Photo by Dave Schumaker

This article was originally published by the Center for American Progress.

It should come as no surprise that a president who grew up in Hawaii and has been known to enjoy the occasional vacation on Martha’s Vineyard would prioritize policies that result in the improved management of America’s oceans and coasts. In the past few weeks, President Barack Obama has met such expectations. His administration released a final implementation plan for the National Ocean Policy that he established by executive order in 2010. It also finalized a budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, which, even in a time of sequestration and fiscal austerity, asks for an 11 percent boost from current funding levels.

Both actions show that the administration understands the challenges facing our marine resources and is willing to prioritize them. President Obama’s National Ocean Policy has drawn fire from Capitol Hill, primarily from congressional Republicans who have painted it as yet another example of government intrusion. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) has decried it as an imposition of a new “job-killing regulation.” Rep. Hastings and his colleagues peppered administration witnesses at a 2011 hearing on the National Ocean Policy, concerned that the policy might constitute a jurisdictional overreach that could make life more difficult for agriculture and other industries with “upstream impacts”—and apparently unwilling to accept the idea that the policy neither creates any new regulations nor kills any jobs.

Message received, Chairman Hastings. The updated implementation plan released earlier this month includes new language asserting in no uncertain terms that the concerns of pro-small-government Republicans have been heard. “The Policy does not create new regulations, supersede current regulations, or modify any agency’s established mission, jurisdiction, or authority. Rather, it helps coordinate the implementation of existing regulations and authorities … in the interest of more efficient decision-making,” it reads. As a result, the policy received endorsements from both the National Corn Growers’ Association and the American Soybean Association, the latter of which called out the plan as a “serious and thoughtful” example of “regulatory streamlining.”

Overall, the National Ocean Council did a bang-up job of taking notes, internalizing comments, and taking them into consideration before finalizing its implementation plan. And it didn’t just pay attention to members of Congress, but also to the folks who commented on the draft plan or raised issues with the policy in general.

One aspect of the plan that drew a great deal of consternation is its call for comprehensive ocean management on a regional scale—in effect, the development of regional plans to prioritize certain ocean activities in appropriate areas. Many coastal regions in this country are already participating in what the implementation plan calls “regional planning bodies,” which are coordinated management entities among neighboring states. In fact, several of these regional ocean partnerships predate even the first draft of the National Ocean Policy released in 2010.

While the final implementation plan clearly articulates the benefits of a regional approach to ocean management and planning, it also recognizes that differences in priorities, problems, and ecosystems exist across different areas of the country. In the Northeast, for example, plans aim to resolve conflicts between future offshore-wind-energy development and existing fishing interests, while the Pacific Coast’s priorities will differ since offshore wind cannot be developed there at this time because of technological limitations. Alaska has resisted implementing any of the principles of comprehensive ocean planning at all, prompting sharp criticism from its congressional delegation of the draft implementation plan that would have required regional planning bodies to be developed in all regions. Many Alaskans viewed this imposition as top-down government meddling in what they consider to be state affairs.

Recognizing the need for each region to come to its own conclusions about how best to manage the areas that it knows best, the final implementation plan stresses that regional ocean-planning efforts are voluntary, not mandatory. “States … may choose to participate on regional planning bodies,” reads the final version, which goes on to say that, “Should all states in a region not choose to participate … a regional planning body will not be established.”

Even with these changes to the regional ocean-planning structure, the plan received a lukewarm reception from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the newly minted ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard. During a hearing earlier this week, Sen. Rubio expressed his concern about the plan, saying that, “Too often the administration puts forth ‘voluntary’ … documents like the National Ocean Policy that, when all is said and done, we’re faced with a new regulatory regime with questionable value and severe economic consequences.”

Fishermen, particularly recreational fishermen, also balked at the lack of attention the initial draft of the National Ocean Policy paid to their issues. Commercial fishermen have been plying our waters since before the nation was founded, and anglers comprise arguably the most populous group of ocean users at more than 12 million strong, according to NOAA. Many feared that the National Ocean Policy would infringe upon their access to fish, even spawning a conspiracy—briefly reported by ESPN as news—that it was the Obama administration’s goal to shut down America’s waters to fishing.

The final implementation plan should help assuage these unfounded fears, as it specifically states that one of its goals is to “ensure continued access” for recreational fishermen and another is to improve the “science that supports increased sustainable fishing opportunity.”

If that’s not enough to convince fishermen that this administration has their back, they need look no further than the president’s fiscal year 2014 budget request for NOAA. At a time when squeezing pennies out of the federal government is nearly impossible, this budget actually calls for an 11 percent increase in the agency’s funding from current levels. This includes boosts to fishery stock assessments, surveys, and monitoring—programs critical to ensuring that fishery managers have the best possible data with which to set catch limits and other fishery regulations that ensure maximum possible access for fishermen today and into the future.

Increased ocean funding isn’t just good news for folks who enjoy trips to Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard. The National Ocean Economics Program has found that ocean-related industries generate more than $258 billion of our gross domestic product, or GDP, and employ more than 2.7 million Americans, with 1.9 million of those jobs in the recreation and tourism industries. This research was fundamental to the establishment of CAP’s Blue Economy Initiative, which seeks to better define the economic value of healthy oceans and coasts. Protecting and sensibly managing our oceans and coasts is more than a ticket to a few nice vistas and vacation spots—it’s an economic imperative. And these recent actions by the Obama administration prove that they get the message.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

This article was originally published by the Center for American Progress.

When President Barack Obama convenes his cabinet in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, one might be left with the impression that defenders of our oceans are rather pointedly underrepresented. The Department of Commerce, which oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has lacked a secretary since John Bryson resigned last summer.

Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta probably pulled double duty as Aquaman in the president’s Hall of Justice; prior to his service in the Obama administration, Secretary Panetta served as a congressman from Monterrey, California, and as head of the Pew Oceans Commission. But now he, too, has left the building, with a shout-out to his trusty sidekick, his dog Bravo.

President Obama is seeking to fill the open seat at Commerce, and to replace Jane Lubchenco, who stepped down last month as NOAA’s administrator. During this transition period, ocean advocates wondered whether domestic ocean issues would struggle even more than usual to find prominence in the West Wing. The problems facing our marine ecosystems and oceans are in serious need of solutions, and each day that passes without mention of these answers means another day of devastating blows to our waters.

But a speech last week by Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that he might become the new standard bearer for ocean issues in the White House.

In his remarks, Secretary Kerry discussed a broad range of ocean issues, and the link between ocean health and greenhouse gas emissions was foremost among them. He said:

[I]t is clear that we have an enormous challenge ahead of us … energy policy that results in acidification, the bleaching of coral, the destruction of species, the change in the Arctic because of the ice melt … The entire system is interdependent, and we toy with that at our peril.

