Improving ocean management
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
One of the most controversial projects of the decade in our region is the wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound. This project has environmentalists, longtime Cape Cod property owners, politicians, energy experts and concerned citizens throughout the state and the entire country taking sides. Should private companies be given a license to profit from marketable commodities produced on seabed that is public domain? Should the impact to unspoiled ocean vistas outweigh the potential benefits from the production of renewable energy? And should the authority of the federal government trump that of landside states simply because a project barely lies across an arbitrary line of jurisdiction?
These questions have prompted the state’s renewed interest in ocean management. Offshore use projects are becoming more common and varied. Recent technological advances are making new ocean uses possible. Also, many types of projects are becoming increasingly difficult or impossible to site on land. Available land is scarce while limitations as to what can be built where are increasing. For years there has been controversy around offshore oil production in other parts of the country, for example, in California and Florida. In Massachusetts, recent offshore proposals include not only wind projects but wave energy developments, liquefied natural gas pipelines, fiber optic cable lines and sand and gravel mining.
In an effort to develop proactive governance to replace what has traditionally been a “first come, first serve” approach, state administrators convened an Ocean Management Task Force in 2003. Charged with developing a new Ocean Management Plan, the Task Force met approximately 30 times over 10 months, held six public meetings and received more than 300 public comments.
So, what does the Task Force have to show for their efforts? A report called Waves of Change was produced and made available to the public in March 2004. It recommends strengthening state agencies to address environmental, planning and public trust issues in both state and federal waters, establishing an ecosystem-based protocol to improve management of offshore areas, and initiating ocean education and stewardship initiatives.
In the area of governance, the task force recommended strengthening the Ocean Sanctuaries Act and the Public Waterfront Act (also known as Chapter 91) two existing regulatory programs, currently of questionable effectiveness. Earlier this year, Governor Romney filed the Ocean Resources and Conservation Act that would allow the state to assert greater control over its ocean territories and would implement some of the Task Force recommendations aimed at more proactive governance.
As for management tools, the Task Force recommends convening a work group to address the designation of marine protected areas, increasing enforcement of existing environmental laws pertaining to the ocean and waterways, and developing inventories of the uses and resources of the state’s marine waters. To manage potential impacts of new projects, the Task Force recommended developing methodologies and standards for the analysis of visual, cultural and aesthetic impacts of projects proposed for state waters.
Some of the most interesting and far-sighted recommendations of the Task Force have to do with improving scientific understanding of our marine environment. These include establishing a marine and fishery scientists group to advise the state, developing an ocean monitoring and research plan, a seafloor mapping program and standards for review of data submitted by project proponents. The Task Force also recommends that the state commit to developing an ocean literacy and stewardship “ethic” among Massachusetts residents, outreach mechanisms and greater dissemination of marine data collected to the public at large.
Certainly, our knowledge of the ocean, marine ecosystems and resources are so lacking that these steps are necessary at a minimum. But, the question remains whether the work of Ocean Management Task Force will contribute to wise proactive conservation of sensitive public resources in the near future. We now know, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the consequences of debating coastal issues ad naseum, postponing conservation measures and neglecting what goes on in the less visible, submerged domains of our environment. Will the conclusions of ocean experts make significant contributions to wiser ocean use, lead to further unfunded mandates or get slogged down while in their infancy and buried in the mud flats long before the tide rises? This remains to be seen.
To read more on Massachusetts’ Ocean Management Initiative see: http://www.mass.gov/czm/oceanmanagement/index.htm.
A great catch!
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
By Emily Long and Luke Johnson/ Special To The Tab
New England is certainly linked in peoples’ minds with lobsters. On a mid-western college tour, we were informed by our tour guide sporting shorts with little red lobsters that he was from New England. Lobsters are commonly found here in a big boiling pot or on a bib covered in buttery lobster juice, but how much do we really know about them? Do we ever stop to think what kind of lives these crustaceans might live outside of the plate in front of us?
