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Marine Protected Areas In The Gulf Of Maine By Peter Shelley There is a well-known Chinese folk tale in which a number of blind sages come to dramatically different conclusions about what they are in the presence of as they feel different body parts on an elephant. The one feeling the tail believes it must be some sort of serpent; the one feeling the leg believes he must be feeling some sort of tree. The beauty of this fable lies in the fact that their opinions are both subjectively valid and objectively invalid at the same time. The current situation with marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Gulf of Maine in the northwest Atlantic Ocean reminds me of that parable: many opinions from particular perspectives, none of them sufficient to the whole. MPAs must be considered both holistically as well as particularly. As an ocean resource management tool, they are intended to serve functional objectives. Individual opinions about the value of MPAs are often directly related to how well the functional objectives of a particular marine protection regime align with that individual's interests. Many of the current MPAs and the conversation about MPAs in the Gulf of Maine reflect social, economic, and political compromises that derive from the vested and emerging power interests currently operating in the Gulf, not from strategic, science-based design. Those compromises are reflected in both the limited functional objectives of these protected areas as well as the reluctance to establish long-term protections. No serious effort has gone into thinking about current or potential future MPAs in the Gulf from a more holistic, ecological perspective. Whether that fact is a problem depends on one's perspective. From my view, it is an enormous problem for which we are paying the price every day in lost economic and ecological opportunities. I would like to throw out the broader, ecosystem context for establishing protections for marine areas in the Gulf of Maine. I would argue that the current approach is not likely to get the region even close to the fundamental strategic objective that should underlie all decision-making concerning our oceans. That objective is restoring and maintaining over time a healthy, vital, abundant, and diverse coastal and marine ecosystem. Such a condition in our regional oceans, which hasn't truly existed for centuries in New England, will produce both new ecological goods and services for the benefit of every living thing as well as an enhanced platform of expanding marine economic activity and opportunity in this region. The three ecological legs on which a healthy Gulf of Maine must stand are excellent water quality, "sustainable" resource extraction practices, and healthy habitat quality. Granted, other background influences such as climactic and oceanographic forces and even solar flares have profound and systemic effects on productivity, diversity, and abundance in the Gulf of Maine, but pollution, over-harvesting or inappropriate mineral extraction, and habitat destruction are human activities about which we have some choice. In New England, I would grade our progress as good and getting better with respect to pollution, fair with mixed signals for the future with respect to properly managing resource extraction, and poor with few signs of improvement with respect to habitat protection. This report card is not abstract; the student -- in this case the Gulf of Maine ecosystem -- is struggling with our reluctance to stake the right steps and many of the management success stories are more than matched with failures. The conceptual strength of MPAs as a management tool for our oceans and coastal area arises from the growing body of evidence that their establishment and presence produces positive results for each of the three components of the ecosystem. General pollution controls can be tightened to protect MPAs as special, ecological systems. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently developing tougher discharge standards for MPAs. New England has many bays and coves where historic fish populations have disappeared despite the absence of any fishing pressure for many decades. Pollution may be playing a role in the negative shift of these ecosystems and designations of coves for protection would provide additional pressure from regulators and the public on up-river polluters to clean up their acts. Second, MPAs are critical tools in regulating extractive activities. There are many areas of the Gulf of Maine whose highest and best use is connected to their living biological resources. Oil and gas or other mineral extraction at these sites should be permanently prohibited. Designation of permanent marine protection for these areas would take them off the mineral industry's menu. Only three sites in federal waters in New England have such protections: Stellwagen National Marine Sanctuary in Massachusetts Bay and two small subtidal holdings in the Cape Cod National Seashore and the Monomoy Wildlife Refuge. Georges Bank has been under temporary moratoria against development for decades and now is only protected by a presidential executive order. MPAs are also the most effective and potentially equitable management tools for fisheries management. The New England Fishery Management Council has been moving at a slow pace (I think it is still moving...) to designate "habitat areas of particular concern" or "habitat research areas" that could serve as long-term closures with only one in the region on Georges Bank. Closing areas to fishing for short-term species recovery objectives only is a more broadly accepted approach