NE Ocean Planners Begin to Draft a Plan

by Mike Crowe

June 3-4, 2015 Regional Planning Body meeting in Mystic, CT. The 24 members of the RPB are seated at long tables in the background. They prepare the information in the recommendations or guidelines that will be offered to the state and federal agencies granting permits for ocean projects in the northeast U.S. The plan which the RPB writes in the next six months with regard to this information will be Ocean Policy for the northeast. In the foreground are so-called participants who are not members. They are stakeholders and interested parties including government agencies, business representatives, environmental groups, scientists, lawyers, interested citizens, etc. They can make time-limited public comment at prescribed periods, but they are not involved in the decision making or plan writing process. Fishermen’s Voice photo

MYSTIC, CT – At their June 3-4 meeting, the 25 members of the Northeast Regional Planning Body (RPB) moved to write the first draft of a northeast regional ocean policy. That policy will provide what they characterized as guidance to the state and federal agencies that grant permits for industrial projects in the ocean in the northeast.

Anticipated expanded industrial use of the ocean resource in the U.S. and elsewhere led to a White House executive order for the development of a National Ocean Policy in 2010. The meeting focused on how management would apply the ocean plan information; how the RPB intends to implement the plan; and science and research priorities.

The meeting focused on the proposed writing of a draft plan over the next six months. Over the next six months, prior to completing a first draft, the RPB will break up into smaller working groups to address seven tasks. Included in the tasks are to develop maps for identifying important management and use areas for commercial fishing, recreation and marine transportation; advance new methodology to identify important ecological areas across taxonomic groups; the management application of aquaculture projects; sand and gravel extraction; submerged aquatic vegetation habitat and regional restoration and conservation priorities; continue to develop agency guidance and best practices for pre-application (for project permits); options for a specific monitoring plan; and identifying science and research priorities.

The two-day meeting was the fifth of its kind since 2012. During the same period, there have been four one-day workshops and nine thinly attended public comment meetings along the New England coast. Of the coastal regions around the U.S. tasked by the White House executive order to address ocean planning, New England is the closest to submitting a final document for the mid-2016 deadline. The mid-Atlantic region is the next-nearest to completion.

George Lapointe, a former Maine Department of Marine Resources commissioner, presented mapping data he gathered in his more recent capacity as a private consultant to the RPB process. Those maps indicated fishing activity of vessels carrying VMS tracking equipment. Maps with high fishing vessel traffic were described as "hot spots" of activity. The data do not include lobster fishing vessels, which do not use VMS equipment. Lapointe said lobster fishing data would be useful in verifying where lobster fishing is conducted.

SeaPlan senior partner Deerin Babb-Brott presented SeaPlan's strategy for providing access to data that companies will need in the pre-application process. SeaPlan is an organization that is expected to act as an intermediary between industries with ocean project proposals and the state and federal agencies that issue permits. As a stakeholder, SeaPlan grew out of a larger nonprofit involved in the development of Massachusetts' Ocean Policy, which was passed in 2009. According to SeaPlan, the organization’s principals were connected with the White House when the executive order for the establishment of a National Ocean Policy was given. SeaPlan's funding comes through grants and by working for government and industry. In a telephone interview, SeaPlan senior partner Andrew Lipsky said, "We try to be an independent, non-allied voice for sustainability, but we are not an environmental group. SeaPlan provides neutral ground for bringing parties together to address sustainable oceans uses."

Lipsky continued, "Data is our currency. It’s how we bring groups together.” According to SeaPlan, the organization worked with New York charter fishing organizations in mapping, trip-location data and catch-reporting. It raised money to provide charter captains with electronic tablets for collecting trip data. The information is shared with government in order to achieve better decision-making and regulatory efficiencies.

New England Fishery Management Council member Doug Grout spoke about his concerns regarding inadequate funding and unintended consequences. He said the VMS data available is both convenient and good, but there are many gaps. There is little data on lobster fishing and shrimp, he said. This could result in unintended consequences, he said. Agencies need to know that a blank in a mapped area does not necessarily mean there are no conflicts, he said, adding that these gaps could result in new uses being assigned over existing uses.

"National Ocean Planning needs Congressional approval and the financial support that would bring. Currently we are using existing budgets, but there is a need for funding to complete work on existing data and to gather new data,” said Grout.

Without regulatory authority, some questioned the power of the guidance being developed for regulatory agencies in this RPB process. Glenn Normandeau, executive director of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Commission, said, "There is value in existing uses. There is a lot of information for making decisions on uses. The use selection could be better than now, when state and federal agencies are both looking at the same area and the same data on it."

