Planning the future for oceans and fisheries.

• Position: Ocean Conservation

Close your eyes for a moment and think about New England's oceans and coasts. It's likely that you conjured up an image of children frolicking in the surf, landing a nice striper, or catching a stiff breeze in snapping white sails. Indeed, our oceans and coasts are integral to our New England identity, not to mention our regional economy and energy future. But, like our landscapes, our oceans are under pressure from an ever-increasing variety of human uses. How can we adequately protect them while advancing their enormous potential? From Rhode Island to Maine, CLF focuses on striking the delicate balance that will ensure our oceans' health, viability and productivity for generations to come.

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Order on the High Seas

In New England, as in coastal environments around the country, competing interests from tourism, fishing, shipping, sand and gravel mining, oil and gas drilling and renewable energy development vie for a piece of the ocean pie, threatening fragile marine habitats and the wildlife and communities that depend on them. Exacerbating the problem is that our oceans are governed by a hodgepodge of agencies and numerous, often conflicting laws. For 10 years, CLF has fought to fundamentally change the way our oceans are managed and now, the tide has begun to turn.

In January 2010, Massachusetts released the nation's first comprehensive ocean management plan for state waters, the result of CLF's tireless efforts to implement a cohesive, ecosystem-based approach to ocean planning. The plan, required by the Massachusetts Oceans Act of 2008, reflects CLF's insistence on protecting our most vulnerable and unique habitat areas while promoting opportunities to develop renewable energy--particularly offshore wind power--in the most ecologically responsible way. The historic plan clearly delineates conservation areas, renewable energy areas and multi-use zones in state waters and provides a definitive ocean zoning map for the Commonwealth--at last putting local, state and federal agencies on the same page.

In 2009, CLF advanced similar efforts in Maine and Rhode Island. As a member of Maine's Ocean Energy Task Force, CLF charted a course for development of renewable ocean energy in state waters, proposing three wind energy test sites in the Gulf of Maine. Legislation calling for the state to implement the Task Force's recommendations was introduced in early 2010 and is pending. And in Rhode Island, CLF worked with the Coastal...