at this time but it has been very effective. Indeed, high landings around some of the closed areas for scallops indicates that these areas function well not only in restoring resident populations of scallops in the area but also in exporting scallop juveniles into adjacent unclosed areas for recruitment into the scallop fishery. The fishery councils, however, are just that: fishery managers, not fish managers. The New England Council's ecological blindside continues to be its fealty to the short-term economic demands of the fisheries it manages, not the more important biological parameters of a healthy marine system. Finally, healthy bottom habitat. MPAs in the Gulf of Maine are perhaps the only way to achieve the recovery and protection of the critical habitats that are so essential to the fundamental productivity and diversity of the system. Ocean and coastal habitats are smothered with polluted sediments and dredge spoils and are dragged repeatedly and disturbed by all sorts of fishing gear. There are possibly only a handful of sites that could even be used as background reference sites by researchers trying to understand the consequences of such disturbances. There is no site in the Gulf of Maine that is completely free of such human impacts. Many fishermen have developed theories that they are improving productivity of the system by dragging fishing gears, likening the impact to a farmer's tilling of a field. Unfortunately for this hypothesis, farmers discovered a decade ago that their plowing was in fact destroying their soil resource and have started moving toward "no till" agriculture. There is little evidence to support the fisherman's hypothesis except some studies of the North Sea which has been dragged by Europeans for so many centuries that no one can even speculate what the system used to look like before dragging. About all one can say, in my opinion, is that some species are advantaged by bottom disturbances like dragging, but that many others are destroyed in the process. We are undertaking massive human engineering of our benthic areas without a clue about its ultimate effects, an experiment of the worst nature. The effects of fishing gear on bottom habitats and the ecosystems they support directly and indirectly are ultimately a scientific question of the first order that should be on the top of everyone's priority list. Alternative hypotheses need to be tested, not tossed about like the gospel. Serious sites that are ecologically valuable and that are large enough to allow for all the "background noise" in ocean research projects are needed that will allow these critical questions to be answered. Now, not tens of years from now. Any serious, responsible industry would never tolerate such uncertainty about the underlying supply dynamics of its business cycle. Finally, fully protected MPAs are the only tool available to protect parts of the ocean as wilderness. Protection and respect for the wild runs deep in the American ethic and there are substantial, positive benefits associated with simply setting aside some of the most unique and special marine areas for no reason other than their preservation for all time. While this perspective may seem as alien to some users of the ocean as the elephant's tail was to its leg in the Chinese folk tale, I believe that this wilderness ethic is real, socially important, and politically viable in America. In a publication my organization is releasing shortly, The Wild Sea; Saving Our Marine Heritage, we call for the establishment of a coherent system of MPAs in the Gulf of Maine that collectively performs four functions. First, the system protects marine biodiversity by identifying and permanently protecting representative benthic and pelagic habitats, unique ecological areas, and areas of critical ecological function. Second, the system provides a permanent safety net against fishery stock collapses and the uncertainties of fishery management and fishery management science by providing protection for 25% of the biomass necessary to support maximum sustainable yields of commercially harvested species in permanently closed areas. Third, the system incorporates a strategy for critical ecological studies through the region's educational and science institutions. And fourth, the system is designed, managed, and monitored with the integrated and meaningful involvement of all relevant and affected people involved in the Gulf of Maine. Many of these functions are already served and promoted by existing closed areas, science programs, and specific advisory groups. What is missing is the larger context, an overall design, a unifying scientific basis. Until some energy is invested in developing that vision at a meaningful scale, the New England region will continue to drift with respect to our regional seas policy here in the Gulf of Maine. From our perspective, too many truly important issues are at stake to abide such a passive, risk-taking approach. Drifting is not acceptable. Peter Shelley is a Vice President of the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and Director of CLF's Maine Advocacy Center. He has litigated cases on a wide range of marine and freshwater resources issues and is currently concentrating on marine protected areas, fisheries management reform, estuary habitat protection and restoration, coastal sprawl, and public trust doctrine. He serves on the boards of the National Fisheries Conservation Center, the Maine Coastal Mountains Land Trust and the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, an organization that he helped to create. Mr. Shelley was awarded a Pew Fellowship in Conservation and the Environment in 1996. |