National Ocean Council to release Marine Spacial Planning Blueprint

From the Huffington Post:

The year 2012 promises hope for the future of America’s oceans. Changes are expected that will help the creatures that live below the surface, the people who live and vacation along our coasts, and the clean energy developers who want to tap into the vast wind potential that lies off our shores.

Any day now, the National Ocean Council — a forum for federal agencies — will release a draft blueprint of how we should best tackle the major threats facing ocean life, such as ocean acidification, habitat protection, water quality and pollution. We are looking forward to a robust public discussion of how we can help.

Putting a strong ocean action plan in place is one of the key deliverables of the national ocean policy set into motion by President Obama in 2010. The national ocean policy — for the first time ever– calls on agencies to coordinate their offshore work and ensure that our oceans will be healthy for this and future generations’ use.

The executive order that established this policy also called for comprehensive, regional ocean planning to evaluate the uses of our oceans — recreation, fishing, tourism, industry, energy and conservation — and identify ways to manage these uses sustainably so that future generations, as well as our own, can continue to enjoy the ocean’s vast resources. NRDC just developed a basic fact sheet on the value of this kind of smart ocean planning — it’s exactly the sort of common sense process we need to get our watery home in order. And this short film narrated by Philippe Cousteau — a tireless ocean advocate and grandson of the famed underwater explorer, Jacques Cousteau — also helps explain how this kind of sensible ocean planning can improve the health of our seas.

Hopefully, the National Ocean Council will set the course for better oceanic planning. This will be the nation’s first-ever ocean policy.  Unfortunately, the ocean and shore line development has become a free for all.  Hopefully it isn’t too late to make good decisions that reflect good ocean use, like we want to have good land use practices.

The ocean is vast and there needs to be a central goto group to handle the magnitude of this  crucial area.