First field report from Washington DC
We’ve just returned from Washington DC, where the first week of June is “Ocean Week.” The Ocean Week designation is somewhat arbitrary, as the ocean doesn’t just fade into the background of our collective unconsciousness once we’re into the second week of June – although by outward appearances one might think it does…
Ocean Week – or more concisely “Capitol Hill Ocean Week” or “CHOW,” was created by the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation after a successful “Ocean Day” in 2001. So for the last 17 years, ocean conservation NGO’s such as the Marine Fisheries Conservation Network, and Blue Frontiers have been using it as a springboard for education and lobbying efforts and other festivities that galvanize ocean actions on “The Hill.”
I’ve been voyaging to DC every one of those 17 years, bringing words and information about the impacts of ocean noise pollution to lawmakers and regulators, and pushing the lugubrious vessel of National Law toward better ocean noise management. I don’t purport to know how this all works, as policy development does not adhere to the same logic that drives progress in, say, engineering or physics (of which I have a better grasp).
But after 17 years of scooting around the Marble Halls, I occasionally get a glimpse of something that almost makes sense. This year’s revelation came on my first day in the area, when I visited the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).
I’ve harbored a pretty dim view of the agency over the years, mostly due to their complicity with the fossil fuel and other extractive industries. As a consequence, when folks from NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources (OPR) directed me to meet with BOEM on my concerns about the disruption of marine habitats through the increasing use of underwater acoustic communication systems, I wasn’t anticipating much progress.
But having reached a dead end at OPR, I also saw little harm in taking their advice. I met with BOEM Chief of Environmental Assessment Jill Lewandowski and her staff to convey my ongoing grouse that NOAA is not using the best available science in their assessment of environmental impacts of activities for which they are issuing “Incidental Harassment Authorizations.”
Surprisingly, and much to my delight, Jill and her staff were not only receptive to my concerns, they indicated that they were already considering some of the more accurate assessments of noise exposure consequences from noise-disrupted habitats – not just noise regulations based on reductionist “go/no-go” exposure thresholds.
This revealed an important structural shortcoming of how the Federal agencies are organized. There is a large handful of Executive Departments with their over-arching management remits: The Departments of Agriculture, Labor, Education, Justice, and Commerce, are examples.
The Department of the Interior “manages public lands and minerals, national parks, and wildlife refuges, and upholds Federal trust responsibilities to Indian tribes and Native Alaskans. Additionally, Interior is responsible for endangered species conservation and other environmental conservation efforts.”
Originally NOAA was to be organized under the Department of the Interior, but apparently in 1970 when the agency was being defined, a scrap occurred between Richard Nixon and then DOI Secretary Walter Hickle which resulted in Nixon assigning NOAA to the Department of Commerce, which “works with businesses, universities, communities, and the Nation’s workers to promote job creation, economic growth, sustainable development, and improved standards of living for Americans.”
Unfortunately, NOAA’s mission to “understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts, share that knowledge and information with others, and conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources” is somewhat tangential to the Department of Commerce mission, thus the somewhat confused relationship about their product (and probably why I haven’t been too successful in my attempts to get them to hone their noise exposure guidelines to “the best available science”).
One discussion that has been circulating for some time is to make NOAA “organic,” i.e. their own Department. The “Department of Climate and the Ocean” has a nice ring to it. Probably impossible under the current administration, but as ocean and climate dynamics are looming large in our global horizon, the time may be ripe to pull NOAA away from the remit of Commerce put it on up on their own track.
