Under the Ice. Photo by Zach Whalen.

I’ll be honest with you – I tend to stay on top of the water when I’m in the ocean. Or, I try, anyway. As a surfer the goal is to spend as little time underwater as possible. Especially in the winter. But I’m starting to think I’m missing out on something by avoiding the chilly depths of our Gulf of Maine.

The Boston Sea Rovers, one of the oldest underwater clubs in the nation, hosted its 59^th annual show this past weekend, and I was lucky enough to be there with some fellow CLFers. We went to talk about the importance of preserving valuable habitat, like Cashes Ledge, for protecting our fragile ocean ecosystems and helping our dwindling groundfish stocks recover.

We hoped that by showing people Brian Skerry’s beautiful photographs of the gorgeous kelp forest and amazing animals of Cashes Ledge, the divers would be inspired to help us protect it. They were – we got hundreds of signatures on our petition to ask our fisheries managers to protect essential habitat in the Gulf of Maine. And, while we may have gone there to talk, we ended up doing a lot of listening as well. Here are just a few things I learned after spending two days talking with divers:

• The Gulf of Maine is an excellent place to dive. There are so many wonderful animals to see here.
• But visibility often stinks. This is partly due to the very productive nature of our waters. As phytoplankton bloom and the food chain gets going, it gets a little harder to see. Or, poor visibility can be due to human activities in the water (see next bullet).
• The ocean floor looks pretty bad after a bottom trawler comes through. I heard this dozens of times this weekend. “It looks like a freshly plowed field,” said one diver, and you can see the sediment plume from miles away.
• The next time I want to talk to divers about the amazing beauty of Cashes Ledge, I’d better bring a map so they know how to get there and see for themselves.
• The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Discovery Channel have partnered to develop a robot that can follow a white shark. Seriously. I saw the footage. More on this later in the month (yes, I am totally geeking out on this).

I also learned that, in spite of difficulties equalizing my ears underwater, there may be ways I can still get down below, if I take things very slowly. I’m pretty stoked to find out if that’s true. My 10 year old son, who was with me this weekend, wants to learn also. Even more motivating!

I’m not sure I’ll be as hardy as diver Zachary Whalen, who took this awesome picture under the ice, but maybe I can at least go down below on a warmer day and watch the seals that I usually only see when they pop their heads up next to me while I surf.  But if there are waves – I’m bringing my board.

Why does CLF heart estuaries? For so many reasons. Estuaries are one of nature’s great ideas. Not just an elegant transition from freshwater to saltwater, estuaries also provide rich feeding grounds for coastal birds and are important places for fish and other marine life to reproduce. Their sheltered waters and unique vegetation provide juvenile animals with places to hide and find food. This is why estuaries are often called the “nurseries of the sea.”

Some of New England’s best known estuaries include Casco Bay, the many small bays and inlets of Massachusetts’ shore, the Great Bay in New Hampshire and, of course, Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. Estuaries are great places for recreation and tourism. Boating, bird-watching, and fishing are some of our favorite estuary pastimes. Not only are estuaries beneficial to us for relaxing and enjoying nature, they are extremely valuable and provide other services as well. They are natural filters – storing and trapping pollutants and sediments that come off the land, preventing them from reaching the blue water. They also provide protection from coastal flooding. With all these wonderful reasons, what’s not to love about estuaries!

CLF works to protect and restore these amazing and valuable places with a network of like-minded conservation groups across the nation. Restore America’s Estuaries is a national alliance of coastal conservation organizations committed to protecting and restoring the lands and waters essential to the richness and diversity of coastal life. The challenge we all face is to make sure our estuaries and other waterways receive the care and proper management they deserve. Restoring degraded streams and rivers is a great way to provide healthy estuaries and the benefits we love and depend upon. If you love estuaries too (and we know you do), then take a minute to share the love online through the I Heart Estuaries Facebook page. Let the Congress and the Administration know of your heartfelt desire to see New England’s estuaries receive better protection and stewardship.

The storm surge from the Blizzard of ’78 split this Rockport, MA house in half. Photo from the Mass.gov Blizzard of ’78 Gallery

Originally posted Tuesday, February 5th

Sometimes hardy New Englanders take perverse pride in the bad weather we endure. But that didn’t stop us from getting very concerned when Sandy headed our way last October. And it didn’t help to prevent the tragic losses that piled up during the Blizzard of ’78, which formed off the coast of South Carolina 35 years ago today, then pounded New England for two days after that.

