The Northeast Regional Ocean Council (NROC) is ramping up its efforts to gather data and create a cohesive picture of current use of New England’s marine waterways. The council, a collaborative effort set up by New England’s governors in 2005 to create a unified regional approach to ocean planning, will reach out to stakeholders in commercial and recreational fishing, ocean-energy production and marine shipping. The goal of the council’s work is to develop a better understanding of how the ocean is currently being used, and to have that information easily accessible for future planning of ocean use, according to Nick Napoli, NROC Ocean Planning Project Manager.
“The goal of all of this is to have a better baseline,” Napoli said. “We’re not going in with any assumptions.”
To further its work, NROC has awarded grants to various regional organizations, including to the Island Institute (which publishes The Working Waterfront) that will collaborate with several other contractors to map commercial fishing efforts in the region. Other projects underway include surveying recreational fishermen about their activities, refining an interactive database of New England ocean use, and exploring how to build consensus among stakeholders who may have competing visions for ocean waters. NROC also recently announced a request for proposals for two new projects: one that will map out conservation issues in the region and another that will review how marine habitats are classified and modeled in New England.
It’s all part of an overall effort to create a more unified approach to marine planning, especially as the ocean becomes a busier place in the future, said Ted Diers, New Hampshire co-chair for NROC and Coastal Program Manager for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. Ocean use is governed by more than a dozen federal agencies, as well as state and regional authorities. It’s often difficult for each agency to communicate and see the big picture when it comes to ocean use, and information can get lost. NROC is a regional effort to get everyone on the same page, according to Diers.
“None of this changes anybody’s jurisdiction,” he said. “It just forces them to play in the same sandbox.”
It’s important not just to gather data about current use of the ocean, but to interpret that data correctly, especially when it comes to commercial fishing, according to Nick Battista, marine programs director at the Island Institute. Much of the institute’s current project with NROC revolves around interpreting commercial fishing data correctly to show the true current use of the ocean. For example, Battista said, a map may show an area has not been fished for years; that information could be interpreted to mean the area isn’t important for commercial fishing, but a closer look may reveal it actually is a vital hatchery.
“Maybe some people are not fishing there because it’s been closed because of various management decisions,” Battista said.
It’s also important to fill the data gaps of current ocean use, said Stephanie Moura, executive director for SeaPlan, a Massachusetts nonprofit focused on ocean planning. Recently, the National Marine Fisheries Service has suggested that unmapped recreational fishing in New England may have contributed significantly to the collapse of Atlantic cod stocks. Moura said it’s hard to create a complete picture of how we use the ocean without taking recreational fishing more into account. SeaPlan is working with NROC to survey recreational fishermen.
“We don’t really know a hell of a lot where recreational boaters go,” Moura said. “From an ocean planning perspective, it’s a data gap.”
SeaPlan is also part of a working group that has created an online database about ocean use in New England. Named the Northeast Ocean Data Portal, the database offers free public access to all maps and data of ocean use. The portal is interactive, so users can put together data from different sources to create new maps. In the past, it was necessary to go to various governmental agencies to get such maps, said Peter Taylor, owner of Waterview Consulting, a Maine firm contracted to work on the portal.
“It’s a way to make data available that historically has been really tied up,” Taylor said.
The database is considered a model for regional ocean planning efforts in other parts of the country, Moura said. Throughout the U.S., states are looking at ways to create a unified, regional approach to ocean planning, as is the federal government. The Obama Administration recently launched the National Ocean Policy initiative, which attempts to unify the U.S. government’s management of the ocean in federal waters.
In the fall and winter, NROC contractors and partners will finish initial data-gathering and reach out to regional stakeholders, Napoli said. NROC will also review proposals for its two new areas of study in September.
Craig Idlebrook is a freelance contributor living in Medford Mass.