SEATTLE, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. ocean policy needs dramatic, immediate and coordinated reform, on both the state and national levels, to protect and restore ocean life and preserve billions of dollars worth of environmental resources, two commissions and leading scientists recommended Sunday.
The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, a body appointed by the president, released new findings, slated to be presented to coastal state governors in early March, warning of a severe decline in the health of ocean ecosystems and calling for a major unification of ocean and coastal resources management activities.
The Pew Oceans Commission, of Arlington, Va., released similar findings at a joint news briefing at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.
"It has been more than 30 years since this nation reviewed the laws and policies now in place to protect the oceans," said Leon Panetta, chairman of the independent Pew Oceans Commission and former White House chief of staff during the Clinton administration. "The bottom line is our oceans are in serious trouble,"
The two commissions urged establishing a National Ocean Council to coordinate policy on federal, state and local levels. It would be headed by a presidential adviser and comprised of the heads of ocean- and coast-related agencies, Panetta said.
"There are members (of the U.S. Senate) who are very interested in reports from both commissions who have indicated to me interest in a proposal for a National Oceans Policy Act," Panetta told United Press International.
At present, more than 10 federal agencies and 28 coastal states and territories have jurisdiction over the oceans in the United States. Ocean management decisions historically have focused on species of commercial interest, such as tuna, salmon or cod.
Last June, both organizations had recommended shifting from single-species management and fragmented governance to an integrated approach called ecosystem-based management.
"Our government is currently not structured to do this," said ocean policy commissioner William Ruckelshaus, one of 16 members of the body. "Thus, one of the first orders of business (of) the federal commission would be to create a National Ocean Council to assist states and local governments to develop regional councils along ecosystem lines."
Current practices that focus on just one species can undermine the ecosystem upon which that species and many others depend, the groups warned.
"In the same way that a physician considers the whole person -- including medical history and current medications -- in prescribing a cure for a specific ailment, ocean managers must learn to think about the interconnectedness of an ecosystem," said marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco, a Pew Oceans Commission member and professor of marine biology at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "Just as the heart is connected to the lungs and brain, so too are different species connected within an ecosystem," she said.
"When managers try to address the problems that face a single species, they must examine how it interacts with other living and non-living portions of the system and consider the implications of management decisions to the entire ocean ecosystem," Lubchenco added.
Ecosystem-based management evaluates how policy decisions and actions interact across species, habitats, land and sea, and from one type of human activity to another.
"At first look, ecosystem-based management may seem enormously complicated, but it actually provides a means for simplifying management in some significant ways," said Federal Ocean Commissioner Andrew Rosenberg, dean of science at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. "Considering interactions between activities up front can reduce the conflicts between management actions and negative effects that inevitably arise when activities are considered one by one in isolation."
One way ecosystem-based management could affect fisheries policy is by establishing maximum sustainable yields for commercial species. Current management has attempted to adjust catch quotas with the goal of keeping populations near 50 percent of their estimated "unfished" levels.
Ecosystem-based management, however, acknowledges there often is uncertainty when it comes to predicting natural fluctuations of fish populations and ocean conditions. The goal becomes not a precise catch level for each species, but retaining a diverse ecosystem that maintains its own resilience in the face of change.
Such an approach could help save the remaining salmon species in the Pacific Northwest, said Seattle resident Ruckelshaus, who was the first administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1970 to 1973.
In British Columbia, he explained, most salmon management efforts focused on maximizing catches from hatcheries, almost all from Fraser River salmon runs, which subsequently collapsed. By then, the natural diversity of salmon runs along British Columbia's coast largely were lost.
"We've spent billions of dollars to help save those fish, and it was managed as carefully as it should," Ruckelshaus noted. "It's impossible to bring those fish back without understanding the ecosystem they share with each other."
In contrast, in Bristol Bay, Alaska, record catches of sockeye salmon over the last 20 years have been linked to a prototype of ecosystem-based management, according to University of Washington researcher Ray Hilborn and colleagues. There, he said, instead of concentrating only on the most productive runs, resource managers protected a range of different stocks with diverse life histories and different times of breeding, spawning and rearing.
The past two decades in Bristol Bay saw environmental conditions change in unpredictable ways, which meant different stocks flourished or declined. It turned out, however, the approach provided unique stability and sustainability to the fishery, in the same way diversification of financial investing can reduce overall risk.
"We have to convince people the ocean is more than just a nice resource," Panetta said. "It is a public trust that demands our stewardship."
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Charles Choi covers research for UPI Science News. E-mail [email protected]