The Blizzard of ’78 was really more of a winter hurricane than a blizzard. And not just a hurricane, but a “bomb”  – a meteorological term that refers to how quickly pressure fell during the storm’s formation. People were caught unprepared for the rapidly deteriorating conditions, leading to dozens of fatalities on land and at sea. Not only were thousands of people stranded on the roads, unable to get to safety, but the suddenness of the storm took mariners by surprise as well. In his bestseller Ten Hours Until Dawn, New England author Michael Tougias tells the riveting and tragic story of what occurred as several vessels rushed to the aid of a heating oil tanker that was taking on water after running aground in Salem Sound. The tanker was fine in the end, but the Can Do, one of the boats that attempted to provide assistance, was not – sinking with all hands lost.

The overall devastation from the storm was enormous. Tougias describes the aftermath well:

“In Rockport, cars were flung into the Old Harbor along with a house. Bearskin Neck houses were crushed, then ripped by the seas, including the red wooden building known as Motif #1, a popular subject for artists.”

“Up and down the Massachusetts coast, seawalls were flattened and hundreds of residents became trapped in their houses, encircled by swirling water that prevented them from running to higher ground.”

“Particularly hard hit was Revere, just north of Boston and south of Salem… Three homes were totally leveled and several others suffered extensive damage from fire. However, it was the breaching of the seawall that did the most damage… The Beachmont section of Revere saw the worst devastation. Homes were bobbing down the streets, and many people thought they would literally be swallowed up by the sea.”

One of the reasons the destruction was so extensive from the Blizzard of ’78 was its horribly timed concurrence with an astronomical high tide. You may recall a more recent storm that visited our shores with the same bad timing.

Sandy reset our collective notion of “storm damage” in the Northeast. Most of us will never forget the images that scrolled across our screens that awful night (those of us that didn’t lose power, anyway), of subway tunnels flooding and horrible fires and a dark, so dark, New York City. More than three months later thousands of people are still suffering without heat or homes in Sandy’s aftermath. Nobody was really prepared for the scale of Sandy’s ravages. But Sandy was not a complete surprise. There have been some notable forerunners.

We’ve had our share of big storms on the East Coast. The Blizzard of ’78, of course, stands out. And 1938 is legendary for the Hurricane of 1938, or “The Long Island Express,” which rocketed up the coast at an unprecedented 70 miles per hour, taking out communications as it went, preventing people in its path from getting warning about the cataclysm that was headed their way.

1991 was an especially bad year – bringing us Hurricane Bob, the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history at the time, in mid-August, and the unnamed hurricane that sprang, very bizarrely, from the “Perfect Storm” that fall, which damaged parts of New England even worse than Bob had.

We know these big storms will come our way from time to time. We also know that our seas are rising – simply put, as they get warmer they expand. Disturbingly, we have recently come to understand that the sea is rising much faster in the Northeast than the global average. The ocean is coming closer, and the big storms will keep coming as well.  It’s time to get our act together and plan better for these big storms. We are weather-hardy in New England, but we are also smart enough to get prepared.

We can and should plan ahead. Employing the principles of regional ocean planning will help our coastal communities prepare for the next storm, using tools like the Boston Harbor Association’s model for “no regrets” adaptation to sea level rise, Massachusetts’ Storm Smart Coasts, and NOAA’s Hazard-Resilient Coastal & Waterfront Smart Growth, and building on lessons we are learning from our tempestuous history. We need a comprehensive, science-based, and participatory process that allows everyone who will be affected by decisions about our coastal areas to have a say in how we prepare for storms and sea level rise, and how we respond in the aftermath.

Hopefully it will be a very long time before we have to find out how ready we are for the next big storm – how well we have learned from the Blizzard of ’78, from Sandy, Bob, and the others. But, just in case we don’t have long to wait, let’s roll up our sleeves, get prepared, and make a plan for the worst.

