Our nation’s oceans matter to all of us

Last week, I focused on the intangible value of our coasts and oceans — how it makes us feel and why, and also why this is important. I dissected its effect on people by sense, discovering some interesting facets of what being on or by the water does to our brains and our bodies. I ended with a promise that in my next column I would address the issue of how to make sure that these experiences continue to be possible for people in the communities along our coast.

I’m going to scale way back — imagine Google Earth zooming up from Brunswick to show the entirety of the United States. Now you can see the nearly 90,000 miles of coastline that define our country (according to the U.S. Census). That may seem like a large number, but in fact counties along the shoreline constitute less than 10 percent of the total land area of the U.S. (excluding Alaska).

That small sliver, however, is home to 39 percent of our total population. And that number is only growing — coastal populations grew 40 percent between 1970 and 2010 and are expected to grow an additional 8 percent by 2020. Of those 125 million people who live along the coast, some enjoy it for recreation and others derive their livelihood from it. Then, there are the 200 million other people who live in the country’s interior.

But, the value of the coasts reaches all the way into the country’s heartland. Take St. Louis, Missouri, where I grew up, where you can somehow buy Maine lobster at the supermarket and where, if you floated long enough down the Mississippi River, you’d end up in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s not to mention all of the products that come and go via our oceans. The point is that our country’s oceans matter to all of us and the reasons why are myriad.

However, our efforts to figure out how to best balance all of the different ways we use our oceans is still quite nascent. We’ve tended traditionally to think of the oceans as wild places, but they are becoming more heavily used and in more ways than ever. Now traditional uses like shipping and fishing are sharing space with aquaculture and wind energy — two major emerging ocean industries. And whenever there are new uses proposed, it sparks a debate about where they should go and how they should co-exist with what is already there.

So, how do we do that? Many people are likely already familiar with land use planning which has helped guide everything from where highways go to where we establish public green spaces. Advocates like Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park, and John Muir, who argued for the establishment of our national parks system, helped to make sure that there were green places for the benefit of all. Now we have to figure out how to do that for the ocean — how to allow for multiple uses all while not forgetting the importance of its intrinsic value to our physical and mental health.

The good news is that this kind of planning is underway. In 2010, President Barack Obama issued an executive order laying out a framework for each region of the country to come up with its own ocean use plan. I spent eight years or so working with the Ocean Conservancy on ocean planning — gathering opinions and information from all types of people using and valuing the oceans in different ways in order to provide input for a master plan. This included everyone from coastal hotel owners to recreational boaters to shellfish harvesters. We used some amazing visualization tools to look at where various activities were taking place at different times of year and also to assess things like ecological value and habitat vulnerability.

The Northeast was the first region to complete a regional ocean plan — this included a set of maps and guidelines based on all of the information gathered from multiple users and resource specialists. It was a complex process with lots of maps and many, many meetings. But now, decision-makers can then use this information to help guide what happens where in the oceans. It’s pretty neat to see all the data on a single map and it is accessible to anyone to see on the Northeast Ocean Data Portal. You can add whichever layers of information you’re interested in to make a customized map. Just don’t click on them all at once or you’ll quickly see just how heavily used our coastal waters are.

This regional plan is part one of how to make sure that we can continue both to benefit economically from our oceans but also to enjoy them. As you can imagine, the more detailed work has to be done at a smaller scale. This is where each community has to be involved. And, it is where the specific values that each community feels can be taken into consideration. That’s what I’ll focus on next week. As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Susan Olcott lives in Brunswick, Maine, with her husband and 7-year old twin girls. She earned her M.S. in zoology studying the lobster fishery in New England. She then designed education programs for the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and taught biology to military personnel in Sardinia, Italy before returning to Maine to work on ocean planning for The Ocean Conservancy. She is now a freelance writer and currently writes about coastal issues for the Harpswell Anchor and The Working Waterfront and about local foods for the Brunswick Topsham Land Trust and Zest Magazine. In addition, she helps local schools pursue educational grants and writes children’s book reviews for the Horn Book’s family reading blog as well as for her own blog: susanolcott.wordpress.com.