There are huge needs when it comes to thinking about how to use marine protected areas as tools to meet a variety of goals. Fisheries management goals are often discussed, but I'm going to try to emphasize a lot of other types of goals that MPAs have been established for or that they could be useful for.

Many of the existing places with MPAs in the US are actually within state waters. Many of us know them as state beaches. In fact, a network or system of state beaches is often viewed primarily not as a place to meet fisheries needs, but as a place to meet recreational tourism needs. My point too is to clarify that I am using the term MPA very broadly; I'm going to emphasize there may be a whole variety of other reasons to build a nationwide system of MPAs beyond the fisheries discussion.

My bottom line is that this executive order asks federal agencies to do a number of things. This is just the beginning of many of those tasks. We are at a critical point where we need input from all kinds of people on how we proceed. We need input on a whole variety of things.

US National MPA Initiative: The bigger context
The bigger context includes the following questions: How are we going to zone our coastal ocean resources? Who gets access? What do they get access to? How do you deal with the inevitable conflicts that arise and what does it really mean to zone ocean and coastal areas for different uses, and what is the role of MPAs in doing that?

It's not an easy issue. There are many different authorities and many different interests, and the historical use of the ocean commons makes it very difficult when I give this lecture to people who don't know anything about the marine environment because they assume that what happens on land happens in the water and that there's private property and all that kind of stuff. This history and use of the ocean commons makes it a much more interesting challenge.

Meeting different goals with MPAs
What would it mean to develop a national or regional system of MPAs? What we're doing does not occur in a vacuum--in fact, the US is behind perhaps a dozen other countries right now that have been thinking about this and come to the same conclusion--many of them about a decade ago or more. Several nations have come to say, "Wait a minute, maybe MPAs are a tool--or a tool we haven't used effectively enough--when it comes to managing our marine resources."

The bottom line basically is this: Why are most of our protected areas terrestrial and so few of them marine? Is that the way it should be, or is this a tool we have not effectively thought of in the marine context?

The challenge is how to use these to meet these different goals, whether they are fishery goals, recreational goals, or cultural heritage presentation goals. At the moment, and this was pointed out in a number of different reports and studies, the US situation was one in which we didn't have a good handle on where all these places were or what they did, so you couldn't answer the question "what does the current system of MPAs in the US look like?"

Kip Evans, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

Black Rockfish at Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The Marine Sanctuary, located off the coast of California, was designated in 1992 and is the largest marine sanctuary in the US. It is managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

We knew that there were lots of sites, but very few of them had been designed with an intentional network in mind, and really there was very little strategy--and I don't mean this as any disservice to any of the authorities that established these--but really very little long-term strategy as to where we go from here in terms of building regional networks of MPAs.

That is the context with which the MPA executive order was put forth. That this was an interesting tool that seemed to have merit and that federal agencies were tasked with developing a framework, investigating the science, assessing the current status of MPAs in US waters, and developing a framework for what it would mean to develop a science-based nationwide system of MPAs. In doing so, it said: "Depending on what you find out, strengthen the existing ones and establish new ones as needed." It has a special policy direction to federal agencies that says: "In your activities, be sure that you don't harm the resources that are already protected in some of these places." The idea being it wasn't very cost-effective if one side of the government or one of the partners had set something up through a thoughtful process and another part of the government was doing something that was eroding that.

There were two other pieces of it. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was instructed to look at how they use their tools when it came to reducing ocean pollution, and as all executive orders say, federal agencies are told to report back every year.

The executive order: Tasks for NOAA
What does this executive order do and what does it not do? It lays out a big vision. It lays out an almost impossible task. It does not change at all who can or cannot establish MPAs or manage them. It doesn't designate any new sites--in fact, it leaves the designation and the management in the hands of all of those authorities that currently have that, such as fishery management councils with the National Fishery Service, the park service, the states, the territories and the tribes. It doesn't create any new federal authorities or change existing programs or focus on no-take fisheries and it doesn't target any specific areas. It doesn't, for example, say this national system should protect 20 percent of the national waters. It doesn't lay out any guidelines like that.

It strongly says it should increase our ability to get the public and stakeholders involved in this process. It has a whole set of assessments to look at how effective are the sites that we have already put in place and it calls for developing a lot more science-based knowledge for the design and management of these sites.

