 200-nautical-mile limit of U.S. jurisdiction, but the administration contends 50 miles out from the islands is enough, ignoring the fact that sea creatures don't recognize such boundaries and that biodiversity improves in broader reserved areas.

While the designation shelters the Mariana Trench and the seafloor, it will allow commercial fishing in the waters above them. Also permitted will be military use of sonar, which can harm marine mammals, and training runs through monument waters.

The designations come with no funding for enforcement or for preservation activities. James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality Issues, said protection will largely depend on “;personal self-policing,”; and that local authorities will determine preservation efforts.

In any case, the heavy-lifting for the monuments will fall on the new administration, as will many other environmental issues left undone or that need correction post-Bush.

Among them are Bush's last-minute regulation changes that weakened the Endangered Species Act, sanctioned dumping of millions of tons of coal mining waste into valleys and rivers, exempted factory farms from air pollution reporting, speeded oil shale development across millions of acres in Western states and allowed auctions of drilling rights near national parks and wilderness areas.