Category Archives: ocean law and policy

Western states meet to tackle invasive mussels

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Invasive quagga musselsPHOENIX, AZ – State legal and law enforcement officials and environmental scientists from the 15 Western states will meet in Phoenix next week to explore legal and regulatory ways of limiting an invasion of non-native mussels that can clog water systems, foul power plants, harm the environment and cost billions of dollars in damage and control wherever they spread.

Their focus: On forging a uniform approach to education, inspection and regulation to encourage recreational boat inspections in the West to prevent the spread of invasive zebra and quagga mussels.

The Aug. 22-23 meeting, convened by Oregon Sea Grant, the National Sea Grant Law Center (both programs of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and hosted by the Arizona Dept. of Fish and Game, is expected to draw representatives from the attorneys general of all 15 Western states, along with state and federal fish and wildlife officials and biologists who specialize in marine invasive species.

Zebra mussels, native to southern Russia but accidentally introduced to many other areas around the world, were first detected in Lake St. Clair, near Detroit, in the late 1980s, likely imported in the ballast-water of ocean-going ships. By clinging to the undersides of docks, boats and anchors, they rapidly spread through the Great Lakes region, the East Coast and the Southeast. Although small, the mussels grow rapidly, and can quickly colonize almost anything underwater – from boat hulls and anchors to municipal and industrial water intakes, hydroelectric systems and other facilities. The cost of managing these pests in the Great Lakes alone has been estimated at more than $500 million a year.

The related quagga mussel, another prolific breeder whose filter-feeding habits has been shown to change entire ecosystems, has followed a similar invasive path since showing up in Lake Erie in 1989, and is now found from the Great Lakes to the Northeast.

Within the last few years, isolated infestations of both species, which can survive for days to weeks out of water  have begun to show up in Western recreational and irrigation waters in California and Arizona, moist likely transported on recreational boats and trailers. Efforts to control the spread by educating boaters have met with mixed success, and state-by-state differences in legal and regulatory frameworks hinder the states’ ability to require and conduct inspections.

The Phoenix meeting will look at the impacts of invasive mussels on local economies and infrastructure, the challenges to effective control, and a 100-plus-year-old federal law – the Lacey Act – which could give states a tool for approaching the problem.

Sessions include discussions of state authority to stop boats for inspection, quarantine and decontamination, what programs and laws have been successful in Western states, public attitudes about invasive species education and enforcement, and how cash-strapped states can fund such programs.

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National Ocean Council releases draft ocean policy implementation plan

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Scientists, fishermen and the environmental community are applauding this month’s release of a draft National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan by the National Ocean Council and the Obama administration.

The plan, released last week, lays out more than 56 actions the federal government will take to improve the health of the nation’s oceans, coasts and Great Lakes.

“President Obama has displayed historic leadership in setting priorities to address the most pressing threats facing our oceans,” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said. “Water is the lifeblood of our planet, and America’s treasured coasts and seas make up a significant part of Interior’s stewardship portfolio. Implementing this plan is a major priority for Interior and its agencies.”

Among other things, the draft calls for strengthening and integrating the nation’s network of ocean observing systems, sensors, data collection and management and mapping capabilities into a single national system, and integrating that system with international efforts. The council has already established http://www.data.gov/ocean as a prototype of the kind  tool that could make information easily available to everyone from scientists and policymakers to teachers and their students.

It also calls for ecosystem-based management approaches to fisheries and other ocean resources.  Where traditional management approaches typically focus on a single species or use, the draft notes, “ecosystems are complex, dynamic assemblages of diverse, interacting organisms, habitats, and environmental factors shaped by natural and human influences.”