What does it do? It lays out the vision that says: "Figure out what a national system might look like. Consult with everyone and their brother who might have an interest in this."

Some specific examples that would help us do this include:

• Create a website so that people have easy access to information on MPAs.
• Make a list of where all these US MPAs are.
  
• Establish a MPA Center to help support these tasks.
  
• Establish a formal advisory committee to provide non-federal input on how we shape this national system and how we do these tasks.

I neglected to mention that all of these efforts were tasks almost jointly to the Department of Commerce and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Interior. We have a joint, inter-agency team working on these things.

This is a brief progress report based on these points mentioned above:

Task 1: Establish a website. We did this last year and basically we're updating it monthly, with a big update in September 2001 because we're going to add a lot of information on this inventory of existing MPAs.

MPA.gov

Homepage of MPA.gov. This website, managed by the Department of the Interior and the Department of Congress, provides the public with information about Marine Protected Areas.

Task 2: Inventorying all existing MPAs is a much bigger task than we ever thought. A couple of us had been involved early on in collection of information, but once you try to do this on a large scale it becomes quite a daunting task. We began with many of the federal sites since that was something we could do ourselves, a kind of small piece. We designed an initial inventory. Our goal over the next year is to begin working with our state, territorial and tribal partners to begin to inventory their sites. Critical questions in doing this of course are: What sites are we going to include? This takes you immediately to this definition problem of what is a MPA and what are you trying to inventory? What are the criteria to do that? It would be invaluable for us if we got input from other groups involved in MPAs on what data they would want to see. What kinds of assessments would you want to be able to do on this collection of the current US MPAs? Questions about format would be useful for us, too.

I'll get into definitions just briefly. We basically used the tack that the state of California took. When they did an assessment of their MPAs they realized they had several different names and different types. They did an assessment and boiled it down to around five. They basically said: "These are all different types of marine-managed areas, places that have been given some kind of protection or special status." That's what we did as well and from the executive order we had this definition of a MPA that would have a little more protection and in addition had these special terms like "lasting protection" in which we had to figure out what it really meant, and in doing so we basically proposed a number of definitions for some key terms. That allows us to go to federal agencies and say "OK, you have 10 sites--which of those 10 sites actually meet the criteria we propose so we can begin building this inventory and moving forward?"

This is all proposed; this is all draft stage. It's on the website, and my hope is that experts and the public involved with MPAs will give us some feedback on it. Not to debate if this is a good definition of an MPA. The question here is: If you had an inventory of something--marine protected areas, marine-managed areas--what would that inventory be of? Answer that and then help us come back to these criteria. Is it an inventory of places that are permanently created and closed to all extractive uses? That's one inventory. The question is whether that would be a useful one for planning purposes on a regional scale or a local scale or through the fishery management councils. The question that we've been struggling with is that we're trying to create a useful database on what the US has when it comes to these MPA-type places. What would be useful in that inventory so it can be used as a planning tool?

My hope is that we answer the question cleanly and stick to it and then it becomes a useful planning tool for people to quickly assess for their region or their state or their community or their goal--where are these places, what kind are they--to be able to go through and map it on any given scale. Do searches and queries--be able to ask "how many in the Southeast region are no-take ecological reserves?"--that kind of thing. The goal is being able to click on down to what scale--we have questions, what scale would be most useful if you wanted to click on down and ultimately see one or two of these places? What scale and what format? Ultimately, it will take you to a site profile of a particular place, for example, and then you can see whatever zones they have and all those kinds of things.

The question is: What would make this inventory a useful tool for planning purposes?

Task 3: Establish a MPA Center. The mission is to provide information, tools and strategies to help design and implement effective MPAs. It's also supposed to help develop this framework for a national system of MPAs. The basic issue here is it appears there's a need for some additional help--either in coordination, or providing some additional resources or tools to a variety of authorities when it came to MPAs. The vision for the center was not that it was going to do it all, but looking at whether a small group could help coordinate and find partners to address critical needs when it came to answering critical questions related to MPAs. That's really what this group was supposed to do.

It's focused on two key areas right now. First, asking what is the science and priority scientific needs when it comes to MPAs. Second, establish an institute for MPA science housed at the Fisheries Lab in Santa Cruz, California, in a partnership with the University of California. The emphasis at the Institute for MPA Training and Technology is to examine what are the communication tools that would help us do a better job engaging stakeholders and providing technical assistance to managers of MPAs or others concerned about them.

