Sea sense amid marine chaos

The ocean is getting crowded: Fishermen are competing with offshore wind projects, oil rigs with sand miners, recreational boaters, liquefied gas tankers and fish farmers. So a number of groups — including policymakers, academics, activists and industry officials — say it's time to divvy up space in the sea.

Tough decisions

“We've got competition for space in the ocean, just like we have competition for space on land,'' said Andrew Rosenberg, a natural resources and environment professor at the University of New Hampshire. “How are you going to manage it? Will the people with the most power win? Will it be whoever gets there first? Or is it free for all?''

To resolve these conflicts, a handful of the American states — including Massachusetts, California and Rhode Island — have begun zoning the ocean, drawing up rules and procedures to determine which activities can take place where.

The government is considering adopting a similar approach, though any coherent effort would involve sorting out the role of 20 agencies that administer 140 ocean-related laws.

Focus on marine health

“It's an idea for which the time has come,'' said Jane Lubchenco, who chairs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“By focusing on different sectors, nobody is paying attention to the whole — the health of the system.''

But conducting what experts call “marine spatial planning'' presents challenges, since so little of the ocean has been mapped in detail and so many interest groups want to use it.

The government has mapped only 20 per cent of the “exclusive economic zone'' that stretches from the US coast out 200 nautical miles and that's just its geophysical bottom, not the habitats and species that exist at varying levels.

Charlie Wahle, a senior scientist in NOAA's National Marine Protected Area Centre, said the agency is convening experts in California to chart how groups, including kayakers, the Coast Guard and fishermen, use waters off the state's coast.

“People have been willing to engage and share their information and knowledge of the way it really is,'' he said.

Divided waters

Marine ecologist Larry Crowder, a scientist at Duke University who has compiled data for such plans, said the approach makes sense because ocean resources are not “equally distributed, whether it's oil and gas or fish and corals''.

But he added that the sea has many overlapping activities and “when you put the maps together, it quickly becomes a train wreck''.

The states pioneering this approach have charted different paths. California is establishing marine protected areas along its 1,100-mile coastline under its 1999 Marine Life Protection Act, dividing it into five regions and brokering agreements with interest groups.

Ian Bowles, Massachusetts secretary of energy and environmental affairs, said the state is working to determine

“what are the areas of ecological value that we should be protecting from other uses'' and what parts of the ocean can accommodate such diverse concerns as liquefied natural gas offloading terminals, wind projects and sand mining for restoring eroding beaches.

While a few states are leading the way in the US, the Europeans and Australians have done this for years. Charles Ehler, a Paris-based consultant who is drafting a manual on the subject for the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, said the demand for offshore wind farms and other activities has spurred countries such as Belgium, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands to establish marine boundaries.

“There's a greater intensity of demand for offshore space in Europe than in most of the US,'' said Ehler, noting Belgium's demand exceeds its available space by 200-300 per cent.

Even though they have a head start, policymakers overseas are struggling with many of the same questions Americans are contemplating, including how to reconcile new and traditional ocean uses and how the climate change will affect the place where marine species live.

With the exception of Norway, few nations have been willing to subject fisheries to the same management regime as activities such as renewable energy and gravel mining.

Resistant to change

“The traditional users of the sea have been the most resistant to marine spatial planning because they have pretty much been free to go and do as they please,'' Ehler said.

While California includes the fishing industry in its planning process, Massachusetts fishermen held up passage of the state's Ocean Act until they were reassured they would be exempt.

“We don't want to be told: ‘You can't go to this place anymore,''' said Bill Adler, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association. He added that the fishing industry is already regulated separately by the state.

Some US oil and gas executives have adopted a similar stance, arguing that any offshore drilling projects must undergo a federal environmental assessment. “I don't think the process is broken,'' said Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Company.

But as the country appears poised for a new push in offshore oil drilling, advocates argue it needs to take a more serious look at how it coordinates activities off its coasts.

Environmental concerns

“We wouldn't put a coal plant in a national park,'' Spruill said. Philippe Cousteau, the president of the non-profit EarthEcho International, said policymakers should put environmental considerations “first and foremost'' when deciding where to locate new drilling activities.