Have you ever been at a noisy party and couldn’t hear the guy next to you? Or been on your phone when a fire truck went by and you couldn’t hear the conversation? Or gone to a rock concert and had a “hearing hangover” for hours afterwards? This sort of thing happens in the ocean, too, except marine life can’t just leave the party or put in earplugs (well, most of them can’t, anyway).

Sound travels really well in seawater, but light does not, so ocean animals rely on sound for a variety of reasons. For example, New England’s oyster toadfish will signal his mate that he’s got a nest ready for spawning by making a “boat-whistle” call. Lots of other fish make and use noise not only to attract a mate, but to scare off predators, or tell other fish to stay out of their territory. Check out this fun set of fish calls to hear more. Marine mammals make noise, too – whales use sound to hunt, navigate, avoid predators, bond with their young, and generally communicate with each other.

But our oceans are getting noisier and it’s harder for marine life to use sound they way they need to. Too much noise can harm ocean animals in a variety of ways. It can cause temporary or permanent hearing loss, make it hard for the animal to find food, separate a mother and calf, or even lead to strandings or death. Shipping, ocean dredging, seismic surveys for energy development or seafloor mapping, military exercises, and fishing – all can make for a noisy ocean environment.

Researchers are only just starting to make progress in mapping out our ocean noise, to help us get a handle on how to reduce the impact of it on wildlife. For an example, look at these new maps of ocean noise in the North Atlantic. Unfortunately there is a lot of uncertainty about what kinds of sound are worst for marine life, and at what levels.

There is not a robust regulatory mechanism for addressing ocean noise pollution in a comprehensive way. The procedures for addressing harm to marine mammals differ among various sound producers—for example, commercial shippers, fishermen and aquaculture operators, the military, the oil and gas industry, and the academic community. In general, ocean and coastal resources are currently managed by more than 20 federal agencies and administered through a web of more than 140 different and often-conflicting laws and regulations.

We need to do better, and we can.

An example of how we can learn to better coordinate ocean noise and wild animals is right here in the Gulf of Maine. Our critically endangered North Atlantic right whales need to be able to hear and use sound even more than they need to be able to see. Researchers from the Cornell University Bioacoustics Research Program have spent the past few years studying whales and noise in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. They have found that today’s whales, as compared to 50 years ago, live in a world of “acoustic smog,” and that “cumulative noise from all the shipping traffic is making it difficult for all the right whales in the area to hear each other most of the time, not just once in a while.”

The researchers suggest that this new knowledge can help adapt current management tools and be used as part of “comprehensive plans that seek to manage the cumulative effects of offshore human activities on marine species and their habitats.”

They are on to something. This call for collaborative, data-driven, practical management is at the heart of Regional Ocean Planning. A good regional ocean planning process can help us coordinate our activities while minimizing and mitigating conflicts among ocean users and protecting healthy ecosystems. It is the process that recently helped researchers in Stellwagen Bank better protect whales from vessel strikes by shipping traffic. And it’s a process that can help us unravel the ocean noise puzzle – and better protect our hearing marine life, while continuing to develop our maritime economy.

Those who say coordinated and collaborative ocean management can’t be done have yet to see the world through Karen Meyer’s eyes. Karen is the Executive Director of Green Fire Productions and the director and producer of Ocean Frontiers. This groundbreaking movie showcases the real-life experiences of fishermen, conservationists, energy companies, shipping interests, farmers, and local community leaders in four areas of the country who worked together to improve ocean health and the management of our oceans and coasts:

• Recognizing that their fishing grounds were in jeopardy if they didn’t start planning better, the community of Port Orford, Oregon, united to create a unique Community Stewardship Area that encompasses not only their fishing grounds, but also the upland watersheds that drain into them.
• A group farmers in Iowa headed to the Gulf of Mexico for a fishing trip to see why the Gulf needs to be protected from the nutrients that flow off Midwestern farmlands into the Mississippi River, and on to the Gulf, where they create enormous dead zones. “I guess I didn’t realize the value of it (the fishing industry) and how important it is” says one farmer, in a series of moving interviews. Some creative and effective nutrient management measures are being implemented across Iowa, with the full support of the farmers that use them – who feel like they have an obligation to not harm their downstream neighbors.
• An extremely contentious conflict on the coral reefs of the Florida Keys (at one point a Marine Sanctuary Director was hung in effigy) involving the seemingly incompatible uses of tourism, recreational and commercial fishing and diving, and resource conservation led to a difficult but ultimately successful planning process and the creation of a special set of marine zones that could only have happened with the full involvement of all the stakeholders. As one commercial fishing representative said “It really worked out in our best interest that they’re protecting these resources because what they protect helps us in the long run.”
• Right here in New England’s own Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary the unlikely allies of shipping industry representatives, natural gas companies, conservationists, and scientists came together to work on the difficult problem of shipping traffic around Boston striking and killing endangered whales. After careful and thorough research on the feeding habits of the whales, the shipping lanes in and out of Boston were re-routed to avoid the areas most heavily used by the whales. In a success story that is one of the best examples of regional ocean planning in New England  we find a blueprint for future ocean use decisions.

