Saving Seafood

Northeast Ocean Plan is solidifying

July 6, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — The new Northeast Regional Ocean Plan currently being developed will not create any new regulatory authority, Maine Department of Marine Resources Deputy Commissioner Meredith Mendelson told a group at the Ellsworth Library last week.

The hearing, one of three in Maine, was held to solicit comment from the public and from “stakeholders” on what it anticipates is a near-final draft of the Northeast Ocean Plan. The public comment period began May 25 and ends July 25.

Six years ago, President Obama signed an executive order establishing a National Ocean Policy that called for the creation of nine regional boards to develop plans “to better manage the nation’s oceans and coasts.”

Four years ago, the Northeast Regional Planning Board was formed to develop a strategy for the waters off New England. The board includes representatives of nine federal agencies with authority of one sort or another over activities in the ocean, six federally recognized tribes, the New England Fishery Management Council and all six New England states.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Federal ocean planning effort met with skepticism

June 19, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — No commercial fishermen attended a Wednesday meeting about a new ocean planning initiative, and a local port leader warned that mistrust of the government — widespread on the waterfront — could be spurring skepticism about the federal effort to gather and utilize public input.

State and federal officials including Betsy Nicholson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) led the event, which drew about 20 people to a third-floor room in New Bedford’s downtown library. The intent was to hear public comment on the draft Northeast Regional Ocean Plan. The plan culminates a four-year effort to compile input from numerous marine industries, environmental groups, public and private officials, tribal entities and others, across all six New England states, for a document that could guide future ocean planning.

Neither the final plan nor the regional group that created it will have law-making authority, but Nicholson said Wednesday that NOAA is “committed to using this information in our regulatory and management decisions” in the future.

David Pierce, director of the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries, acknowledged that there could be doubts about how much weight NOAA will give to public input used to create the plan.

“Can the commercial and recreational fishing industries actually trust what comes out of this plan when it’s in its final form? That’s an understandable concern,” Pierce said at the meeting. “It’s going to be hard to convince the fishermen that they should trust the federal government. … We’re all going to have to work on that.”

A key part of the initiative, for example, is the Northeast Ocean Data Portal, which is envisioned as a tool for the collection of ocean data from numerous sources, government and otherwise, to guide planning decisions.

One contributor is scientist Kevin Stokesbury, of UMass Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science & Technology (SMAST). Stokesbury said he worked with The Nature Conservancy to contribute scallop survey data from 2003 to 2012, and link it with oceanographic data from SMAST professor Changsheng Chen.

“It’s a way to bring everyone to the table and make sure they all have a voice,” Stokesbury, who was not at the meeting, said by phone Thursday. He then raised a caveat.

“I’m always optimistic they’re going to use my data – they don’t always do it,” he said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times