•   Home  
•   Our Programs
  • Biomonitoring Resource Center
  • Cancer Help Program
  • Collaborative on Health & the Environment (CHE)
  • Commonweal Garden
  • Fair Growth Project
  • Health & Environment Program
  • Health Care
    Without Harm
  • Institute for the Study of Health & Illness (ISHI)
  • Juvenile Justice
  • New School
  • Ocean Policy Program
  • Precautionary Principle
  • Women's Health and the Environment
•   Retreat Center
•   Nature Photos
    From Commonweal
•   Publications
  • Overview
  • Choices in Healing
  • Diamond
  • Eco-Pioneers
•   Newsletters
  • Past Issues
•   About Us

 

Ocean Policy Program

History and Description | Highlights | Staffing | Related Publications | Funding

Program History and Description

The Ocean Policy Program promotes science and policies that support ecologically sustainable and economically viable ocean management. We collaborate with ocean managers, fishermen, scientists, NGOs, and others. Focal areas include restoring island ecosystems, reducing conflicts between seabirds and fisheries, and designing approaches to sustainable marine life and fisheries management. Since 1996, our projects have focused on:

• Ecosystem approaches to ocean and fisheries science and management
• Conservation of the world's seabirds and shorebirds
• Increasing funding for ocean science, management, and conservation

Ocean Policy Program Highlights – Seabirds

Conservation of the world's seabirds has been a major focus of the Ocean Policy Program since 2005. Although seabirds are among the most threatened species in the world, seabird conservation has received little attention compared to other important ocean conservation concerns, such as marine mammals, sea turtles, fisheries reform, coral reefs, and marine protected areas.

Large seabird colonies are important elements in many island ecosystems yet animals and plants introduced by humans to seabird breeding islands are the single greatest threat to most seabird species. As a result, one of our high-priority strategies is restoration of ecosystems on islands where seabirds breed.

Albatrosses, the world's most charismatic seabirds, are also at risk away from their breeding islands. Of the world's 22 species of albatrosses, 18 are threatened, and the rest are classified as near-threatened on the IUCN Red List. The principal cause: tens of thousands of these magnificent birds are accidentally killed each year by tuna and swordfish longlines and other fishing gear. Our second seabird conservation strategy is reduction of this "bycatch" through the development of safer fishing gears and adoption of those gears by the fishing industry.

Ocean Policy Program Highlights – California

Since 1996, California has been a laboratory for applying many new approaches to ocean management and science. The Ocean Policy Program has been fortunate to have been intimately engaged with developing and implementing several of the reforms.

In the course of that involvement, our projects have assisted the California Legislature, the Resources Agency, the State Coastal Conservancy, the Department of Fish and Game, and the California Fish and Game Commission as they formulated and implemented a suite of recent ocean policy, management, and science mandates and programs. Noteworthy among these are the Marine Life Management Act of 1998, the Marine Life Protection Act of 1999, the California Ocean Protection Act of 2004, and the Coastal Ocean Currents Monitoring Program.

The following summaries highlight some of the initiatives in which the Ocean Policy Program has been centrally involved.

The Marine Life Management Act of 1998

The Marine Life Management Act (MLMA) mandates fundamental reforms of marine life and fisheries management policies and provides a blueprint for their implementation. The Act, negotiated and drafted by Ocean Policy Project staff, has moved California in directions that are coming to be accepted as promising means of avoiding the familiar scenario of collapsed fish populations with accompanying economic hardships for fishermen. Those directions include management that:

• Allows only sustainable uses of the ocean;
• Maintains the health of the natural systems that support fisheries;
• Moves from single-species fisheries management to ecosystem-based management;
• Values fishing and non-consumptive uses equally;
• Matches the level of management precaution with the level of information available about the interactions between fisheries and the ecosystems that support them;
• Incorporates no-fishing areas as a standard fishery management tool;
• Shifts from single-species data collection to ecosystem monitoring to provide the information for ecosystem approaches to management;
• Recognizes that successful management is a collaborative process that requires participation of all those who will be most affected by management decisions.

See the Guide to California's Marine Life Management Act, by Michael Weber and Burr Heneman.