Karen talked to us recently about the film, and some of the outstanding stories of collaborative ocean management she has documented in Ocean Frontiers. Thousands of coastal residents, governmental leaders, and ocean users are seeing Ocean Frontiers in venues from theaters to the US State Department to home viewing parties. You or your group can host a screening, or find one near you here.

Robin: What is your goal for Ocean Frontiers?

Karen: To share the ocean conservation success stories that are unfolding across the country so that we can all learn from these ocean pioneers and begin replicating their successful approaches in our own communities. Together we are moving in a positive direction. We are educating ourselves about what works and incorporating the lessons learned as we move forward with regional ocean planning. More than a film, Ocean Frontiers is a campaign designed to inspire people to better care for the ocean, for the good of all.

Robin: What was it like talking with people in small towns and rural areas like coastal Oregon and Midwestern farming regions about ocean planning? How did they receive the idea?

Karen: We were talking with people in places where ocean planning was already in the works or actively underway – people who had seen positive results from ocean planning. So, they were happy to share their experiences and insights to help others in different regions where people are just embarking on ocean planning.

One thing we heard often was that people were resistant or concerned about ocean planning at the beginning – and then they realized that this could affect their use of the ocean, so it made sense to be involved. Through the course of ocean planning, when it was done well, people came away with a strong sense of ownership about how the ocean was being managed. They saw their input reflected in decisions that were made, they were proud of the collaboration among all decision makers and stakeholders, and they felt strongly they were ensuring a healthy ocean and healthy communities.

Robin: Who have you seen benefit from regional ocean planning?

Karen: In the Florida Keys, as one example, it’s been all of the stakeholders as well as the ecosystem – the coral reefs and the fish. The stakeholders include: commercial and sport fishermen, the dive industry, recreational boaters, the charter boat industry, scientists – and ultimately everyone who lives in or visits the Florida Keys.

Robin: What is your favorite ocean planning success story, or the one that surprised you the most?

Karen: The commercial fishing town of Port Orford, Oregon is especially significant to me. The town depends on natural resources for their economic livelihood: timber was big here, and commercial fishing makes up 60% of their economy now. The people of Port Orford show us that we can change the way we do business, we can have an environmental ethic around the way we fish and that this could be the key to maintaining a way of life and the economic engine of our coastal fishing towns. The Port Orford community has been willing to address the problems brought on by the boom and bust of the fishing industry and take some risks in pursuing the triple bottom line. They are thinking big, by looking at the entire ecosystem of where they make a living – land and sea – and they designated the Port Orford Community Stewardship Area that encompasses state and federal waters of their historic fishing grounds as well as the watersheds that feed into the nearshore.

Robin: What kind of responses do you get in the surveys you pass out after your screenings?

Karen: There’s been a phenomenal response to Ocean Frontiers. More than 80% of the people surveyed after watching Ocean Frontiers express not only a better understanding about ocean planning, but an intention to participate in ocean planning.  People tell us that they are thrilled to see that collaboration among competing interests is possible – and they see that it’s vital to our success. People respond strongly to the solutions portrayed in Ocean Frontiers and have let us know that they are tired of the doom and gloom stories we so often hear. Witnessing examples of deeply entrenched conflicts where different groups of people could never imagine working together, and then eventually finding solutions that address both economic and environmental concerns is invigorating and motivates the audiences to strive for the same.

Robin:  What has been the best Ocean Frontiers event so far?