With a new blue warrior bringing ocean issues to arguably the most influential group of advisors on planet Earth—or, as Kerry put it in his speech, “planet ocean”—let’s take a look at the top five ocean issues the secretary of state can use his position to influence.

Climate change

Secretary Kerry, who was a strong climate hawk as a senator, used pointed words to hammer home the critical need to take proactive steps to address the looming climate crisis. “The science is screaming at us … demanding that people in positions of public responsibility … at least understand what is happening and take steps to prevent potential disaster,” he said last week.

These words echoed those that Secretary Kerry delivered in his first major foreign policy speech last month, in which he challenged Americans to “have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren: an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.”

His remarks also represent one of the most prominent mentions of ocean acidification—an issue already taking a toll on Northwest fishermen and oyster farmers, and one that is slated to get much worse in the coming years. He also commented on the rapid, global-warming-induced transformation of the Arctic Ocean that is now underway.

Secretary Kerry’s awareness of and sensitivity to these issues will be vital contributions to an Obama cabinet in dire need of hawkish leadership on both climate change and ocean conservation.

Ocean and climate’s role in national security

On the same day as Secretary Kerry’s speech, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a new report predicting a link in the rise in atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration with a marked rise in the frequency of Hurricane Katrina-magnitude storms, underscoring a point the secretary made in his remarks: Climate change and our oceans represent an issue of “both national security and economic security.”

In referencing the national security implications of climate change, Secretary Kerry is picking up where Secretary Panetta left off. In a 2012 speech hosted by the Environmental Defense Fund, the former Secretary of Defense said, “rising sea levels, severe droughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.” Sustained shifts in weather patterns have already been linked to global instability, as noted in multiple articles that explore the connection between drought-driven increases in food prices and the unrest that led to the Arab Spring rebellions.

A wide variety of researchers have detailed the looming security threats of climate change, including the Quadrennial Defense Review, which called it an “accelerant of instability or conflict”; a 2012 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reflecting looming crises as a result of water issues, including shortages, water quality, or floods; and the work of our colleagues at the Center for American Progress, whose report “Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict in North Africa” probes potential water- and climate-related tensions in an already precarious region.

Cultivating a deeper understanding of the link between climate change and political instability will bolster the case for domestic and international policymakers to get serious about taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and start dealing with global climate change.

Arctic management

In 2011 then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped lead the Arctic Council to a landmark agreement on search-and-rescue efforts in the international waters of the rapidly thawing north. The Arctic has proven particularly vulnerable to climate change, and its sea ice is receding at unprecedented rates in the summer months: The summer of 2012 holds the dubious honor of seeing the lowest amount of sea ice in recorded history.

As ice retreats further and further from its historic range, we will see an increase in industrial activity in the region, including oil and gas exploration, shipping, tourism, and fishing. As one of only eight nations with claims to the outer continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean, the United States stands to play a leadership role in shaping the future of Arctic activities. As a new issue brief from CAP’s Kiley Kroh and Howard Marano points out, however, we are still a long way from forming an adequate understanding of the complexities of this remote region. Secretary Kerry can play a leadership role in ensuring that we safeguard the Arctic’s natural resources.

The U.N. Convention on Law of the Sea

Ratification of the U.N. Convention on Law of the Sea would help America continue to play a leadership role in the Arctic and assert its rightful jurisdiction over the emerging resources on our extended outer continental shelf. Joining the treaty would also give the United States a seat at the table in global environmental policymaking decisions, as well as in discussions that will have international security implications such as the ongoing tensions between China and its neighbors in the South China Sea.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Secretary Kerry held four hearings in the previous Congress and advocated tirelessly for the Senate’s approval of the treaty. Despite his efforts Republicans stonewalled him, disregarding their usual allies such as the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and other big industry and defense interests that aggressively supported the treaty’s ratification.

Former Secretaries Clinton and Panetta also advocated for America to join the 164 other countries and the European Union in ratifying the treaty and to leave behind the handful of hold-outs such as North Korea, Iran, and Libya. Secretary Kerry should continue his advocacy for ratification in his new role and should keep pressing his former colleagues in the Senate to do the same.

Pirate fishing

As a former senator from Massachusetts—one of the highest-value fishing states and home to arguably the most historic fishing ports in the nation—Secretary Kerry understands the value of healthy, sustainable fisheries to our coastal economies. While we have made great strides domestically in fishery management, pirate fishing—illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing—is a massive international problem estimated to cost honest fishermen between $10 billion and $23 billion annually. It also reduces the sustainability of fisheries at home and abroad by undermining international conservation agreements and by damaging the marine ecosystems we depend on for seafood.

In 2011 then-NOAA Administrator Lubchenco and her European counterpart Maria Damanaki announced a joint effort to combat pirate fishing, committing the two governments to “work together to adopt the most effective tools to combat illegal fishing.” Secretary Kerry touted the agreement when it was signed, calling it a “gut punch to those who break the rules.” His efforts to continue the work done by Administrator Lubchenco and Damanaki will pay dividends for America’s fishermen and seafood consumers alike.

Conclusion

Secretary Kerry’s striking remarks last week certainly raised expectations for additional pro-oceans leadership from the State Department and the rest of the Obama administration. The litany of challenges facing the world’s oceans, however, affords us very little time to wait. These issues require immediate, decisive, and politically courageous decisions, and ocean stakeholders are desperate for a champion willing to back up words with action. Here’s to hoping Secretary Kerry is up for the job.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy and Shiva Polefka is an Ocean Research Associate at the Center for American Progress.

On November 7 the American people woke up to a post-election Washington, D.C., that looks an awful lot like pre-election Washington, D.C. President Barack Obama earned a four-year extension on his lease at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and his Democratic colleagues retained their hold on the Senate, and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and his Republican colleagues still control the agenda in the House of Representatives.

Despite historically bad approval ratings for Congress, which actually dipped down into the single digits as recently as last month, 21 of the 22 senators seeking re-election held onto their offices in general elections—10 others retired, and one incumbent lost in a primary election. And with four House seats still awaiting decisions as of this writing, only 25 of the 382 incumbent representatives in general elections lost their races—40 others retired, and 13 were beaten in primary elections—and five of them were running against other incumbents as a result of redistricting changes.

Yet even with the outward appearance of status quo, a deeper look inside the results of last week’s elections shows that when a few key seats change hands, the effects on our oceans and coasts may be striking. There are some new obstacles to overcome, as well as some great opportunities to cultivate new leaders who will prioritize these issues in the 113th Congress.

