There has never been a better time to care about the ocean than now. The ocean provides us with so many things – half of the air we breathe, an amazing variety of things to eat, a place of beauty and refuge and sometimes fury. This year the New England coast line was pummeled by tropical storms and Northeasters, reminding us yet again that our glorious ocean is powerful, relentless and unforgiving. Despite our ingenuity and technical know-how, we live in a natural and changing environment and need to better plan and protect our ocean ourselves going forward.

We used to think that the ocean was so big, and life in it so abundant, that nothing we did could harm it or exhaust its resources. But now, because of us, the ocean is changing fast and in dramatic ways. It is getting warmer, more acidic, and ever more crowded – as we consider new uses like tidal and wind energy development in addition to our historic ones like fishing, shipping, sailing and other recreation. The fabric of New England’s ocean ecosystems is changing, too. Previously depleted populations of sharks and seals are on the rise, while other species like Atlantic cod and yellowtail flounder have plummeted. And there’s evidence that the changing ocean chemistry will profoundly affect the entire food chain, from tiny plankton on up.

The time to care is now. With climate change affecting our oceans in ways we are only beginning to understand, now is the time to restore the health of our ocean so that it can be as resilient as possible to the changes that are coming. Ocean conservation has been part of our work at CLF since the mid-1970s when we were a scrappy little organization on Beacon Hill fighting the federal government and the oil industry over oil and gas drilling on Georges Bank – New England’s most important fishing grounds. We won that case, then won it again and again as the oil industry kept knocking on New England’s door. Ocean conservation is part of our history and is embedded in our DNA, and we are still working hard to  protect our ocean and keep it thriving for future generations of New Englanders in many ways:

• Keeping vital habitat protected – special places like Cashes Ledge, a breathtakingly beautiful underwater mountain range 80 miles off the coast of Cape Ann, home to the largest coldwater kelp forest on the North Atlantic seaboard. Cashes Ledge provides rich habitat for many of our most amazing and iconic sea creatures – Atlantic cod and wolffish to bluefin tuna and North Atlantic right whales. Some of these species are on the brink of existence in our waters, and truly need places of refuge to sustain and rebuild their populations. CLF has recently gone to court to keep current protected habitat areas, including Cashes Ledge, closed to destructive trawl and dredge fishing gear.

• Working for an end to overfishing – all the habitat protection in the world won’t help a species recover if the fishing pressure is too high. CLF has been fighting for sustainable New England fisheries for decades, and we still aren’t there. Cod numbers are currently at a very small fraction of what a healthy population would be. We have asked for a moratorium on directed cod fishing until their numbers recover – in opposition to the current political push to increase catch limits. Can you imagine New England without cod? Neither can we – which is why we have gone to federal court against fisheries managers to stop them from increasing catch limits on cod and other imperiled groundfish until the populations are better recovered.

• Supporting our nation’s first regional ocean plan – New England is leading the nation in ocean planning. With the increasing pressures on our rapidly changing water, we need to better coordinate all of our uses to minimize conflict and make decisions based on the whole ecosystem, as opposed to individual uses. CLF has been involved in ocean planning from the start, advising and supporting our states on the Massachusetts Ocean Management Plan and Rhode Island Special Area Management Plan. And now we are actively supporting  development of the nation’s first regional ocean plan by the Northeast Regional Planning Body – made up of state, federal, and tribal representatives and convened pursuant to the National Ocean Policy.

• Celebrating our beautiful ocean – Our New England Ocean Odyssey campaign is all about showcasing the amazing, breathtaking, important, and often strange things that lie beneath our waves. We have one of the most productive, diverse ocean ecosystems on the planet right off our shores, and we hope that by bringing you the gorgeous photography of Brian Skerry and others, and engaging stories, you will be inspired to help us protect it.

• Restoring historic river herring runs – After 18 years, ocean-going alewives (also known as river herring) can return to their ancestral spawning habitat on the St. Croix River in northern Maine and eventually make the St. Croix the largest river herring run in New England once again.  CLF fought for this right on two fronts.  First, we successfully filed suit against the EPA last year to enforce water quality standards, successfully arguing that a 1995 law excluding alewives from parts of the St. Croix river conflicted with the river’s Class A water quality designation under the Clean Water Act. Second, CLF worked with other environmental organizations and the Passamaquoddy Nation to support emergency legislation in Maine to repeal the alewife exclusion law. The alewife, is a “keystone species” that provides food for many animals, birds and larger fish species native to Maine’s marine and fresh waters, and restoring it to its native river habitat is a wonderful reason to celebrate.

