Comprehensive Management Plan Necessary to Protect Threatened Ocean

Poll Shows 80% of Coastal Residents Support Coordinated Ocean Planning

June 12, 2007

Media Contacts: Colin Durrant or Tom McCann

Boston, MA — A bill promoting comprehensive ocean management planning in Bay State ocean waters will receive a key legislative hearing on Wednesday June 13 at the State House. The Massachusetts Ocean Act was drafted in consultation with scientists, environmentalists, fishermen and other marine trade industries, and state resource managers to end the haphazard and uncoordinated decision-making process that currently exists for commercial ocean projects, and that advocates say is threatening the ocean’s long term survival. The bill is sponsored by Cape and Islands Senator Robert O’Leary.

“It’s time for us to end the Wild West atmosphere that has come to define decisions about what happens in our ocean,” said Priscilla Brooks, Director of the Conservation Law Foundation’s Ocean Conservation Program.

CLF, Massachusetts Audubon and Ocean Conservancy released the findings of a new poll today that show broad public support for a coordinated ocean management plan. According to the January 2007 poll, nearly eight-in-ten (78%) registered Massachusetts voters favor a comprehensive plan that would require future development and economic uses of the ocean to be determined by deliberate planning. The number increases to 80% when interviewing coastal residents. Nearly 94% of registered voters indicated that healthy ocean with plentiful and diverse marine life is important to them personally, with 77% saying it is “very important.”

“The ocean has defined Massachusetts way of life for generations and without action we stand to lose our ocean legacy,” said Jack Clarke, Director of Public Policy and Government Relations at the Mass Audubon Society.

Proposals for liquefied natural gas terminals, sand and gravel mining, desalination plants, gas pipelines, telecommunications cables, deepwater aquaculture, and wind energy facilities have raised concern among ocean advocates, fishing interests and others about how to balance the pressures of development on the ocean’s health with the need to capitalize on the economic opportunities the ocean holds. What is needed, they say, is a comprehensive plan to balance commercial use, personal recreation and the protection and preservation of ocean life.

“Over the past decade, an unprecedented number of proposed activities have threatened the long term health of the ocean and marine-life,” said John Phillips, New England Regional Director for the Ocean Conservancy. “We need a coordinated plan to balance commercial and recreational uses with conservation.”

Specifically, the Massachusetts Ocean Act, S.529, will:

• Establish clear authority for balance ocean management and decision-making by placing oversight, coordination and planning authority for ocean resources within the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
  
• Create an ocean management plan advised by a broad-based 16-member ocean management commissions, including state agency representatives, state legislators, municipal officials, and environmental, fishing, and marine industry representatives.
  
• Ensures decisions about the ocean are guided by the best available science through the creation of a 9-member ocean science advisory council.
  
• Ends ad-hoc decision-making by requires that all permits and decisions about ocean development conform with the ocean management plan.

The Ocean Act was written to reflect the findings of the Massachusetts Ocean Management Task Force, the U.S. Commission for Ocean Policy and Pew Oceans Commission. It was unanimously passed the Senate in the previous legislative session.

For more information, and to download fact sheets on the Massachusetts Ocean Act visit: http://www.massoceanaction.org/

EDITOR’S NOTE: A two-page summary of the poll findings, conducted by Edge Research, is available by emailing cdurrant@clf.org or tmccann@oceanconservancy.org.