Data is the lifeblood of the RPB process, participants said. At the same time, many commented about getting data from the Northeast Regional Ocean Council. Regarding documents posted on the RPB Data Portal for the use of those attending RPB meetings, one participant said, "The documents are distributed too late to be used by those not here today, and too late to review in time for comment by those who are here today.” (http://www.northeastoceandata.org/)

The subject of Ecosystem Based Management arose once again. EBM was not part of the original RPB planning process, but at the request of participants Valerie Nelson, Priscilla Brooks and Les Kaufman, the topic was the subject of a special workshop earlier this year, and has come up at all subsequent meetings. At the June 3-4 meeting, Nelson noted there was no EBM content scheduled for inclusion in the draft plan.

Chuckie Green, of the Mashpee Wampanoags Tribal Council, addressed EBM by saying there was a disconnect between tribal sustenance culture and retail market culture. He also emphasized the interconnectivity of everything in the ecosystem. “If we only consider the economic values to humanity—oil, gas and wind energy—without something set aside for the health of the ocean, we all lose eventually,” Green said.

Green said he was not confident about the effective power of the plan. “If we could get to Congress and make this (plan) law and transform the statement from ‘you should do this’ to ‘you must do this,’ it would have authority. But there are too many in the process, who have something to personally gain, for this to become something more like legislation,” Green said.

Most of the members who sit on the RPB panel are from state and federal agencies or tribes. Participants in the audience are stakeholders such SeaPlan, George Lapointe Consultants, environmental groups, Sea Grant and foundations. Corporate foundations include the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which is funding the RPB process. This particular funding mechanism has been questioned by some because it is a private corporate foundation that has funded catch shares nationally. Critics have asked why private economic interests are driving public policy in a public resource. Catch shares policy has led to rapid consolidation of the fishing industry and quota price speculation. (See “Who Will Watch the Charities” on page 21.)

Valerie Nelson, a water resources policy analyst from Gloucester, Mass., has been an outspoken critic of what she says is private foundation influence, and of the RPB process for what she says is insufficient due diligence in protecting the resource from being privatized and leaving it subject to overexploitation. The mapping of the ocean bottom and the collection of current user data has been criticized as a zoning exercise where the highest-dollar-value use will win out over other uses with higher social or other values. The term “zoning” is not used in the RPB process, but “spatial planning” is. According to some participants, the two terms are equivalent.

Several members and participants referred to concerns about the isolation of the various agencies and how they historically do not interact or share data. One participant wanted to know if that situation would change, with all agencies, referencing the work of the RPB, seeking guidance on permitting and regulating industrial uses of the oceans.

Kathryn Ford, a habitat program leader with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, said there was a need to focus on EBM and review the plan through an EBM lens. She suggested overlaying various data sets, such as existing right whale critical habitat areas, on other existing activities.

Ford said she was a strong believer in the importance of EBM. She said she was concerned there will be a narrow approach to it in the end. “The plan embodies EBM and it should be woven into through the it,” she said.

Grover Fugate, with the Coastal Resources Management Council of Rhode Island, referred to EBM by saying, “I don't know what healthy ecosystems are anymore. Ocean acidity is increasing, there are thermal disruptions, species are moving around in response to these changes and there are more destructive coastal storms. The ecosystem is changing so rapidly there is uncertainty and the system can seem out of control.”

Fugate continued, “On a cautionary note, looking at the science on a daily basis, it looks frightening. We should look at what we can do and what we cannot do. There is a massive amount of data that needs to be brought into a usable form. We need to get some understanding of how the agencies will use and think about the products created from this data.”

At the end of the first day, Nelson said she “felt disappointment with the meeting, because EBM was not discussed as part of the writing of the plan.” She called for there to be a version of the plan with aspiration. She objected to listing hot spots for “outlining maximum extraction in a pedal-to-the-metal" approach. “Ideological, transformational privatization? This is vehemently opposed in New England. If you want aspirational planning, get EBM into the plan. There has not been an effort to ask the American people what they want.”

Looking forward, the information available will be taken to the agencies, to find out what they are comfortable with, said Nick Napoli, a staff member with the Northeast Regional Ocean Council (a NOAA group). It will then go back to the RPB, where a template will be created to present to the agencies. Over the next six months, RPB members will meet in smaller working groups to hammer out the details of specific tasks and write a draft plan.

Marine biologist and participant Peter Auster encouraged the RPB “to be aspirational in its work on the plan. It is important because the Northeast is the first in the nation to make an ocean plan and others will try to meet or surpass what is done here.”

Grout suggested that, as changes to the plan are made over the coming months, they be posted on the Data Portal. Brent Greenfield, executive director of the National Ocean Policy Coalition, said he would like to "have documents on the RPB website that track changes to the draft plan and track decisions on various other actions, also on where things stand on various decisions so we can keep abreast of progress.” He said the public information should be made easily and openly available to help publicize the process. He also suggested a written record be available to the public on the RPB website.

Richard Nelson, a Friendship fisherman, said he wanted a more proactive ocean policy planning process that would include planning symposia to bring more voices into the process.

The next RPB meeting will be in November. Dates, past meeting information, progress and postings related to the RPB and Ocean Policy planning can be found at: http://www.northeastoceandata.org/

NE Ocean Planners Begin to Draft a Plan

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