DailyPress.com
Ocean Conservancy expert says solutions are simpler
By Kathy Van Mullekom, kvanmullekom@dailypress.com | 10:34 PM EDT, November 2, 2010
When federal agencies managing waters off Massachusetts learned an important shipping lane directed vessels through the heart of the feeding and breeding grounds of endangered right whales at Stellwagen Bank, the solution was soon simple:
Redirect ships 2 miles to the north and significantly reduce the likelihood of them striking whales.
It’s the kind of information that can be shared and a strategy implemented for the good of all concerned, according to Sandra Whitehouse, marine environmental policy adviser for the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy — http://www.OceanConservancy.org.
“A lot of it is about trying to be fair,” says Whitehouse, also team leader for the conservancy’s coastal and marine spatial planning program. Environmentalists like Whitehouse will work with the new National Ocean Council and its goals to protect the use and health of nine regions’ ocean, coastal and Great Lakes areas.
“It’s science based and participatory, and will include socio-economic goals.”
When Whitehouse gives the keynote talk at Friday’s Conservation Forum in Williamsburg and Gloucester, she will talk more about the spatial planning concept, also called “ocean zoning,” or smart growth principles similar to what’s used for urban planning purposes. Whitehouse, who has a doctorate degree in biological oceanography, worked and studied at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester 1981-’86; she lives in Rhode Island and has been an environmental consultant for 15 years.
Sponsored by the Garden Club of Virginia, the 52nd forum, titled “Beneath the Surface,” begins at 9 a.m. at the College of William and Mary with Whitehouse talking 10 a.m. to noon in the Commonwealth Auditorium; exhibitors will be located nearby. The afternoon program, 2-4 p.m. at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at Gloucester Point, features authors and environmentalists Emmett Duffy, Elizabeth Canuel on “Algae to Energy Research.'” Carl Hershner, director of the Center for Coastal Resources Management at William and Mary and VIMS, discusses “Shoreline Erosion.” Admission at the door is $25, parking is free.
For too long, Whitehouse says, ocean planning has been done in a stove-pipe approach, concentrating on single subjects like fisheries, shipping and recreation instead of bringing it all together in one big picture. Interstate efforts toward the Chesapeake Bay’s health have been the best exception in the United States, she says, and a good role model for other coastal and marine management programs that are now under way. There are some marine protected areas off the west coast of Florida and numerous sites off Hawaii; otherwise, the United States has done little to manage its territorial waters, which are greater than its land mass.
Globally, Whitehouse cites Norway as a prime example of how good coastal and marine spatial planning allows for oil and gas production alongside areas for conservation. Additional layers of protection, like a pricey $500,000 blow-out protector for oil and gas platforms, helps prevent disasters like the one recently experienced near our country’s Gulf Coast, she says.
“Marine spatial planning is not meant to start from ground zero,” says Whitehouse.
“A lot of it is assimilating information and looking at where our major data gaps are, like with the community of organisms that live on or in the bottom.
“Before, we never had the mechanism for bringing it all together, and now we do.”
•”Beneath the Surface,” the Garden Club of Virginia’s Conservation Forum, will be held 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 5, at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester. $25, free parking. More details at http://www.gcvirginia.org