Karen: The premiere in Port Orford, Oregon. Oregon Governor Kitzhaber, First Lady Hayes and Republican and Democrat leaders in the state legislature attended and in their opening remarks, all spoke as one, affirming the vital link between healthy oceans and healthy communities. It was a thrill to have this kind of a kick-off for Ocean Frontiers, which set the stage and the tone for all of the events to follow. To date, we have worked with 365 partners to organize 150 events for 10,000 people in 27 states and 7 countries.

Robin: What was it like presenting Ocean Frontiers to the US State Department?

Karen: We were honored to be invited to present Ocean Frontiers to the State Department. They are interested in the film because it highlights how industries, governments, and citizens can work together and find solutions to pressing ocean issues. Their work is primarily international so it was exciting to bring these stories from across the US to them and introduce them to the inspiring work taking place here.

Just going into the State Department and seeing so many people from all over the world there, the pictures of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lining the hallways, it was impressive and an experience I won’t soon forget!

Robin: Who would you most like to see Ocean Frontiers?

Karen: President Obama

The multiple uses of our coasts and ocean require coordinated planning.

Ocean planning is a practice proudly developed in New England. We’ve often written about the success of the Massachusetts Ocean Plan and the Rhode Island Special Area Management Plan (SAMP), as well as ways that ocean planning already works in New England. Now we are excited to announce a new network of ocean users supporting the National Ocean Policy. CLF has joined together with dozens of groups throughout New England, including the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, Surfrider Foundation, Massport, the New England Aquarium, Sierra Club chapters, and the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association to help build a sustainable future for New England’s ocean, coasts, and the communities that depend on them.

Founded to support the development of the nation’s first regional ocean plan, the New England Ocean Action Network (NEOAN) brings together individuals and organizations from the region’s environmental community, educational and research institutions, fishing industry, clean energy field, recreational ocean users, and other industries and stakeholders to advocate for a healthy ocean and thriving economy.

What does this diverse group of people have in common? We all share a belief that regional ocean planning can help us coordinate our activities while minimizing and mitigating conflicts among ocean users and protecting healthy ecosystems. Visit NewEnglandOceanAction.org to find out more about who we are and to learn about regional ocean planning.

New England’s coast and ocean are among our region’s greatest economic, environmental, and cultural assets – bringing over $16 billion annually to our region’s economy. Safeguarding the natural environment and improving the management of our coast and ocean through a comprehensive ocean planning process will help to grow our region’s coastal and maritime economy, restore and protect ocean and coastal ecosystems, and recognize and acknowledge New England’s unique maritime heritage.

This is why NEOAN supports, monitors, and comments on efforts to develop a comprehensive, region-wide ocean planning process and will advocate for the development of a plan that:

• Is developed through an open and transparent process that includes the full participation of New England’s ocean and coastal users and coastal communities;
• Uses the best available scientific, economic, and cultural data; legal information; and local knowledge;
• Acknowledges and recognizes the economic and cultural importance of the commercial and recreational fishing industries, as well as other historical ocean users;
• Supports the sustainable development of both our ocean resources and our local and regional economies;
• Seeks to minimize the impacts of human-induced climate change and ocean acidification;
• Maintains adequate federal funding for ocean planning efforts;
• Fosters cooperation between federal, tribal, state and local agencies and governments;
• Protects, restores and maintains clean coastal waters and healthy ocean and coastal ecosystems for the benefit of human communities and marine wildlife;
• Educates ocean users, the public, regional decision makers and stakeholders about the need and value of a comprehensive regional ocean plan and planning process.

A good plan needs a good planning process, and a good planning process gives everyone a seat at the table and a voice. NEOAN will work to advocate for an open, transparent, and participatory planning process and will work with stakeholders and the public to help them understand the planning process and the importance of participation. We invite the participation of other ocean users groups in NEOAN. Contact NEOAN for more information at thriving@newenglandoceanaction.org.

A red cod swims in the healthy kelp forest on Cashes Ledge

Note: This blog was originally posted on One World One Ocean as part of their National Sustainable Seafood Month Campaign. 

When you buy a piece of cod, do you wonder how many are left in the ocean? Are you curious about what kind of gear was used to catch the fish? Gillnets? Hooks? Or, maybe it was a bottom trawler? Do you consider a different choice – maybe there is a more sustainable fish to buy?