The president of the United States

On November 6 all eyes gravitated to the Obama/Romney ticket-topping tilt-a-whirl. Coming as a surprise to no one, oceans—besides former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s mockery of their rise at the Republican national convention in Tampa and a brief rebuttal from President Obama in Charlotte—were absent from the campaign trail. Aside from this one brief thrust-and-parry neither candidate bothered to talk much about climate change at all.

Now, however, following President Obama’s surge to victory in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, climate change is gaining prominence in the national political dialogue. A new Rasmussen poll released the week of the election showed that 68 percent of Americans now view climate change as a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem, up from just 46 percent in 2009, continuing a trend that has been emerging in other recent polling showing greater awareness and belief that climate change is a contributing factor to the recent uptick in extreme weather events.

While the two presidential candidates spoke little about climate change during the race, their positions differed greatly. The White House website’s climate change page touts the president’s efforts to combat the problem through efforts including international negotiations, reduction of emissions through a commitment to clean energy, and Environmental Protection Agency regulatory overhauls. By contrast, Gov. Romney’s efforts to downplay the seriousness of the problem came back to bite him in the closing days of the campaign as voters watched dire predictions about the vulnerability of infrastructure in New York City and New Jersey come true with tragic results.

In addition to climate change, President Obama’s re-election means that there is life for his National Ocean Policy—an effort launched by executive order and designed to bring a semblance of cohesiveness to the multitude of federal agencies that have a role in the management of issues that affect our oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes. Despite the policy’s intention to streamline and reduce redundancy in government activity and enhance states’ rights by providing support for individual states and regions that opt to manage their coasts according to the policy’s core set of principles, many Republicans, particularly on the House Natural Resources Committee, lambast the policy as another example of “job killing regulations” handed down by the White House. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It was widely anticipated that under a Romney administration, the policy and the National Ocean Council established to support it would have been shelved. With President Obama still in the White House, the policy’s supporters have at least another four years to prove the value of its underlying principles, primarily comprehensive ocean planning.

The Senate

The Democrats’ overall majority in the Senate now stands at 55 seats, including two independent senators from Maine and Vermont who will caucus with the Democrats. This is an increase of two from the current Democratic majority of 53 seats. In the early days of the 2012 campaign, pundits predicted that the Senate would flip into Republican hands after November. But those prospects dwindled over the past year as Republican retirement announcements and some of the Republican Senate candidates’ mind-numbingly insensitive comments on rape and abortion took their toll.

Now the Democrats’ continued role as the majority party ensures they will keep the Senate’s committee chairs, thereby controlling the content and panels of witnesses at hearings and playing a lead role in dictating which bills move through the sausage-making machine. Most ocean issues in the Senate fall under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which includes the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard. Here the chair will remain occupied by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV) rather than having its gavel turned over to the presumed Republican Ranking Member Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), one of eight men deadlocked atop the National Journal’s list of “Most Conservative Senators,” and someone my colleagues at Climate Progress have called “one of the most outspoken climate deniers in Congress.”

In addition to the Democrats’ retention of the overall majority, the results of three important Senate contests this past November 6 could well shape oceans policy in that chamber over the next six years. Let’s look at each in turn.

Earlier this year I lamented the decision by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) not to seek a fourth Senate term. Because of her long history of supporting science-based management of our oceans and coasts, losing Sen. Snowe would be a blow regardless of her party affiliation. But it’s even more troubling since she was one of the few Republicans who prioritized these issues. After last week’s election, the list of congressional ocean leaders supported by the political organization Ocean Champions includes just one Republican member: Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ). This is not for lack of trying. The same unwillingness to buck party lines that pervades Congress today and motivated Snowe to step aside has made finding Republicans willing to promote ocean issues an increasingly tall order.

Replacing Sen. Snowe will be former Maine Gov. Angus King (I). On Tuesday Sen.-elect King formally announced he would caucus with the Democrats. Since leaving Augusta in 2003, the former governor has worked primarily in the field of renewable energy, and with the importance of ocean issues to the state of Maine he will no doubt focus some of his legislative energy in this area. If he seeks a seat on the Commerce Committee, expect him to pick up some of Sen. Snowe’s priorities as his own, but it will take time for him to develop his predecessor’s clout and reputation for coalition building and productive compromise.

One of the closest races of the 2012 Senate campaign will also deliver swift and grand ramifications for ocean issues. While fishery management issues don’t typically rise to the fore in national politics, in Massachusetts, home to the historic ports of Gloucester and New Bedford as well as numerous smaller fishing communities, fishing means votes. During his tenure, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) took a hard line on fisheries issues, continually supporting the fishing industry and lambasting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for failing to do enough to support fishermen.

Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown (left), pictured at a fishermen's rally at the Capitol in March 2012, lost a tight race to challenger Elizabeth Brown. Photo by Michael Conathan

On the campaign trail, former Obama administration official and now Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren followed in the footsteps of one of her closest advisors, retiring Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), agreeing with Sen. Brown’s opposition to catch share management in New England fisheries on the basis that it has had negative effects on small businesses and unfairly favors larger operations. Under the catch share system, the total amount of fish that can be caught is divided up among fishermen who can then either opt to lease or catch their quota. If Sen.-elect Warren maintains this stance on catch shares when she arrives on Capitol Hill in January, it won’t endear her to the Obama administration’s ocean leadership, which has promoted catch shares as a key means of ending overfishing and rebuilding economically and environmentally sustainable fisheries.

Where Sen.-elect Warren will clearly differentiate herself from Sen. Brown and ally herself with the White House will be on the issue of climate change. While Sen. Brown believes humans “play a role” in the forces that are changing our climate, his victorious opponent finds the data supporting human activity as a root cause to be “overwhelming.” And while Sen. Brown opposed regulation of greenhouse gasses by the Environmental Protection Agency, Sen.-elect Warren would support such action. She is also a supporter of Cape Wind, the nation’s first offshore wind farm which has received permits to begin construction on Nantucket Sound, a project Sen. Brown vocally opposed.

Then there’s the victory scored by Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) over Republican rival and Indiana state treasurer Richard Mourdock to replace Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), who was defeated in the Republican Senate primary contest. Lake Michigan clips the northwest corner of Indiana, making it a Great Lakes state, but the reason this office is included in this list has nothing to do with Asian carp, zebra mussels, or the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

Rather, it’s about one critical issue that extends far beyond the borders of the home state of Sen. Lugar and Sen.-elect Donnelly: the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. The treaty codifies customary international law and establishes rules and methodologies detailing the rights and responsibilities of nations when it comes to use and protection of the world’s oceans. One hundred and sixty-two other countries have ratified it, but the United States remains the only industrialized nation that has not signed the convention.

