Oceans, marine life need unified help

For Barack Obama’s first meal as president, he joined congressional leadership in a course of seafood stew, featuring Maine lobsters, sea scallops, shrimp and black cod. It’s a tradition dating back to 1897, but the menu highlights a modern problem. In fact, the word “stew” is all too apt a description for the hash of laws and regulations we currently use to manage one of America’s most valuable natural resources —- our oceans.

America’s oceans are currently managed under 140 different laws, implemented by 20 federal agencies, without any overarching policy, coordinated action or broad vision. In other words, we are managing only the details, not the big picture. And according to some of the world’s best ocean scholars, the time for us to do better is growing short.

In the United States alone, oceans are responsible for more than $117 billion in annual economic activity —- including nearly $50 billion from commercial and recreational fishing. The oceans also generate the majority of the oxygen in our atmosphere and play a critical role in detoxifying our air by absorbing many manmade and natural pollutants. Unfortunately, the impact of modern society is imposing irreversible changes on our marine environment.

As a raft of recent scientific reports indicates, the ocean and the array of life that calls it home are in deep trouble.

In 2008, the journal Science published the first-ever comprehensive map of our planet’s marine environment, showing that human activity has heavily affected 41 percent of the Earth’s ocean-covered area. Warning that the situation looks considerably worse than previously thought, researchers said the map should serve as a “wake-up call.”

Many may be familiar with the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, a swath of water where fertilizer runoff has created vast blooms of algae that absorb all the oxygen from the water and make it virtually impossible for any creatures to survive. A study released last summer found more than 400 dead zones in the world’s oceans —- nearly double the number found two years ago.

The bad news doesn’t end there. Late last year, in one of the most disturbing findings to date, an eight-year study by the National Academy of Sciences showed that our oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide, the primary culprit in global warming, 10 times faster than scientists previously thought possible. This changes the ocean’s acidity level, which could threaten the survival of lobsters, coral and a number of microscopic animals that comprise the very basis of the marine food chain —- a threat that policymakers can’t continue to ignore.

The president faces many important policy challenges in the first year of his administration, but failing to address the threats to our marine ecosystems is a mistake that we can’t afford to make. With millions of U.S. jobs linked to commercial and recreational fishing as well as coastal recreation and tourism, it’s time for us to get serious about how our nation makes decisions that impact the health of our oceans.

Obama could dramatically advance the debate by issuing an executive order directing the many federal agencies whose activities affect the oceans to work together to protect marine ecosystems.

He should also work with Congress to codify this policy in legislation, strengthen the role of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in protecting ocean health, provide a dedicated source of funding for ocean and Great Lakes conservation, and create opportunities for improving the coordination of local, state and federal ocean programs.

Better cooperation and regional planning to address the growing interactions among fishing, shipping, offshore fossil fuel and renewable energy production, water pollution control and other marine activities would be a win-win for everyone.

While seafood stew might make a delicious lunch, it’s a horrible recipe for protecting one of our most precious public resources.

> Chris Mann is a senior officer with the Pew Environment Group.