These are important questions to ask, but there’s something more basic to consider as well. Where do these fish live? What essential requirements do these animals have to survive and thrive in the ocean?

Figuring out what “sustainable seafood” means is a familiar dilemma for New Englanders. We have some of the most productive fisheries in the world, but we also have some of the most heavily fished areas in the world. New Englanders work very hard to manage our fisheries, and there is much we are still learning. Yet, there is one simple fact that scientists and many fishermen are very confident about – if fish don’t have healthy habitat, then we don’t have fish.

We have some very special ocean places in New England. Cashes Ledge, an underwater mountain range about 80 miles off the coast of Maine, is home to the deepest and largest continuous kelp forest in all offshore waters along the US east coast. Stretching 22 miles long and 17 miles wide, Cashes Ledge provides food and shelter to an enormous diversity of creatures – from bottom-dwelling tube worms and sponges to endangered North Atlantic right whales and highly migratory blue sharks and Atlantic bluefin tuna. Cashes Ledge is also rich in a variety of groundfish including Atlantic cod, white hake, monkfish, haddock, and redfish. Many kinds of offshore sea birds can be found dining here, such as sooty shearwaters and Wilson’s storm-petrels.

The reason for such enormous diversity and richness lies in the mountain range itself, whose pinnacles interrupt the primary Gulf of Maine current and create a stunning oceanographic phenomenon known as internal waves, which carry high levels of nutrients and oxygen from the sea surface to the sea floor. This unusual circulation pattern results in an incredibly productive ecosystem. It’s no wonder that scientists have used Cashes Ledge as an oceanographic research lab for decades. It represents one of the healthiest existing marine habitats, and if more of the ocean was like it, there would be a lot more fish.

In 2002 many habitat areas in the Gulf of Maine, including Cashes Ledge, were protected from harmful bottom trawling, and these areas have begun a slow recovery. But as large reductions in the catch of cod, yellowtail flounder, and other groundfish loom in New England, there is increasing pressure to open these areas again. Places like Cashes Ledge must be protected if we are going to keep relying on our oceans to feed us and allow our ocean ecosystems to regenerate and thrive. These are irreplaceable resources, and the permanent protection of marine habitat should be a top priority for any sustainable fisheries management plan.

While it is important to think about fish in numbers – how many we catch, how big they are, how many are left – it is equally important to consider the ecosystem on a larger scale, with all its moving parts, dependent on each other for survival. When do the plankton bloom, and where? Where are the currents taking the food? Where will certain fish spawn if their favorite ledge is dragged? How will the animals adapt to our warmer, more acidic oceans?

So, as we celebrate National “Sustainable” Seafood Month, take a moment to consider where your seafood lived before it was on your plate. The ocean ecosystems that produce the oxygen in 2 out of every 3 breaths we take, regulate our climate, drive tens of billions of dollars of economic benefits, and provide us with considerable recreational activities won’t continue to produce such benefits unless we do a better job at protecting the basic components of a healthy ocean. And, while you enjoy the good decision you made about your sustainably caught fish, also be thankful that the fish came from a good home, and do what you can to help keep it that way.

Help support habit protection for special places like Cashes Ledge – click here. 

Brian Skerry and Luis Lamare get ready to photograph Cashes Ledge on their recent dive. Photograph by Christian Conroy.

What’s so special about Cashes Ledge? In this second of a planned series of dives on this New England biodiversity hotspot, Brian Skerry was joined by marine ecologist, Jon Witman, an expert on Cashes Ledge.  Jon has been studying Cashes Ledge for 35 years, and has been watching how the diversity and abundance of sea life has been changing there, and how it has responded to its current limited-protection status. We talked to him and found out more about why Cashes Ledge is so important to the Gulf of Maine, and what we can do to keep it thriving.

Robin:

Why have you spent so much time on Cashes Ledge?

Jon:

Cashes Ledge is a fascinating and wild offshore place that helps us understand how marine ecosystems tick. It is also a unique storehouse of Atlantic marine biodiversity. Cashes Ledge provides an opportunity to understand why biodiversity matters in an ecological sense. Unfortunately, we are losing marine biodiversity in the world’s oceans faster than we can study it.