Trevor Corson’s “The Secret Life of Lobsters” offers an intellectual awakening on an anecdotal plate. He interweaves stories of lobstermen and scientists, offering a hint of the friction between the two groups, while demonstrating their common love of lobsters. Having spent his childhood summers on Little Cranberry Island, Corson developed an early interest in lobstering and he gained a general appreciation of the village’s economic dependence on the lobster industry. Later in his life, he spent two years working full-time aboard a lobster boat and gained a much deeper appreciation of lobstering: “I wanted to be a marine biologist when I grew up, but also a commercial fisherman.”
The non-fiction book takes the reader directly into the lobster’s world. We travel into the traps at the bottom of the ocean, to a scientist’s make-shift lobster town equipped with video cameras. Occasionally, Corson takes us back in time to discuss issues of over-fishing and to speculate about future generations of lobsters and lobstermen. Corson’s witty parallels between humans and lobsters make the book especially interesting. In one section he dramatizes the mating rituals of lobsters by making allusions to their human counterparts, as when he described a female molting before mating: “a few minutes later, she fell over on her side, unzipped the back of her shell, and began to wiggle.” In another chapter, Corson graphically describes male lobster fights in parallel with descriptions of the battles between lobstermen and scientists regarding lobster conservation.
The book provides insight into lobster politics, discussing how people use lobsters as a resource. Scientists are constantly working for the preservation of lobsters, while fishermen are juggling the preservation of lobsters with the preservation of their livelihood and their families. In the book, you hear these two groups really listening to each other. In one scene, scientists, skeptical of the lobstermen’s preservation efforts, witness a lobster haul and are amazed by the large number of lobsters tossed back into the sea. Throughout the book, the two groups are always learning new things about each other, resulting in a new level of mutual respect.
The writing style is laid back and Corson conveys his message in a playful manner. He has an informative voice, but the scientific information and historical references are not overemphasized, so the story narrative flows. He takes basic biological and behavioral facts and shows their complexity. At times it is like a lobster soap opera.
You might say that Corson has a talent for conveying lobster personalities. He describes the drama of lobsters that have been placed into artificial environments with a clarity that keeps you wanting to read more. There were moments when our minds drifted from the page, especially when nautical jargon was involved – yet we yearned to get back to the action underwater!
There’s a profound conservation lesson to be learned from this book.
Studying lobsters is a window into our environment. Lobstermen do not set out to catch every lobster they can. They are aware of the impact of their actions on the lobster population so they set standards to control overfishing, standards that exceed those set by scientists and lawmakers. This book enriched our knowledge of lobster fishermen and of the workings of the lobster fishery. As the title implies, there’s more to lobsters than most of us know. The author makes us see why scientists and fishermen care about lobsters. If you read this book, you, too, will understand the fascination and intrigue of lobsters.
Emily Long and Luke Johnson are seniors at Newton North High School. They wrote an opinion piece for the TAB last year based on a year-long Biology project. Having discovered that the TAB is a useful link to the community, they will continue contributing to the Environment page because they want to increase public awareness of environmental issues.
The writing’s on the water
Wednesday, October 5, 2005
By M. G. Criscitiello, MD/ Special To The Tab
Book Review
“Confluence: A River, The Environment, Politics, & The Fate of All Humanity,” by Nathaniel Tripp, 161 pages, Steerforth Press, Hanover, N.H. 2005 – $21.
“Buzzards Bay: A Journey of Discovery,” by Daniel Sheldon Lee, 229 pages, Commonwealth Editions, Beverly, MA 2004 – $24.95.
Newton environmentalists have welcomed recent improvements in the water quality and general health of the Charles River and of Boston Harbor. Reduction in pollution, restoration of fish life, and the addition of waterside pathways, parks and other amenities have added up to a large plus in the lives of Greater Bostonians. Only a little removed from us are two other important bodies of water, the Connecticut River and Buzzards Bay, both deserving of our attention. Recently published books by two journalist/naturalists have shed light on the unhappy history of environmental challenges to these major waterways. Nathaniel Tripp, author and part-time farmer in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, has served on the Connecticut River Joint Commission, also on municipal zoning boards. This has brought him into regular contact with power company officials, loggers, dairy farmers, scientists, fishing interests, real estate lobbyists, property owners and many advocacy groups. He describes the interests and actions of each of these parties, viewed against the background of his own intimate knowledge of the river, one of New England’s major watersheds.
