Public/Private Draft Ocean Plan Aired at Boston Waterfront

Les Kaufman, center, evolutionary ecologist, Boston University Marine Program. “Boundaries need to be set that state the cautions for particular areas and stakeholder uses.” Fishermen’s Voice photo

BOSTON, July 27, 2016—After a four-year effort, the draft of a regional ocean policy plan was presented at a meeting on Boston’s waterfront.

The Northeast Regional Planning Body (NRPB), which developed the plan, made comments on what is likely the last iteration of the plan before it is sent to Washington, D.C., for presidential approval. The NRPB has a tentative plan to host a webinar in September on the draft plan before sending it to Washington.

The Northeast plan is the first to come from the nine regions aligned with federal fisheries management areas. These plans will collectively become the National Ocean Policy, as called for by a White House executive order in 2010.

The planning body is made up of representatives from state and federal agencies, tribal representatives, scientists and environmental non-governmental organizations.

The first NRPB meetings, in 2012, were dominated by industrial extraction priorities. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management presentation dwarfed relatively timid commentary of other members at the November meeting in Cambridge, Mass. But in 2014, some citizen participants, New England state appointees to the NRPB, and tribal planning body members began emphasizing the importance of ecologically based management (EBM) to a national ocean policy. Since then, EBM has been included in the discussions.

At the July 27 meeting, two topics were discussed at length—Important Ecological Areas (IEA) and a 10-year study titled the Global Ocean Health Index (GOHI). IEAs have been controversial because they are considered another area closure to some stakeholders, in particular fishermen who are excluded from many areas of the U.S. oceans.

Critics on both sides of the closed area issue say these “important areas” are arbitrarily selected. Those who support protected areas claim protected areas should form a unified marine habitat that protects the historic migratory and spawning behaviors essential to sea animal survival. Other critics argue the areas selected are not impacted by fishing or are not critical habitat. ENGOs actively promote these areas in conjunction with other marine protected areas in their fundraising efforts.

Ben Haskell, deputy superintendant of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, said IEAs and other managed areas need to come together. Haskell said, “The process for identifying IEAs needs to be reconciled with the recognized areas that were designated prior to these new IEAs.” Referring to the Stellwagen Bank sanctuary, he said, “I would hope that these new areas would overlap geographically with existing managed areas. Ecosystem Based Management is all about refining marine resource management. Healthy marine ecosystems for fisheries and coastal communities is one of the overriding goals.” The Stellwagen Bank sanctuary remains open to commercial fishing and other stakeholder uses.

The GOHI project, funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, has studied a range of factors to measure ocean health, from predator-prey food chains to the quality of the entire water column for marine life. The index listed 10 goals for a healthy ocean. Internationally, ocean health is getting attention, if not universal action. China is working on an ocean plan, for example, while Colombia is looking at changing their ocean management structure to accommodate changes in ocean policy. Other countries have been slow in adopting a stance on ocean policy planning.

Les Kaufman, a Boston University scientist, said the marine information that is now out there is not being looked at. He said cautions are needed. “Boundaries need to be set that state the cautions for particular areas and stakeholder uses,” Kaufman said.

Peter Auster, marine biologist, University of Connecticut. Auster research uses the same types of techniques underwater that wildlife biologists use on land. That is, making direct underwater observations. Fishermen’s Voice photo

In a discussion about making what could be complex scientific data accessible to portal users who might not be scientists, marine biologist Peter Auster said, “It is premature to distill down what is available versus what is useful—user-friendly versus user-useful. We are at the learning stage of what will be useful. We are now determining what makes sense.”

Kaufman, in a discussion of the Ocean Health Index, a project he worked on, said he “would suggest that at the next stage they use the Ocean Health Index to assess the public view of the tradeoff involved in ocean uses”—the tradeoff being the ecological loss or gain in exchange for the economic loss or gain in any particular stakeholder ocean use project.

In addition to accessibility of the information on the data portal by the general public, the sustainability of the data portal was raised. Wendy Lull from the Seacoast Science Center in Rye, N.H., asked at a June meeting, “This has never been done before. If a lot of people use the portal and if it collapses, then what?” Lull referred to unknowns regarding future funding and management of the data portal, which NRPB has characterized as the principal access point to data collected on the ocean in the Northeast. “The portal could be improved over time, but what if that data falls out of favor or the federal and state agencies, who have informally made an undefined commitment to the ocean plan and the data portal at its functional core, step away from that commitment?” asked Lull.

“The data portal has not been funded beyond 2017,” said Betsy Nicholson, NOAA employee and co-lead on the NRPB. “We would like to have the federal government take over funding of the data portal at some point.”

The data portal provides access to maps, benthic data, charts, marine habitat for plants and animals, migration data, etc., produced by scientists over several decades. It is a resource stakeholders—oil and gas, fin fish aquaculture, marine mining, shipping, etc.—can voluntarily access when proposing projects in U.S. waters out to the 200-mile EEZ line.