Solutions

It's Time for a Healthy Oceans Act

We depend on the ocean for food, recreation and jobs, but now pollution, overexploitation and habitat degradation are pushing the world's oceans into a silent state of collapse. Ocean deterioration has lead to more beach closings, fewer fish for commercial and recreational fishing and dangerous chemicals in our seafood. Fortunately, solutions are available that can help revive the world's oceans, starting with passing a national Healthy Oceans Act.

We are already seeing the effects of inaction on our seas:

• Fewer fish. Worldwide, industrial fishing has wiped out 90 percent of large ocean fish, including tuna, marlin, swordfish, cod and halibut.¹
• More beach closings. Nationwide, there were 25,643 beach closing and advisory days due to pollution concerns in 2006 -- a 28 percent jump from 2005 and a record high.²
• Ocean dead zones. Fertilizer runoff into the oceans sets in motion a chain reaction that creates oxygen-free ocean dead zones off our coasts. There is a dead zone that swells to the size of Massachusetts in the Gulf of Mexico, and 39 smaller dead zones around the country, where fish, corals and marine mammals die.³
• Disappearing shores. Between 1780 and 1980, the United States, excluding Alaska, lost more than half of its original wetlands, taking with it critical marine habitat and natural buffers to pollution, erosion, and storm and flood damage.⁴
• Seafood unsafe to eat. Sixteen states have issued ocean fish consumption advisories due to contamination by mercury, PCBs, dioxins and other toxic chemicals.⁵

The longer we wait to fix these problems, the harder and more expensive it will be to turn them around. A national ocean protection strategy will reduce pollution and protect ocean habitats so that beaches are cleaner and fish and other ocean animals more abundant around the country -- and in our own backyard.

We need a national Healthy Oceans Act to:

• Establish a national policy to protect and restore our oceans in order to safeguard the economic, cultural, recreational, and other benefits that healthy oceans provide. We have a Clean Water Act and a Clean Air Act, but the United States has not yet made a similar commitment to protect oceans.
• Provide federal leadership and funding to protect and restore ocean life. There's currently no high-level, well-coordinated national effort to protect oceans.
• Coordinate federal, regional, and state work to protect and restore ocean health. We must ensure that regional problems and priorities inform and drive a coordinated drive to protect and restore ocean health.

The current patchwork of laws and governance has failed to safeguard our oceans. Confusion and inaction reign, with approximately 140 different laws-each with diverging goals and conflicting mandates-pertaining to the management of the oceans and our nation's coasts. The federal government manages our oceans and coasts without a basic vision and game plan to ensure that our oceans stay healthy and productive.

Resources:
Reviving Our Oceans
Report: Testing the Waters: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches
Tips and Resources: Sustainable Angling
Tips and Resources: Sustainable Seafood Recipes
Tips and Resources: Protect Your Coast from Water Pollution: A Homeowner's Guide

1. Myers, Ram and Boris Worm. 2003. Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities. Nature 423: 280-283.
2. Natural Resources Defense Council. 2007.  Testing the Waters, p. 2.
3. Pew Oceans Commission. 2003. America's Living Oceans: Charting a Course for Sea Change, pp. 22, 54, and 62.
4. Pew Oceans Commission. 2003. America's Living Oceans: Charting a Course for Sea Change, p. 56.
5. Environmental Protection Agency. 2007.  National Listing of Fish Advisories Technical Fact Sheet.  Available at http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fish/advisories/2006/tech.html.