Big Ideas in Conservation - A Sea Change for Ocean Management

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"Until the idea of ocean zoning is adopted widely, we will continue to struggle with our oceans' declining health."

—Lynne Hale, Mike Beck and Scott Smith of the Conservancy's Global Marine Initiative

Lynne Hale is director of the Conservancy's Global Marine Initiative, leading the organizations efforts to substantially expand its work in coastal and marine conservation. She is an expert in coastal ecosystem management. Photo: Courtesy of Lynne Hale

Mike Beck is a senior scientist with the Conservancy's Global Marine Initiative and a research associate at the University of California Santa Cruz. His present work includes research on marine regional planning, kelp forests and marine property rights. Photo: © Steve Kurtz

Scott Smith is the senior policy advisor for the Conservancy's Global Marine Initiative. He coordinates international partnerships and policy issues related to marine conservation. Photo: Courtesy of Scott Smith

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Global Marine Initiative
See how the Conservancy works to protect oceans and coasts for people and nature.

What You Can Do
Find out how you can make ocean protection personal — read these 10 tips for helping to save our seas.

By Lynne Hale, Mike Beck and Scott Smith

The oceans cover 70 percent of the Earth's surface and provide us with an amazing array of services. But today the world's human population of more than 6 billion claims ever-larger amounts of the seas — fish for eating; coastal beaches for playing; marshes for agriculture; coastlines for development; ports and sea lanes for shipping; space for oil, wind, and wave rigs for energy; rivers for irrigation and electricity; and a place to dispose of wastes.

The oceans' ability to continue to nurture the diversity of marine life — while also providing the services on which we depend — is already at a breaking point. Unless we can find a new way to balance the multiple ways that we use our seas and plan for new threats, our oceans will continue to decline.

And that way is ocean zoning.

Pulling Our Ocean Resources in Too Many Directions

Here's the problem: Despite our growing understanding of how these many uses increasingly conflict and exceed the oceans' ability to absorb them, we still approach them and the people, companies and governments who use them individually.

For example, fisheries managers only manage fish and have little way to affect agricultural practices — such as the use of fertilizers, which pollute estuaries and create algal blooms and dead zones.

Another example: Most marine park managers have little ability to address fishing within their boundaries and often no influence on what happens outside park boundaries.

In some U.S. states, one agency manages the habitats on the bottom of the sea, a separate agency manages the water above it, and a third manages the gas and minerals beneath the bottom. Even conservation organizations that advocate protection don't always take into account fully the way people — often the poorest and most marginalized — depend on ocean resources for their livelihood.

Bringing Land Conservation Ideas to the Sea

In order to provide for current and future uses of oceans and the diversity of growing users, we need a sea change in the way we manage the oceans. Instead of addressing marine conservation and management one piece at a time, we need to think about an entire seascape — and recognize the many stakeholders who use it and allocate space and use among them to maximize benefits and minimize conflicts.

We have long managed the land in this way through zoning — sitting down with a wide range of stakeholders to figure out the optimal use of place that considers the long-term benefits for both people and nature. It is time to adopt and adapt that approach to the seas and institute the idea of ocean zoning.

If such zoning is done well, we can learn from terrestrial experiences — reaping the benefits and avoiding some of the mistakes. One of the many lessons from the land is that we need transparency in how uses and areas are allocated. But such transparency only comes when managers and users have ready access to a common base of information from which management choices can be made — such as interactive web-based maps. These new technologies exist and are being used in real-world management experiments.

The Tides of the Future

We are already starting to see a trend from single-use planning to multi-use planning and even toward integrated ocean planning and zoning in some areas:

Australia has instituted a multi-use management plan across the entire Great Barrier Reef, recognizing nine different zones that allow for uses from fishing to boat anchoring to preservation.
In Venezuela, the Conservancy is working with the national energy corporation to develop new approaches that allow for energy extraction while preserving critical reef areas.

This is a promising start, but until the idea of ocean zoning is adopted widely, we will continue to struggle with our oceans' declining health. With a change in the U.S. administration and a new head of NOAA who has championed the benefits of better management in the seas, now is the time to bring this new idea to the forefront of marine conservation and recognize both the incredible ability of our oceans to provide for us and the need for their protection.

(March 2009)

Fast-Forward to the Future of Conservation!

Photo credits (top to bottom, left to right): © Exploring tidal flats in Washington (Ellen Banner); © Mike Beck conducts research in kelp forests off the coast of California (Richard Herrmann)