Following passage of the MLMA, the Ocean Policy Program initiated a multi-year project to help the Fish and Game Commission and the Department of Fish and Game implement major elements of the new law. Our efforts focused on the following:

• Funding the Fish and Game Commission's first marine policy consultant (1999-2003)
• Funding public process consultants to assist Department of Fish and Game staff
• Drafting and adoption of the Nearshore Fishery Management Plan (see below)
• Drafting and implementing California's model commercial fishery restricted access policies
• Applying ecosystem-based marine science to ecosystem approaches to management
• Helping secure roughly $45million in new funding for ocean management and science in California
• The Master Plan: A Guide for the Development of Fishery Management Plans, California Department of Fish and Game
• California's Living Marine Resources: A Status Report, California Department of Fish and Game

Nearshore Fishery Management Plan (2002)

The Nearshore Fishery Management Plan (FMP) lays out the state's path to adopting risk-averse management that incorporates ecosystem concerns. The Commission adopted the Nearshore FMP in October 2002.

Ocean Policy Program staff and consultants were part of the small team that developed the Nearshore FMP's stepped process for moving from single-species fisheries management to ecosystem approaches to fisheries management. That innovation is included in the FMP control rule.

Coastal Ocean Currents Monitoring Program

In 2003, the Ocean Policy Program was able to play a key role in securing $21million of state bond funds for what has become the Coastal Ocean Currents Monitoring Program (COCMP). The program, using relatively inexpensive, shore-based monitoring technologies such as high frequency radar, is providing information expected to benefit a wide range of ocean management concerns, including oil spill trajectory modeling, coastal water quality monitoring, and fisheries management.

The State Coastal Conservancy, the lead agency for the program, asked the Ocean Policy Program to assist them in initiating COCMP. Our successful partnership with the Conservancy to launch COCMP concluded in 2007.

Increasing funding for management and management-related science

Since 1998, Commonweal's Ocean Policy Program has been instrumental in acquiring approximately $45million in new state funding for the Department of Fish and Game for Marine Life Management Act implementation, to the State Coastal Conservancy for the Coastal Ocean Currents Monitoring Program, and to the Resources Agency for the California Ocean Science Trust.

In addition, with funding from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, Commonweal has also made strategic investments in several projects based at other organizations through our California Nearshore Science Program.

Staffing for the Ocean Policy Program

Burr Heneman, Ocean Policy Program Director

A co-founder of Commonweal, Burr has been involved in marine policy and science at the state, national, and international levels since the 1970s. He formerly was director of the Ocean Conservancy's Pacific region (1991-1994); consultant to BirdLife International and the Saudi Arabian wildlife agency on the Gulf War oil spill and fires (1991); consultant to the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission on various national and international issues (1985-1988); and executive director of PRBO Conservation Science (1980-1984). He was awarded a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation in 1999 for his work on marine life management reform.

Ocean Policy Program consultants (current or recent)

Dr. John Croxall, Chair, BirdLife International's Global Seabird Programme; formerly, Head of Conservation Biology, British Antarctic Survey.

C. Josh Donlan, Director, Advanced Conservation Strategies.

Dr. Les Kaufman, Professor of Biology, Boston University Marine Program.

Paul Siri, Ocean Policy and Science Consultant; Director of the California State Coastal Conservancy's Ocean Science Applications program, which includes the Coastal Ocean Currents Monitoring Program.

Michael Weber, Ocean, Coast, and Fisheries Program Officer, Resources Law Group, Sacramento, CA.

Ocean Policy Program partners (current or recent)

• Advanced Conservation Strategies
• The Pew Institute for Ocean Science
• Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami
• The State Coastal Conservancy (California)

Publications Related to the Ocean Policy Program

The following list includes several recent publications related to the efforts of Commonweal's Ocean Policy Program to disseminate information about best practices in marine life and fisheries management:

Funding for the Ocean Policy Program

The Commonweal Ocean Policy Program has been funded by the following:

• Jenifer Altman Foundation
• California Coastal Conservancy
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• David and Lucile Packard Foundation
• Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation
• Resources Legacy Fund Foundation
• Anonymous grants and contributions