The National Ocean Policy Needs Your Help

The National Ocean Council wants to hear from YOU – Help Make a Difference for Healthy Communities and Healthy Coasts

The Obama Administration is moving forward with its National Ocean Policy (NOP), and we need your help to make sure it is implemented effectively.

The NOP was created to “ensure the protection, maintenance, and restoration of the health of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems and resources”. Through four key themes—ecosystem-based management; best available science and data; efficiency and collaboration; and strong regional efforts—the policy outlines action that must be taken to protect marine ecosystems and to encourage sustainable ocean uses

Everyone wants clean water, clean beaches, and healthy coasts. We now have a tremendous opportunity to protect and restore these very places for future generations – our oceans, Great Lakes, coastal ecosystems and the wildlife that depend on them. This month, the National Ocean Council released a blueprint for implementation of the NOP. While it’s a good start, more can be done to ensure that the plan is as strong as possible, starting with more interagency cooperation and greater emphasis on activities taking place on the water.

The National Ocean Council seeks comments from citizens like you. Please send them your comments and ask the council to ensure a robust, conservation-oriented National Ocean Policy. The future of America’s oceans is at stake so lets Take Action.

HOW TO SUBMIT COMMENTS:

Below is a draft comment letter you can send to the National Ocean Council. Just copy the letter - click this link, and paste the letter into the comments area. Feel free to customize it.

Dear Chairs Sutley and Holdren and National Ocean Council Members:

The recently released Draft National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan is a giant step forward in advancing the National Ocean Policy and helping to create healthier oceans and coasts and stronger economies for our coastal communities. The Plan shows great strength in providing a cohesive framework for National Ocean Policy implementation and being an action-oriented plan that provides for government accountability. As you move to finalize this plan, please consider the following recommendations:

Protecting, maintaining and restoring the health of our oceans, coasts and Great Lakes must be of primary importance with an emphasis to achieve conservation milestones that can provide immediate ecological benefit such as the protection and restoration of coastal and marine habitat for priority species;

Ensure the plan does not overlook needed new actions and does not only propose existing government plans and programs;
Produce an implementation status report every two years that notes progress on reaching ecological indicators and the actions and milestones in the Plan; and
Fully utilize existing legal authorities to implement the National Ocean Policy.

The National Ocean Council should also prioritize needed funding for regional ocean partnerships in those regions which are best prepared to begin regional planning bodies and convene stakeholder participation. Regional ocean partnerships can create the best value of scarce federal funding by bringing federal, state, tribal, scientific and non-governmental entities together to start to address ocean management challenges.

The National Ocean Policy is founded on sound science, an inclusive and transparent public and stakeholder engagement process, the protection of habitat and wildlife populations, and encourages government at all levels to work together. The Draft Implementation Plan reflects over two years worth of hard work, investment and commitment made by state governments, commercial and industrial ocean users, universities and scientists, 27 federal agencies and departments and tens of thousands of citizens across the country to move our oceans toward better ocean management. I urge the National Ocean Council to operationalize the National Ocean Policy as soon as possible through this Implementation Plan with the goal of creating the enduring environmental stewardship of our ocean, coastal and Great Lakes ecosystems.

Wear Blue for Oceans

Don't Be Blue, Just Wear Blue on January 13th - Support a national ocean policy.