He recalls the 1930’s era of dam construction, focusing especially on those built in the Fifteen Mile Falls region along the upper reaches of the river. The creation of large reservoirs above these dams allowed the New England Power Company to control the release of water in order to generate electricity in response to peak demand from cities and factories, many of them farther south in Massachusetts. This was quite profitable, but these daily alterations in river flow interfered with the usual seasonal cycles, resulting in marked changes in the downstream riverbed, its vegetation and its fish life. As the power company bought land along the river valley, many people were forced to leave the region, and there was a marked change in the economy of nearby rural regions of Vermont and New Hampshire. Also, the remaining dairy farms and woodlands came increasingly under the ownership of large conglomerates, and as outside ownership increased, life in the small villages along the upper river changed markedly. Tripp does inject much local color into his story, included, for example, are his accounts of instructing local school children in the ways of the river, of his annual canoe trip downriver with Gov. Howard Dean, and of his trek into Quebec to investigate complaints of the Northern Cree over the building of power lines in their territory.
For many years there has been an attempt to restore Atlantic Salmon as a breeding species in the Connecticut River. This effort appeals even to those environmentalists who don’t fish, but Tripp offers words of concern about its impact on other native fish species. He also notes that salmon restoration is viewed by many to be of benefit primarily to wealthy sportsmen, with neglect of some less glamorous species important to the dinner table of local fishermen. He warns us – “One of the greatest vulnerabilities of the environmental movement is its elitist reputation. This characterization finds an especially ready ear among the rural American farmers, woodsmen, and mill workers who live close to the outdoors and are already being stressed for economic as well as for social reasons.”
This slim volume contains many interesting anecdotes about people and places along the Connecticut, told in an informal style. Underneath it all, the author doesn’t try to hide his anger at human greed, and he admonishes those who “came along and tried to subjugate nature without really understanding the long-term consequences of what they were doing”. Only in his final chapters does he use the fate of the Connecticut River as an example of what is happening in larger scale around the world – a brief fulfillment of the book’s somewhat ambitious-sounding subtitle.
Daniel Lee’s story of Buzzard’s Bay is more wide ranging in its scope. For example it includes an historical account of how the Bay was used for food and transportation by Native Americans of Southeastern Massachusetts in the era before Bartholomew Gosnold’s 1602 arrival. Each chapter covers a single topic such as the attempt to preserve threatened bird life on shores and islands, the impact of hurricanes on towns around the Bay, the status of commercial fisheries, the role of the special summer school for boys on Penikese Island, and the changing patterns of wildlife around the Bay. Conservation issues are discussed in each case, and the author includes much information gained from interviews with various environmental experts as he accompanies them in the field.
He acquaints us with the “Coalition for Buzzards Bay,” a key watchdog group which monitors water quality and provides an annual “report card” for each bordering community, listing its level of success in controlling the release of pollutants. He reports on the effects of the oil spills of the past few decades and the continuing hazard of transporting two billion gallons of oil through the Bay each year! He reminds us, however, that the greatest overall threat to the water is from sewage generated by the increasing population around Buzzards Bay. Conventional septic systems and wastewater treatment plants do not prevent nitrogen derived from these sources from reaching Bay waters. Released from such human waste, and also from heavy use of fertilizers on farms, lawns and golf courses, nitrogen leads to overgrowth of algae and subsequent drop in oxygen content of the water. It is feared that this will fall to levels no longer permitting marine organisms to survive.
Both of these books, short as they are, provide easy reading and much useful information for the environmentally-minded.
Modestino Criscitiello, a retired cardiologist, is Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, Tufts University School of Medicine. He is a Board member of the Newton Conservator and host of the Conservators’ Environmental Show on NewTV