Currently, I’m trying to figure out how the whole benthic ecosystem out on Cashes Ledge – from the fish, to the kelp forests and the diverse invertebrates communities have changed over the past decades. I’m particularly interested in how resilient the system is to human disturbance and to climate-related changes in the oceanography.

When we studied Cashes Ledge intensively in the 1980’s, it was like a time machine providing a fleeting glimpse of what New England marine coastal communities might have been like hundreds of years ago, when lots of large predatory fish – especially cod,  were commonplace close to shore. We videotaped over 100 cod an hour going by an area of bottom about the size of a large picnic table on Cashes Ledge, compared to no cod seen at the same depth at coastal sites in the Gulf of Maine.

I actually saw a whale cod as long as a diver and schools of Atlantic bluefin tuna while diving on Cashes Ledge then. There have been substantial reductions of predatory fish since then, which is something I’m studying, but Cashes Ledge is still a vitally rich ecosystem compared to coastal ones that have been more heavily impacted by humans.

Robin:

What other kinds of interesting animals have you seen on Cashes Ledge?

Jon:

There are layers of marine life on Cashes Ledge, including minke, right, humpback and pilot whales, blue sharks, basking sharks, atlantic white sided dolphins, big schools of bluefin tuna chasing herring, whale cod, red cod, pollock, wolffish, torpedo rays, squid, strange feather stars called crinoids, and unusual sponges and sea squirts typical of sub arctic areas of Scandinavia.

Robin:

Can you talk about the internal waves and why they are important?

Jon:

The top of the ridge on Cashes Ledge is an incredibly dynamic place – layers of plankton in warmer overlying waters are driven right down to the bottom as much as 20 times a day by these phenomena known as internal waves. This is a big deal because the downwelling plankton layers are pulses of concentrated food that sustain bottom dwelling organisms and, in effect, fuel the food web.

We stumbled across this phenomenon in the course of our scuba dives to the top of the ridge at 30 m. One dive team would go down and report that the water on the bottom was cold and beautifully clear but the next team an hour later found pea soup visibility in greenish warm water. This, of course, turned out to be the plankton layer pushed down onto the bottom like a yo-yo by internal waves.

The temperature increase was so large that we could feel the warm water through our drysuits. At that time, the prevailing view of the subtidal zone was that it was a stable place with nearly constant environmental conditions, compared to the rocky intertidal zone. But out on Cashes we were documenting as much as 5 degree centigrade temperature increases in 10 minutes right on the rocky sea floor at 30 m depth.

Internal waves are like a sine wave travelling along the boundary between the warm surface waters and the colder layer below. They can be huge – spanning 50 m vertically in some parts of the world and 30 m high on Cashes.  I’ve seen these downwelling green water waves approaching the ridge on Cashes Ledge while scuba diving and sitting off the ridge in the Johnson Sea Link submersible – it’s one of the most spectacular things I’ve seen underwater.

Robin:

What makes Cashes Ledge so unique?

Jon:

There are at least three things make Cashes Ledge so unique. First of all, it is the largest continuous kelp forest in offshore waters on the entire east coast of the US. The kelp grow unusually deep there, beyond  30 m depth. The forest and the ledge itself provide many valuable goods and services to keep the offshore Gulf of Maine ecosystem healthy, vibrant, and productive. For example, it’s a nursery habitat for commercially valuable groundfish. It’s also an energy rich food source for marine life living in habitats both on the ledge and far away from it – in the form of detritus as the kelp breaks down.

Secondly, the Cashes Ledge ecosystem contains a wide range of different bottom types – it isn’t just all rocky ledge. Just like on a mountain slope in the Green or White Mountains in New England, there are cobble and boulder fields on the lower sides of rocky slopes on Cashes Ledge. Deeper down, the sea floor is covered in sand and gravel that grades into soft bottom areas of silt and mud in the basins. So what you have in the Cashes Ledge underwater landscape is a representative collection of most of the major types of bottom habitats found in the Gulf of Maine, but in an incredibly compact area, as ecosystems go.