Integrated information systems and ecosystem-based management were among the high-priority tools suggested by the West Coast Regional Ocean Research and Information Plan, developed in 2009 by Oregon Sea Grant and four other West Coast Sea Grant programs at the behest of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The new draft plan also calls for an investment in ocean literacy programs for America’s schools and universities,

The government is soliciting public comments on the plan through Feb. 27, 2012. To read the full plan and submit comments, visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/oceans/implementationplan

Sea Grant-funded historian’s book on fisheries management published

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Carmel Finley, an instructor in the OSU History Department, is receiving positive attention for her new book published by University of Chicago Press, All the Fish in the Sea – Maximum Sustainable Yield and the Failure of Fisheries Management. One reviewer commented that the book “explodes the myths around MSY” (maximum sustainable yield) — a significant consideration since MSY is at the heart of modern American fisheries management. Another reviewer noted that “fisheries science and management are ripe for study by professional historians” and praised Finley’s book.

Locally, public radio station KLCC interviewed her, which was a role reversal for Finley, who was the Oregonian’s coastal correspondent for  years prior to graduate school and her doctorate at UC San Diego (where she received support from Sea Grant). Back in Oregon, OSG supported her to develop the Pacific Fishery History Project web site. She also contributed an article in OSG’s new salmon book, Pathways to Resilience, on “The Social Construction of Fishing, 1949.”

National Ocean Council to meet in Portland July 1

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PORTLAND, OR – Members of the National Ocean Council will convene at Portland State University on July 1 for the last stop in their “regional listening sessions” tour of the US.

Experts from the Council’s 27 Federal agencies and offices have been busy drafting strategic action plans to achieve nine national priority objectives that address some of the most pressing challenges facing our ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes.  Having already received solicited and received initial comments on the plans, the council is asking for citizen comments on the strategic action plan outlines they have developed.

The Portland stop is the last of a dozen public listening sessions designed to gather further comments on the plans while they are still in the draft stage. The session will take place at PSU’s University Place, 310 SW Lincoln Street.

The PSU meeting, which will be chaired by NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, runs from 9-11 am on July 1; those interested in attending are asked to preregister online.

The current strategic action plan drafts, covering priority areas from marine spatial planning to regional ecosystem protection and restoration, can be read at http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/oceans/sap

 

New video explains Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning

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Coastal and marine spatial planning is a critical emerging topic in ocean management, policy and science – and a major thrust of Oregon Sea Grant’s strategic plan for the coming years. It’s all about managing multiple ocean uses and needs in ways that minimize conflict, protect vital resources and sustain the ocean’s ability to provide many things to many people, from food to energy to a healthy planet. Yet the topic is little known or understood outside of regulatory and academic circles.

To learn more about what CMSP is – and is not – check out this new, narrated video from the National Sea Grant Law Center:

(Based at the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant program at the University of Mississippi, the National Sea Grant Law Center provides legal research, education, training, outreach and advice on issues of ocean and coastal law.)

OSG scholar writes about wave energy, law

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Former Oregon Sea Grant scholar Holly V. Campbell has an article exploring the legal implications of wave energy development in the winter 2010 issue of the Sea Grant Law & Policy Journal, published by the National Sea Grant Law Center at the University of Mississippi.

Campbell’s article, “A Rising Tide: Wave Energy in the United States and Scotland,” compares and contrasts the two countries’ legal policy and permitting environments for the development of  wave energy, an emerging renewable energy technology that uses the power of ocean waves and to generate electricity.

The journal, and Campbell’s article, are available online at  http://nsglc.olemiss.edu/SGLPJ/SGLPJ.htm

Campbell, a PhD candidate in environmental science at Oregon State University’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, holds law degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of Utah.

In 2007, she was among Oregon Sea Grant’s Legislative Fellows, graduate students assigned to work with coastal lawmakers and learn about marine policy-making. She has also worked with Sea Grant Extension sociologist Flaxen D. Conway on a grant-funded project, “The Human Dimensions of Wave Energy,” where her assignment was to examine the legal and institutional framework surrounding wave energy development. And she has assisted Michael Harte, head of OSU’s Marine Resource Management program and Sea Grant’s climate change specialist, on several projects.

Read more about the Sea Grant Scholars program for graduate and undergraduate students.