May 26, 2016 — A regional planning group issued a sweeping ecosystem-based ocean draft plan Wednesday to guide federal agencies in New England.
The draft Northeast Ocean Plan has no regulatory power, but since it was developed by a group created by presidential order in 2010, the reams of science behind the plan will guide the federal agencies that help manage the coastline and oceans of New England, according to Betsy Nicholson, a member of the regional group that wrote the plan and regional director for coastal management for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The science is drawn from hundreds of data sources, and often packaged into easy-to-use interactive maps to understand the cumulative effect of disparate industries, such as looking at how marine mammal habitat intersects with regional shipping lanes or the location of marine industry job clusters or beach renourishment projects. Most of the data had existed before the plan’s release, Nicholson said, but not in one place, and not in such an easy to understand and use format.
“This is a huge benefit for people like fishermen, small tourism business owners and others,” said Anne Merwin, director of ocean planning at Ocean Conservancy. They “need to be out on the water, or in their shops, not tracking down the latest ocean development proposals.”