Sen. Lugar is the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in that capacity has been the leading Republican voice supporting Senate ratification of the treaty. In fact, he is the only Republican member of the Committee who is not one of 34 signatories to a letter pledging to vote against the treaty should it come up for a vote in the full Senate. Sen.-elect Donnelly will likely support the treaty, but without Sen. Lugar’s leadership in the Foreign Relations Committee it will be virtually impossible for the Democrats to bring the treaty up for a vote before the full Senate. The loss of Sens. Snowe, Lugar, and Brown means the road to the 67 votes needed to ratify a treaty will get more difficult in 2013.

The House of Representatives

This year, Ocean Champions, an organization that calls itself “the only political voice for the oceans” and which is dedicated to getting politicians elected who will prioritize ocean issues, prioritized defeating the representative they dubbed “Ocean Enemy #1,” Rep. Steve Southerland (R-FL). That didn’t happen, yet other members of the Tea Party Caucus failed to win re-election, including:

• Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL)
• Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD)
• Rep. Allen West (R-FL), who still refuses to concede a race that, while close, the state has called for his Democratic challenger, Patrick Murphy
• Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA), who faces a runoff election with non-Tea Party Republican Rep. Charles Boustany after redistricting forced them to compete for a single seat

The Tea Party hasn’t made ocean issues a priority in its platform, but its members tend to deny climate change and oppose government regulation and spending. Some members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus who also serve on the House Committee on Natural Resources including Rep. Southerland, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC), and Rep. Landry. They have used their seats on that committee, which oversees most ocean issues, to target President Obama’s National Ocean Policy as a prime example of government gone wrong.

The chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), has led the charge against the National Ocean Policy in his committee, holding multiple hearings designed to discredit it. He also supported an amendment to strip all funding for its implementation. There were rumors that Rep. Hastings might be looking to swap his current gavel for the leadership slot on the more powerful House Rules Committee, but earlier this week news broke that this change would not come to pass.

Had Rep. Hastings switched chairs, his most likely successor would have been Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT). Rep. Bishop is also a member of the Tea Party Caucus—Rep. Hastings is not—but while his district does include the Great Salt Lake, he has not been as outspoken as Rep. Hastings on issues relating to other bodies of salt water, including the National Ocean Policy. In any case, it would appear that a change in leadership on the Natural Resources Committee could hardly make things worse for the National Ocean Policy, but it seems the best ocean advocates could have hoped for is that the issue fades to the background a bit more under new management.

One issue that won’t fade is the future of fishery management. Perhaps the biggest news in turnover among elected officials in the fisheries world occurred months ago, when Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) announced his retirement after more than three decades of service. Never one to shrink from a fight, Rep. Frank never hesitated to buck party lines when he felt it necessary in order to take care of his constituents, and this included taking his beefs about fisheries management to higher levels of government.

Matt Tinning, executive director of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, detailed the sea change that the loss of Rep. Frank will bring to the docks in New England:

Frank was a passionate advocate for fishermen in Massachusetts, most especially those from the Port of New Bedford, in his district. He routinely raised fisheries issues at the highest levels of the administration. Indeed, rumor has it that he made specific fisheries asks of then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in the midst of complex negotiations regarding Wall Street reform — over which he had enormous leverage as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

While Rep. Frank’s seat was won by Rep.-elect Joe Kennedy (D-MA), the coastal portion of his district, including New Bedford, was reapportioned to Rep. Bill Keating (D-MA), recently elected to his second term. Rep. Keating will be charged with picking up where Rep. Frank left off, but he faces the slightly more difficult task of balancing the differing needs of the New Bedford waterfront—the highest-value fishing port in the nation—with those of his current constituents in the smaller, struggling ports of Chatham, Plymouth, Scituate, and Martha’s Vineyard.

Congress will be facing fisheries issues on a national scale in the years to come. The Magnuson-Stevens Act, the law regulating fishery management, will be up for reauthorization in 2013. Rep. Southerland fired off an early salvo in the looming war over the role of science and the law’s current requirement to end overfishing by holding a Natural Resources Committee field hearing in his Florida district back in August. He came out swinging against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s efforts to regulate fisheries, only to have the majority of his constituents in attendance loudly proclaim their support for the regulations. How this debate plays out in the years to come remains to be seen.

Conclusion

In 2008 President Obama rode the wave of “change” into the White House. On the surface, 2012 looks like the opposite. But as usual, reading beyond the headlines—Democrats retain White House and Senate, Republicans keep House of Representatives—can lead to different conclusions. Significant alterations could be afoot for our oceans as climate change starts to regain some of its footing in the national policy dialogue, the National Ocean Policy gets a new lease on life, and fishery management… well, time will tell on that score.

As we look to 2013, many ocean advocates hope that the more things stay the same, the more they may actually change.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Hurricane Sandy’s terrible toll in lost lives and decimated communities is still being measured. But as we start to sort out the pieces, it’s also worth noting that the storm sent shockwaves through the mid-Atlantic region’s fishing industry. Harbors and infrastructure were pummeled and in some cases destroyed along the New York and New Jersey coastlines, and the Garden State Seafood Association has already asked Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) to formally request a federal fisheries disaster declaration.

In the aftermath of the storm, the link between our changing climate and increasingly extreme weather is coming into greater focus and being called out by an increasingly large caucus. (For more on the link between climate and extreme weather events in North America, see this new column by the Center for American Progress.) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was among the first to link Sandy’s fury to the “reality” of climate change. Bloomberg Businessweek ran a cover story under the banner headline, “It’s Global Warming, Stupid,” which called out the increasing spate of corporate voices accounting for climate change in their business models. And the magazine’s namesake, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, cited climate change as the tipping point that led to his much-ballyhooed endorsement of President Barack Obama for reelection.

Just as Sandy’s fury cannot be separated from the effects of global climate change, fishermen have already noticed the effects of global climate change on their work. As our last wild capture industry, fishing businesses are arguably more reliant on natural forces than any other profession. It’s a centuries-old vocation, inherently dependent on knowledge passed down from one generation to the next, so when species distribution patterns evolve, even subtle change becomes readily apparent.

As ocean waters have warmed, fishermen have been finding some species that their grandfathers and even their fathers never dreamed of seeing. A 2009 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center found that about half of the species it studied were shifting their range further north or into deeper water in search of colder water, including Atlantic cod, haddock, and hake species—the keystones of New England’s iconic groundfishery. The commercial lobster fishery has all but disappeared in the waters of southern New England. And on the Pacific northwest, oyster farming is threatened by ocean acidification, a phenomenon caused by higher carbon concentrations in seawater.

In the Businessweek story, Eric Pooley, senior VP of the Environmental Defense Fund, adapted an old analogy first articulated by National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Jerry Meehl. “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther,” Pooley said. “Now we have weather on steroids.”

A similar theory can be applied to climate change’s impact on fisheries. Not that ocean warming and acidification has led to fisheries on steroids—the general decline in world fish populations certainly counters that interpretation, and we should be careful not to blame climate for the decline in populations. Overfishing, coastal pollution, and habitat degradation are far and away the greater factors there. Rather, climate change is increasing the degree of difficulty fishermen and regulators face in rebuilding depleted fish stocks now that the overfishing has, at least in the United States, largely been ended. We can’t say climate change has prevented any one species from rebuilding, but climate change sure made it harder and take a lot longer.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs U.S. fishery management, requires overfished fisheries to be rebuilt to sustainable levels within 10 years, and mandates catch limits be set low enough that this target can be achieved. This means fishermen are forced to catch less and leave more fish in the water to increase reproduction rates and replenish their population. But when warmer water temperatures or increased ocean acidity prevent those populations from growing, the only recourse regulators have is to make those cuts more severe, meaning fishermen end up not only paying the price for their past overfishing but also for the damage our fossil fuel habit has inflicted on the world’s oceans.

Lawmakers in Congress have already begun debating changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which will be due for reauthorization in 2013, and one faction has coalesced around the need to weaken the statute’s scientific underpinnings and provide managers more flexibility to set higher catch limits. Many of the loudest supporters of this concept deny either the existence of climate change or mankind’s role in creating it.

To be clear: Any action that short-circuits the role of science in fishery management, including the establishment and enforcement of annual catch limits, would be a grave mistake. But as data continue to emerge linking human-induced global climate change to the health of fish populations, lawmakers, scientists, and managers must come together to determine how to account for its effects in their rebuilding plans.

If Congress is serious about enacting meaningful reforms that account for the economic needs of the fishing industry and the environmental needs of fish populations, it is going to have to acknowledge climate change as one of the fundamental environmental forces. That may make some climate zombies uncomfortable, but perhaps the sudden uptick in the climate dialogue brought about by Hurricane Sandy can help remove the scales from their eyes. Perhaps their fishing constituents can shine a little light on the greatest threat to the future health of the world’s oceans.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Photo: MyShot

The following piece originally appeared at ClimateProgress.org.

By Tom Wittig

Developing countries that rely on nourishment from the oceans will soon find their sources of food and way of life threatened, according to an Oceana study released last week. The report, Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO2 World, ranks the top 50 nations most vulnerable to climate change and ocean acidification in the context of their seafood and fish consumption.

Not surprisingly, those nations topping the list are among the least responsible for historic emissions of carbon dioxide.

The Comoros claimed the dubious distinction of most threatened, followed by Togo, the Cook Islands, Kiribati, and Eritrea. Other notable countries in the top fifty include Pakistan (8), North Korea (25), China (35), and South Africa (46). The United States did not make the list.

Just how big is this threat? Over a billion people rely on seafood as their main source of protein. Before mid-century, global population is expected to reach nine billion, creating further demand for ocean-based food. Many nations struggling with nutrition will be further challenged, and citizens of some developing nations will likely turn to inferior foods. The authors elaborate:

Losing [seafood] may mean more dependence on less healthy processed foods that are imported from abroad. Communities that have recently made a shift from eating traditional seafood items to importing cheap, processed foods have suffered widespread health problems. For example, in Pacific Island nations about 40 percent of the population has been diagnosed with diabetes, cardiovascular diseases or hypertension.

The combined rankings were based on three factors: exposure to climate change and ocean acidification, rates of seafood and fish consumption, and adaptive ability. It then predicted these conditions into mid-century for each country.

The report also considers the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification separately. The Maldives are the most threatened based solely on climate change predictions. The Cook Islands, which did not fare much better in the combined rankings, came in at number one in the ocean acidification rankings.

Scientists have already observed disturbing trends in ocean acidification and climate change. Since the Industrial Revolution, ocean pH has decreased by roughly 30 percent. The change in pH spells serious trouble for coral reefs and shellfish that rely on calcium to grow. In increasingly acidic waters, less calcium is available.

Ocean temperatures are also rising dramatically in numerous regions. This change is forcing some marine species to move closer to the poles or into deeper waters. Many fish species are predicted to shift towards the poles at a rate of around 20 miles per decade. Poorer nations do not possess the industrial fishing fleets to chase these moving populations.

Although the United States didn’t make the list, it isn’t safe from these changes. Atlantic cod have shifted farther north to compensate for increasing temperatures, and lobster populations are becoming increasingly vulnerable to disease as waters warm, wreaking havoc on seafood markets. Oceana stresses the effects climate change may have on American fisheries in its report:

Millions of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue are at risk if there are substantial losses in the capture, processing and sale of U.S. seafood due to regional climate impacts. Due to rising temperatures, the continental U.S. is projected to lose an average of 12 percent of its fisheries catch potential.

According to the Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post, ocean acidification is also endangering America’s fisheries. Despite not being the sexiest issue, ocean acidification is receiving increased attention as its effects become more pronounced. Eilperin notes that falling pH is putting pressure on America’s shellfish fisheries. In regions like the Alaska and the Chesapeake Bay, hits to seafood and fish harvests are not just a threat to industry, but a threat to culture.

While the U.S. still lacks the political will to make the necessary changes to adapt and slow climate change and ocean acidification, at least we have the technology and economic resources. The nations atop Oceana’s list do not. Their citizens will have little hope if the seafood and fish they have relied on for generations disappear.

Tom Wittig is an intern with the Ocean Program at the Center for American Progress.

It seems there’s a never-ending see-saw battle in scientific research about certain consumables. Red wine will decrease incidence of cardiovascular disease! No it won’t. Dark chocolate will lower your body mass index! Or not.

Seafood is no different. For every report that Omega 3 fatty acids are the fountain of youth, there’s another study warning seafood lovers about looming poison from excessive quantities of heavy metals, especially mercury. But are Omega 3s really that beneficial? And what to make of reports that selenium in fish can counterbalance the negative effects of mercury? And just what the hell is selenium, anyway? What’s the truth about fish?

Of course, there’s no black-and-white answer, but I’ll try to sort through a few of the bigger issues and provide a bit of guidance about what to look for at the fish counter to maximize the benefits and reduce your risk.

First of all, a disclaimer: I’m an ocean policy wonk, not a doctor, so take all this info with a grain of salt (figuratively, people, watch that blood pressure!) and ask your doctor if you have deeper questions—particularly if you’re pregnant.

Omega 3s

Here’s what the Mayo Clinic has to say about Omega 3’s. (I’m using the Mayo primarily because my mother-in-law treats it like an oracle. And if there’s one lesson from this column that has nothing to do with fish it’s that you should seize every chance you get to make nice with your mother-in-law.)

There is supportive evidence from multiple studies that suggests the intake of recommended amounts of [fatty acids] DHA and EPA in the form of dietary fish or fish oil supplements lowers triglycerides; reduces the risk of death, heart attack, dangerous abnormal heart rhythms, and strokes in people with known cardiovascular disease; slows the buildup of atherosclerotic plaques (“hardening of the arteries”), and lowers blood pressure slightly.

Omega 3s from fish are considered superior to Omega 3s from other sources such as eggs or flax seeds because they contain the fatty acids DHA and EPA (let’s go ahead and skip the multisyllabic mouthfuls that make up these guys’ actual names), which are the gold standards when it comes to proteins.

Or are they? Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal wrote about a study that found no evidence of benefits from use of Omega 3 supplements. Yet the article goes on to describe various ways in which this study was potentially skewed, and it notes that:

Thousands of studies since the 1970s have shown that people with high levels of omega-3s have lower triglycerides, lower blood pressure, lower LDL cholesterol, less inflammation and a lower risk of heart disease. Those with low levels of omega-3s are more likely to be depressed, to commit suicide and have memory loss and brain shrinkage as they age.

So let’s see, one study saying there’s no discernible positive impact, against thousands of studies over four decades showing Omega 3s can make your heart work better for longer and prevent your brain from shrinking. I know whose side I’m on. Score one big thumbs up for fish.

Mercury and selenium

One thing that’s crystal clear in all this haziness is that mercury is dangerous. I still remember dropping a mercury thermometer as a kid and being intrigued by the quicksilver beads that oozed out of the shards—until my mother, not a yeller, shrieked at me not to touch the stuff. Less understood is the role played by selenium, a beneficial mineral found in tiny amounts in the human body, in counteracting the negative effects of mercury.

Mercury accumulates in fish as a byproduct, primarily of burning fossil fuels. Mercury finds its way into the ocean from precipitation and settling of emissions from coal plants; it is then consumed by microscopic organisms that are in turn eaten by larger organisms and so on up the food chain. (For more on the relationship between coal and mercury, particularly the battle over an EPA regulation to control it, see the work of my colleagues Daniel J. Weiss and Jackie Weidman.)

The result of this so-called bioaccumulation is that larger, carnivorous fish tend to have higher concentrations of mercury in their flesh because they have spent their lives eating and processing lots of smaller fish, and while the nutritious elements of the prey are turned into energy, the mercury is stored rather than cleansed out of the larger fish’s system.

On the other side of the ledger, large ocean fish also tend to have higher concentrations of selenium, a trace mineral essential to human health that bonds to the mercury and prevents it from being absorbed in your brain. Which, simply put, is a good thing.

Many larger fish are widely cited as having the highest concentrations of mercury, particularly king mackerel, swordfish, shark, tilefish, and some tunas. After growing up on the coast, and working on fisheries issues for over a decade, I’ve never been served either a tilefish or a king mackerel, so those shouldn’t be tough to give up. And there are plenty of reasons beyond mercury not to eat shark—many species are overfished primarily as a result of the inflated value of their fins for shark fin soup, but also because sharks are very slow to reproduce.

Swordfish and most tunas, on the other hand, are a popular menu items and, at least in the United States, sustainably harvested. In addition, according to a study sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Energy and Environmental Research Center’s Center for Air Toxic Metals, and other government and nongovernment entities, these species also contain more selenium than mercury. This study concludes that other than for young children and pregnant mothers, “there are no recommendations to avoid any ocean fish,” including swordfish and tunas.

This finding was backed by a new study published this month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, stating that most seafood’s benefits outweighed its detriments.

Conclusion

The preponderance of evidence shows that in virtually all circumstances, the health benefits of fish outweigh the detriments. Omega 3 fatty acids are widely thought to be a major health boon and while consumers should be cognizant of mercury in their fish, particularly when pregnant or feeding young children, for the majority of adults, even this environmental toxin shouldn’t scare you off your swordfish steak.

As always, the best ways to pick your seafood are to seek fresh, local (when possible), sustainably harvested products—remember, American fisheries are among the most sustainably managed in the world and the number one rule of sustainability is buy American—and when in doubt, follow the age-old rule of thumb, “All things in moderation. Even moderation.”

Particularly when it comes to red wine and chocolate.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Also check out National Geographic’s Seafood Decision Guide>>

If half the Grand Canyon crumbled to nothing in less than three decades, would we stand up and pay attention? If Teddy and Abe’s heads eroded off Mount Rushmore would we step in to save George and Tom?

Sadly, that’s what is happening to one of the world’s great natural treasures.

A new study released yesterday by the Australian Institute of Marine Science shows that in just the last 27 years, the Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral.

Coral reef degradation is unfortunately not a new phenomenon. A 2011 report from the World Resources Institute found that three-quarters of the world’s coral reefs are threatened by increased stress from pollution and climate change. Corals are very sensitive to temperature, but because they are stationary, they cannot migrate to find their prime habitat. So as ocean temperatures warm, the coral organisms die, leaving just the white skeletal structures, a phenomenon known as bleaching.

Yet according to this new study, this degradation is less directly linked to the usual suspects. Just 10 percent of the loss was attributable to bleaching. The study found coastal storms were the leading culprit that caused 48 percent of the damage, and the remaining 42 percent was a result of an exploding population of the crown of thorns starfish that preys on coral.

Don’t mistake these causes for reason to think climate change isn’t responsible. After all, an increase in intensity of coastal storms is undoubtedly a symptom of planetary warming.

Controlling the starfish problem, it turns out, would allow the reef’s degradation — pegged at losses of between four and eight percent of coral cover per year — to reverse. Even at current levels of temperature and acidity, we could see slow coral growth. The starfish problem may be slightly easier to manage than reversing global emissions of greenhouse gasses, but it will require action sure to be unpopular with agricultural interests. As CNN reports:

According to the study, the starfish in its larval stage feeds on plankton, populations of which surge when fertilizer runoff floods the coastal ocean waters with nutrients. So plentiful plankton can lead to swarms of hungry starfish.

The last time the starfish bloomed in 2003, the government spent more than $3 million to try to control the population. No easy feat. But the motivation to succeed may be as great as the Great Barrier Reef itself. In addition to the inherent value of protecting a tremendous natural resource, and the environmental benefits it provides from fish habitat to protection against storm surges, the reef is also a major economic engine in northeast Australia. According to Nick Heath, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund Australia, “Sixty thousand jobs in the tourism industry depend on us acting with urgency over the next few years.”

Oddly, the Australian government is also planning coal and natural gas export facilities that would bring a constant stream of ships across the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

With all these environmental threats and new industrial activity, apparently we’ll have to be content with renaming one of our most spectacular natural wonders the Incredibly Shrinking Barrier Reef.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress

Earlier this week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its annual report on the state of U.S. fisheries and overall, the news was fairly positive. U.S. fishermen caught 10.1 billion pounds of fish in 2011, up nearly 20 percent from 2010. They did so while remaining increasingly within science-based total catch limits intended to end overfishing and rebuild depleted stocks.

But the news wasn’t all good: Some fisheries still face severe uphill battles to remain profitable. And while Americans’ consumption of seafood per capita declined by about 5 percent last year, the total amount of fish we imported shot up—increasing from 86 percent to 91 percent. Meanwhile, domestic fishermen face increasing costs and, in many cases, stricter catch limits than in years past.

If we can’t allow fishermen to catch more fish without compromising the viability of fish populations, then for some of our struggling domestic fisheries to remain economically viable, we must figure out how fishermen can get more money for the same amount of fish. And ideally, to do so either without passing the affiliated cost on to consumers or by providing a higher-quality product.

Innovation in seafood marketing has led to new programs allowing fishermen to rethink the way they get paid to do the most dangerous job in the country. Two methods in particular—community-supported fisheries and underutilized species—provide a framework for how we can give fishermen a boost while getting a better product into the hands and ultimately the mouths of consumers.

Community-supported fisheries

Between May and September a quick scan down my Facebook page will inevitably produce photos or status updates related to my friends’ weekly vegetable windfalls from their farm shares. My personal favorite: “The kids’ new favorite snack: crispy kale chips!” Sure it is. Put the plate of kale chips next to a stack of Oreos and let’s put that theory to the test.

OK, maybe I’m just bitter because my kid won’t eat anything that’s not a carbohydrate. But my friends’ veggie boasting notwithstanding, the locavore food movement is a positive, growing trend. Community-supported agriculture, more commonly known as “farm shares,” has taken off since these programs first began cropping up a few decades ago. In short, consumers pay upfront for a share of a farmer’s output for the growing season. Then, every week, they receive a delivery or pick up a box of whatever came out of the fields that week.

In 2007 a group of fishermen in Port Clyde, Maine—sick of not being able to find their catch in local supermarkets—seized on this idea and created the first community-supported fishery. Under the brand, Port Clyde Fresh Catch, their group sold shares of whole, unprocessed fish—primarily groundfish like cod, haddock, flounder, and hake—to local residents in midcoast Maine. Customers received a percentage of the weeks’ landings: whatever came up in the nets. Today their business has expanded to the establishment of a local processing facility so they can provide a more consumer-friendly product—filets rather than whole fish—and expanded beyond groundfish to northern shrimp, lobster, skate, squid, and crab.

The concept has caught on throughout New England and even across North America. In addition to their growing popularity in Maine and Massachusetts, they’ve cropped up in California, British Columbia, Alaska, and North Carolina among other locations.

This model provides multiple benefits to fishermen, consumers, and the planet. Fishermen get the certainty of an upfront payment for their catch, removing the worry about what the market will be when they get back to the dock, and allowing them to plan expenses accordingly. And because the product is fresher, fishermen typically get a better price. Consumers receive the freshest fish available and the peace of mind that comes from knowing dollars spent on food are supporting neighbors and giving back to the community. And direct delivery means the fish is generating fewer carbon emissions in its travels from the ocean to the plate.

Underutilized species

Diners’ seafood preferences are constantly evolving based on trends, availability, or just good old-fashioned PR makeovers. Could Ralph Lipschitz sell shirts with a polo pony on them for $89 a pop? Maybe, but Ralph Lauren certainly made them sound more stylish. Likewise, no one wants to eat a slimehead, but start calling it orange roughy and the next thing you know, it’s fished to near extinction. Ditto for the Patagonian toothfish’s reincarnation as the Chilean sea bass.

Such changes in appetite aren’t new—in the early days of this country, both Maine and Massachusetts had laws on the books expressly limiting the amount of lobster jailers could serve to prisoners. Too much lobster, it seemed, was considered cruel and unusual punishment. More recently, monkfish went through a similar transformation: The monkfish tails currently on haute cuisine menus at $25 a plate were surplus as recently as the 1990s and sold to the government to feed—you guessed it—prisoners.

Organizations like the Gulf of Maine Research Institute are now attempting to engineer an evolution in seafood preferences by helping create a market for underutilized species. These are fish that have rarely crossed chefs’ minds when planning their menus, and because of this, they remain abundant in the ocean. The program, called “Out of the Blue,” has chosen four such species to highlight and convinced more than a dozen Maine restaurants to feature the fish on their menus for a week. In June they pushed Acadian redfish; in July, Atlantic mackerel. Starting today, the program will kick off its third week with whiting, while the fourth species will remain under wraps until its October debut.

One concern about this effort in particular is that if the species takes off the way Chilean sea bass or monkfish did before it, the result could be a massive increase in fishing pressure. In both of those cases, the popularity boost led to overfishing. While monkfish is now in relatively good shape, the same can’t be said for the toothfish or the slimehead. But with science-based catch limits already in place for the species being promoted, the hope is that we can prevent history from repeating itself. And if programs like this one can develop a market for these species, fishermen can increase their bottom line by setting a few more lines to catch them.

The bottom line

Budgets are tight, and everyone loves a dollar menu, but paying fair-market value for fish means more than dropping two bucks on an order of Fish McBites. While the locavore movement has evolved from fringe to slightly less fringe enough to be spot-on parodied on the pilot episode of the sketch comedy show “Portlandia,” the principle of getting more of our food—including our seafood—from local sources is a model we should strive to replicate.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Oil spill response infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico and Arctic Ocean. (Map credit: Center for American Progress)

Earlier this year, it seemed almost a foregone conclusion that Royal Dutch Shell would begin drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska’s North Slope. Since then, a litany of factors including difficulty handling its drilling rigs, failure to secure Coast Guard approval of a key spill response vessel, and the lingering presence of summer sea ice has prevented Shell’s efforts from bearing fruit. Last week, Shell received preliminary approval from the Department of the Interior to begin preparatory work, including the installation of blowout preventers at the drill sites.

Blowout preventers are critical pieces of drilling infrastructure, but as we saw in 2010 with the BP Deepwtaer Horizon disaster, they are not infallible. There can be no guarantees that Shell will not experience a spill during operations, and the fact is, the infrastructure on Alaska’s North Slope is in no way suited to support and sustain any major oil spill response activity.

In February, the Center for American Progress issued a report detailing both this lack of infrastructure and the dearth of scientific knowledge about how oil behaves when spilled in Arctic conditions. As a follow up, we traveled to Alaska in June and July to shoot and produce an original video.

In “Oil and Ice: the Risks of Drilling in Alaska’s Arctic Ocean,” we interview stakeholders and provide a first-hand look at life in a massive region with no rail service, only one major road, no deep water ports, nowhere to house or feed the army of responders a spill would require, and a seemingly endless pristine environment that could be spoiled forever by a single misstep like the one that caused the BP disaster.

Gulf of Maine cod have been slow to recover from decades of overfishing, even though fishermen have adhered to strict harvest caps in recent years. (Photo: Jamie Doucette)

The following piece was originally published by the Center for American Progress.

At the end of last September, I wrote a column, enthusiastically titled “Optimism for the New England Groundfishery.” My theory was that after a history of overfishing, subsequent belt-tightening, and implementation of a new management system, the industry was on the cusp of recovery. The piece came out just days after New England’s beloved Red Sox sealed a historic September swoon, blowing a nine-game lead in just 24 days and losing the last game of the season in excruciating fashion to keep them out of last year’s playoffs. My assumption was that both the Sox and the groundfishery had nowhere to go but up.

Less than a month later, news broke that a new scientific assessment of Gulf of Maine cod, one of the fishery’s keystone species, showed it was in worse shape than scientists previously thought, and even if all fishing was halted, it would not recover by the end of its legally mandated timeline in 2014. As a result, fishermen saw their allowable catch of the fish reduced by more than 20 percent—an outcome all parties knew was just a one-year Band-Aid on what would have to be far more drastic cuts in 2013.

So much for optimism.

Similar results emerged as the cod assessment’s methodology was applied to other species in the fishery. Looking to 2013, the groundfishery now faces additional allowable catch cuts of 72 percent on Gulf of Maine cod, 70 percent on its cousin Georges Bank cod, 51 percent on yellowtail flounder, and 69 percent on American plaice (AKA sole). In the face of these numbers, it’s time to step back and reconceive of what this fishery can and should look like in the future.

As I detailed in my report “The Future of America’s First Fishery,” the New England groundfishery had a decades-old history of overfishing. In recent years, that practice has almost entirely been curtailed as legally mandated catch limits kept total harvest to sustainable levels. But populations left decimated by past overexploitation have been slow to rebuild, as the recent assessments indicate.

Some fishermen believe the 2011 assessments are too pessimistic and don’t reflect the reality on and under the water. Their arguments would be stronger if their nets were bursting with fish and they were pushing the limits of their annual quotas. But this has not been the case.

According to NOAA’s data, as of August 23, nearly one-third of the way through the fishing year, not a single major groundfish stock had exceeded 33 percent of its annual quota (though Gulf of Maine winter flounder was at 32.3 percent), and groundfish sector fishermen had only caught 16 percent of their allocated Gulf of Maine cod. The most likely explanation for this is that fishermen simply aren’t finding the fish.

Despite the evidence on the docks and in the processing houses, in an editorial this week, the fishing industry-friendly Gloucester Daily Times perpetuated a myth that has formed the foundation of much of its coverage of the groundfishery, saying, “The only way to fix the ongoing economic fisheries disaster is to address the cause of the disaster itself — and that’s [National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane] Lubchenco’s, NOAA’s and the corporately-driven Environmental Defense Fund’s job-killing catch share management system.”

The Times’s endless scapegoating of Lubchenco and NOAA is not only factually incorrect, it actively works against the best interests of the fishery. It doesn’t matter how we manage a fishery if there aren’t enough fish to fill nets.

Management systems didn’t cause these fish to disappear. Overfishing in the 1980s and early 1990s took care of that. And now environmental conditions and global climate change are making it harder for those fish to replenish themselves even as fishermen have had to dial back their effort.

We’ve seen this story before, in this same fishery, just northeast of the international boundary line in Newfoundland, where cod crashed in the 1990s and have yet to recover. It may not be too late for New England to avoid this fate, but to do so will require a major cultural shift.

Several New England governors have asked the secretary of commerce and NOAA to declare a federal fishery disaster.

If a declaration is granted—which  it should be—and Congress appropriates money for disaster relief, all stakeholders must be prepared to use that funding to make drastic changes in this fishery. Not to a regulatory system that the Times and others would like to blame, but to the root problem: there are too many boats chasing too few fish.

As painful as it will be for many fishermen whose livelihoods, culture, and generational history is inextricably tied to the groundfishery, the time has come for all fishery stakeholders to look at the big picture. Right now, this resource cannot sustain the fishing pressure being brought to bear by the fleet. Whether by design or by natural attrition, boats will have to drop out of this fishery.

To employ a blunt and overly simplistic phrase: This sucks. But contraction will occur one way or another. We can either do it in a managed, designed way, or simply let the chips fall and watch fishermen go bankrupt one by one.

After the hauntingly familiar pain of another Red Sox late-season collapse evolved once more into optimism during spring training, this season went downhill fast. Earlier this week the Sox made one of the boldest deals in baseball history sending three all-star caliber players to the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for a few prospects and the freedom to get out from under nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in long-term contracts. In short, things had gone so sour that when the Dodgers dangled a big red “reset” button in front of the Red Sox, Boston’s ownership and management didn’t hesitate to push it.

If disaster funding comes to New England, fishermen, environmentalists, their congressional representatives, and fishery managers must be willing to seize the opportunity to hit their own “reset” button. They must develop and implement a plan that will result in a leaner fishery that keeps vessels of diverse sizes, gear types, and geographic distribution operating, and gives them sufficient access to the resource to keep them solvent in the long-term as stocks rebuild.

This plan must also include mechanisms by which the fishery can once more be expanded if and when populations do rebound. It must consider the implications on vessel owners, captains, and crew as well as shore-side industries. And it must improve scientific research and monitoring of the fishery so all fishery stakeholders can have a clearer picture of what their future might look like.

Baseball, of course, is a hobby for New Englanders, while fishing is often a way of life—though there are plenty of New Englanders for whom the inverse holds true. After last September’s collapse and this season’s floundering, Red Sox fans were elated when team management made the incredibly bold decision to blow up one of baseball’s most expensive rosters.

It’s folly to expect fishermen to react with the same enthusiasm when their entire financial and cultural future hangs in the balance. But this fishery is quickly running out of options.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

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