Each of those different habitat types has its own community of species that do especially well in that particular habitat. For example, there are pink northern shrimp, clams, and tube worms living in the muddy basins at the edge of a boulder field, then communities of soccer ball-sized yellow sponges, bright red sea anemones, and little upright calcified candelabras called bryozoans that look like miniature coral reefs, attached to the boulder tops. Different habitats enhance biodiversity overall. If you sum up all the different species living in each of these different types of habitats from kelp forests to the muddy basins, you have some of the highest biodiversity levels in the Gulf of Maine right on Cashes Ledge.

Finally, as an abrupt topographic high in relatively clear, shallow, sunlit waters, Cashes Ledge is an especially productive offshore ecosystem in the Gulf of Maine. I mentioned the role of the kelp detritus exporting food to adjacent ecosystems, but the dynamic oceanography of the ledge itself also contributes to the productivity of the bottom community in the way that internal waves push concentrated layers of plankton to the top of the ridge.

I think both mechanisms help make Cashes Ledge such a productive area for many species – including groundfish and marine mammals. We’ve seen minke whales feeding in the slicks of internal waves on Cashes Ledge, presumably due to high concentrations of food there.

Robin:

What kind of protection does Cashes Ledge need and why?

Jon:

As special as it is, Cashes Ledge is a very vulnerable marine ecosystem. Right now Cashes Ledge has a small amount of protection from certain types of fishing activity as an Essential Fish Habitat and as a Habitat Area of Special Concern. This is laudable and a real achievement by fisheries managers in New England. However, this protection is only temporary and it could be eliminated at any moment.  It could be opened to fishing practices that further deplete stocks of groundfish, damage biodiverse communities, and decrease the sustainability of the kelp forests.

Because it is such a unique, valuable, and diverse New England marine ecosystem, the rocky ridge, adjacent bottom habitats, and the overlying water column on Cashes Ledge need permanent protection from human impacts. It has been shown many times that marine protected areas help exploited stocks recover and can ensure the sustainability of biodiversity and other goods and services that keep our oceans healthy. We also know that really small protected areas don’t do these jobs very well, so it pays in the long run to preserve larger areas containing different types of habitats.

Globally, we aren’t doing a very good job of protecting the oceans as less than 2% of the worlds oceans are fully protected, despite all the scientific findings showing that marine ecosystems are under ever increasing levels of stress from all sorts of human impacts.

“I love diving with makos, but they have a very different behavior than other sharks. They come in appearing to be more agitated. They’re much more hyper and jacked up.” - Brian Skerry

Mako sharks are built to move. They are very acrobatic – sometimes leaping high into the air –and are also extremely fast. Some scientists think they are the fastest fish, possibly going over 50 mph at times. (Fun fact – makos are one of the only “warm-blooded” fish, which helps explain why they can move so fast, even in colder water.) Makos need wide open spaces and healthy places to eat and reproduce. The health of our oceans depends on healthy top predator populations, and healthy top predators depend on healthy oceans.

Our nation has taken a major step forward in protecting the health of our oceans with the National Ocean Policy – which calls better management through agency coordination, science-based decisions and robust public and stakeholder involvement.  One important priority of the National Ocean Policy is to protect ocean habitat and wildlife while supporting sustainable new and traditional uses of our ocean.

Regional ocean planning and ecosystem-based management are two other key components of the National Ocean Policy that can go a long way in protecting our top predators. Regional ocean planning is a process that brings together all our ocean stakeholders – from fishermen to whale watchers, from beachgoers to renewable energy developers – to help us figure out how to share the ocean sustainably. This process helps all New Englanders use and enjoy our ocean and coasts while making sure we protect ocean wildlife and habitats and maintain the benefits these resources provide for us all.

For an example of how regional ocean planning can protect marine wildlife, check out this blog about endangered North Atlantic right whales and shipping lanes.

Collecting and sharing good data, and using it to help make ocean management decisions, are some of the keys to succesful regional ocean planning. If you are wondering how this might apply to mako sharks, check out this app from NOAA that allows fishermen to share information about caught and released makos – to literally put that shark on the map. NOAA says “Overfishing is occurring on the North Atlantic shortfin mako shark population. By releasing shortfin mako sharks that are unintentionally caught or caught for sport, fishermen can lead the way for conserving this shark species.” Now that sounds like some good planning.