Obama Administration Announces New Plan to Save Oceans, Will it Be Enough?

With demands on US ocean resources control growing quickly, the Obama administration today outlined a new comprehensive ocean management plan [PDF] to guide federal agencies in restoring and protecting a badly stressed US coastal and ocean environment.

Today's policy shift proposed by the president's Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force holds enormous potential for sweeping changes in how the nation's oceans are managed, including energy development, experts say.

At its core, the plan would set up a new National Ocean Council to guide a holistic "ecosystem-based" approach intended to elevate and unify what has long been a piecemeal approach by US agencies toward ocean policy and development — from oil and gas exploration to fisheries management to ship transportation to recreation.

The proposal would include "a more balanced, productive, and sustainable approach to using managing and conserving ocean resources," Nancy Sutley, chairman of the president's Council on Environmental Quality told reporters in a teleconference unveiling the plan. It would also set up "a comprehensive national approach to uphold our stewardship responsibilities and ensure accountability for our actions."

Dr. Sutley, who also chaired the interagency task force, appeared alongside representatives from the Department of Interior, the Coast Guard, the Department of Transportation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But the proposal would apply to 24 agencies.

"This will be the first time we have ever had this kind of action for healthy oceans from any president in US history," Sarah Chasis, director of the ocean initiative at Natural Resources Defense Council wrote in her blog. She called it the "most progressive, comprehensive national action for our oceans that we have ever seen."

The changes could affect new offshore wind-energy proposals as well as oil and natural gas exploration. "We haven't fully looked at all aspects of the report," says Laurie Jodziewicz, manager of siting policy for the American Wind Energy Association. "The one concern we have is we don't want to stop the momentum of offshore wind projects we're already seeing. So while we're certainly not opposed to marine spatial planning, we would like to see projects already in the pipeline move ahead and start getting some offshore projects going in the US."

One senior official of the American Petroleum Institute said he had not yet seen the proposal and could not comment on it.

The new push comes at a time when major decisions will be needed about whether and how to explore or develop oil and gas in now-thawing areas of the Arctic Ocean near Alaska. Policy changes could also affect deep-water regions in the Gulf of Mexico as well as the siting of wave power and renewable offshore wind turbines off the East Coast.

At the same time, desalination plants, offshore aquaculture, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals are clamoring for space along coastal areas where existing requirements by commercial shipping and commercial fishing are already in place.

All of that  – set against a backdrop of existing and continuing damage to fisheries, coral, coastal wetlands, beaches, and deteriorating water quality – has America's oceans "in crisis," in the words of a landmark Pew Oceans Commission report issued in 2003. More than 20,000 acres of wetlands and other sensitive habitat disappear annually, while nutrient runoff creates "dead zones" and harmful algal blooms. Some 30 percent of US fish populations are overfished or fished unsustainably, the report found.

Among the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force's national objectives were:

1. Ecosystem-based management as a foundational principle for comprehensive management of the ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes.