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The Well Being of the Oceans: Building a New Momentum

Are oceans and ocean policy the “next big thing” in public awareness and public interest? And perhaps, as a result, a bullish area in environmental coverage?

A few random headlines don’t a groundswell make, and reporters inland regularly point to their own editors’ ambivalence to an issue they perceive as being of interest primarily to coastal audiences and not land-locked ones.

All the same, some preliminary signs point to a growing public awareness of challenges facing the world’s seas, more than 70 percent of the planet’s surface area. Whether and how that plays in newsrooms is anyone’s guess.

Some possible signs of change:

• Two major oceans reports in 2004—one by the Pew Oceans Commission and the other by the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy—drew significant national media coverage in the past year, and each lays a potential foundation for a public policy response in 2005. The two reports appear to have far more in common than at-odds, and neither paints a comforting picture of ocean health and vitality. At the same time, few knowledgeable experts are forecasting early and aggressive federal legislative and or regulatory initiatives in this area under a second-term Bush administration.
• In its Fall 2004 magazine, Resources, a respected middle-of-the-road Washington, D.C., think-tank, Resources for the Future, oceans issues was the cover story. The authors, James N. Sanchirico and Michele T. Callaghan, wrote that “Countries appear to be moving away from managing the ocean solely for extractive uses, even as the number of economic activities is growing, toward a more holistic approach that includes conservation. One new trend that symbolizes both of these changes is the movement to establish networks of marine reserves, areas that are closed to all extractive uses.”
• Reporter Paul Rogers of the Mercury News, San Jose, California, himself no pushover for environmentalists’ agendas, wrote in October about how Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger “has set a new pace on ocean protection for the nation” with bold state initiatives. Rogers’ October 23 story was headlined “Rising Tide of Support for Saving the Oceans.” (It’s interesting to note that Rogers reported in that same story that the governor’s announcement of new plans to protect the ocean was immediately scooped by his response to a reporter’s question that he would support a controversial statewide stem-cell initiative, “instantly drowning out his ocean news.”)
• Two October Washington Post features by environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin gave voice to a potential growing concern over oceans well being.

On October 9, the Post headlined an Eilperin story “Ocean Exploitation Surfaces as Crisis.” Eilperin wrote that the fate of slow-growing corals in the Florida Keys “is just one small example of the pervasive damage being done to the world’s oceans, damage that has been documented by a rapidly accumulating library of studies and reports.

“Inside and outside the government, a conviction is taking hold that policymakers need to act quickly to avert the looming crisis,” Eilperin wrote. She quoted the head of the National Environmental Trust’s marine conservation network “Ocean conservation is poised to become the next global warming issue….The science is settled. The debate can move on from whether or not there is a crisis to what to do about it.”

Less than two weeks later, Eilperin, reporting from Florida, wrote of a time when the waters of Biscayne National Park “were teeming with fish and vibrant corals,” compared with the near dearth found there now.

“The whole system is in jeopardy—there’s no question,” said Richard Curry, a 27-year science research coordinator for the park told Eilperin in her article on marine reserves headlined “Limits of Ocean Preservation Being Tested.”

Writing of the inevitable public tensions that arise whenever use of a public resource is in some ways restricted, NOAA Marine Sanctuary Program Director Daniel Basta said that the American public often initially resists such restrictions, but over time becomes more accepting.

“The public process is messy,” he said. “But if you educate, are patient, and build trust with the American public, they will do the right thing.”