The center is focusing on a couple things. We need partners. There's $3 million requested in the budget--it's looking pretty good--the House and the Senate seem to agree, but we'll wait and see. Our whole vision was that this should be a partnership with whoever is interested in MPAs, particularly when it comes to the science. The idea is to reach all over the country and all over the world to bring those people together who are interested in the topic. In particular, help assist regional efforts as they develop or as they are currently ongoing.

Kip Evans, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

A rocky offshore ledge at Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

I'd like to highlight for example what's happening on the West Coast, for example. There are some fascinating questions about how to do this on a large scale. On the West Coast, for example, there is a local consortium--three different states, one federal state partnership, four federal programs, and two international initiatives--all considering new or modified MPAs, all thinking about either individual sites, but most of them thinking about networks of MPAs, and all of them thinking about the same area. What do they have in common? Compatible mandates, overlapping geographic areas, shared resources, overlapping jurisdictions in many cases, stakeholders that are increasingly confused about who's doing what and what initiative is involved, and many of them with fast timelines. The state of California is mandated to have a blueprint for their state network of MPAs by July 2002. All of them have limited resources and I think many of them would say almost impossible tasks, at least by themselves.

The stakeholders identify similar needs: The need to improve coordination amongst each other, to improve participation of the stakeholders and enhance the scientific foundation for their design and management.

Why worry about coordination? Well, because none of them can do it themselves, it might improve information sharing, it might better engage the stakeholders, it might actually be easier to develop a more integrated approach, and there might be actual benefits leveraging resources or otherwise to have what's going on within state waters match up with what the proposed sites or other management tools might be in federal waters. The idea here is this is one of the areas where the MPA Center and others can help facilitate perhaps some of this coordination. In particular what we're trying to do on the West Coast as well as the Gulf of Maine as initial pilot efforts.

Many of the groups on the West Coast have huge science needs. In fact, many of them say they need comprehensive benthic habitat maps of the entire EEZ. It really gets to some very fundamental science questions about life history characteristics, oceanography, and the social and economic side of these questions that has been strongly neglected to date.

Our other goal is to be able to compile lessons that various regional efforts have learned and tools they've used into a system that anyone can utilize. Our hope is that we can be the facilitator and transmitter of that information.

The advisory committee is to advise the secretaries of commerce and the interior on MPA issues and in particular has the opportunity to potentially be architects to help think about what this science-based national system would look like and what might be the process by which one would help build or think about this. It's a fascinating time for this group to come together will all of the emphasis looking at what is the federal role and what are the priorities related to ocean and coastal issues with a number of groups, the Ocean Commission just being one of them, that will take on a much broader picture looking at ocean issues from navigation to fisheries. But it is a very interesting time to have a group advising the government on MPA issues.

The big task: The order tells us to develop a framework for a nationwide system of MPAs. It doesn't tell us how to do it, it doesn't say it should be a certain size or have a particular number of pieces. What it says is begin with an assessment of what we have right now. What does the existing system look like? Begin assessing the effectiveness of those sites and also use that to begin thinking about whether this system is meeting the goals and if not, are there gaps that might be filled. Our assumption is that you cannot begin to do this on a national scale. The logical scale is regional--although regional is still not clearly defined, it could be regional or local, but ultimately, through some as yet undefined process coming up with some sort of blueprint for action on where we go as a nation from here.

Challenges include that it may mean some new approaches to management. Huge challenges to coordinate across jurisdictions, incredible need for partnerships to provide science tools and communication. The communication part shouldn't be underestimated. We could have the best science and information, and we would still be talking about how do we engage stakeholders, how do we bring them to the table and have a creative, constructive conversation about how we use these tools.

This is a critical time for this initiative. This initiative is building on and hopefully supportive of all the things that are going on in the regions by the authorities that deal with MPAs. The question is how can we be most useful, how can the executive order carry forward this whole issue and concept forward in a positive way? How do we make this inventory useful? If we can help highlight what these critical science and information or training and technology needs are, please help us highlight what they are. We're not going to fund them, but someone else maybe will. Ultimately, assisting these regional efforts as they face the difficult task of thinking about how to actually use these tools.