We will continue to fight these battles for a healthy ocean so we have more to celebrate next World Oceans Day, and the one after that, and beyond. Please stay with us on our voyage and be part of a better ocean future in New England.

Originally posted on New England Ocean Odyssey.

After extensive discussions with CLF, Deepwater Wind has agreed to voluntarily adjust its planned construction period to minimize potential impacts to migrating North Atlantic Right Whales -- like this breaching beauty here.

Deepwater Wind is taking exciting new steps to build on last month’s historic agreement to protect critically endangered right whales while developing offshore wind projects. The offshore wind developer, expected to begin construction on the proposed Block Island Wind Farm in 2014 or 2015, has announced an agreement to voluntarily adjust its planned construction period to minimize potential impacts to migrating North Atlantic right whales. This announcement follows extensive discussions with CLF, and shows a willingness to go above and beyond to protect North Atlantic right whales in the pursuit of renewable energy.

In order to fasten the five proposed turbine steel foundations into the steel floor, the developer must undergo pile driving, a process of hammering steel pipes up to 250 ft into the ocean floor. This stage of production could potentially harm migrating right whales, which have been documented feeding in Rhode Island Sound throughout the month of April. Deepwater Wind has adjusted its construction schedule accordingly, deciding that no pile driving will occur before May 1 of the project’s construction year.

Deepwater Wind’s decision to alter its construction schedule for the Block Island Wind project follows another agreement to adopt protections for endangered right whales in federal waters. A first-of-its kind coalition of offshore wind developers and environmental organizations agreed to adopt voluntary measures to protect right whales while expediting responsible offshore wind development. This historic agreement sets out measures that developers will voluntarily implement over the next four years in the Mid-Atlantic Wind Energy Areas stretching from New Jersey to Virginia. In it, key ocean stakeholders have shown great leadership in setting a model for future coalitions, and they have demonstrated a commitment to developing clean energy projects while protecting critically endangered species.

Right whale skim feeding off Provincetown, MA. Photo: Brian Skerry

Shipping lanes in and around San Francisco Bay are being changed to protect the many whales that feed in its krill-rich waters. Blue whales, fin whales, and humpbacks will all benefit from the changes. This action took two years of collaboration, data-sharing, and negotiating among the shipping industry, government agencies, and environmental groups. This, in a nutshell, is the regional ocean planning process.

Why does this matter to a New England conservation group? Well, besides the fact that everybody loves a happy ending, New England has been a leader in this type of effort for many years now.

If there is one dramatic example of the need to coordinate our activities in New England’s ocean it is the tale of our beloved but extremely endangered North Atlantic right whales and the shipping traffic that was threatening their recovery.

Right whales love our productive Gulf of Maine waters – they find an abundance of their favorite krill and copepods that teem in our coastal areas. People are keeping a close eye on these urban whales, since there may be fewer than 500 of them left on the planet. This careful watching was why we knew that shipping traffic in and out of Boston Harbor was causing big problems for the right whales. In short – right whales are shallow feeders, making them highly vulnerable to fatal ship strikes. And each whale matters in such a small population.

Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary staff decided to take action to protect the right whales in a bold and unprecedented way. Using 25 years’ worth of whale sighting and state of the art acoustic research Stellwagen Bank officials discovered that the shipping lanes through the Sanctuary also contained the highest concentration of whales, resulting in too often fatal collisions. In a process that took three years and involved collaboration with the Port of Boston, researchers with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Cornell Bioacoustic Research Program, and a Texas-based energy company that relies on shipping in and out of the harbor – high quality data on the movements of whales in and around the Sanctuary was mapped and compared with shipping traffic in and out of Boston Harbor.

As a result, in 2007 the Sanctuary slightly altered the shipping lanes – reducing whale strikes by 81 percent.

This wouldn’t have happened without scientists, conservationists, local officials, federal agencies and private industry deciding to work together.

To ensure continuing whale protection there are buoys “listening” for right whales throughout the bay, and there’s even an app for ship captains so they can receive whale location updates on their cell phones – alerting them to slow down or avoid certain areas. A lot of people came together to create an innovative solution to this complicated problem by using the principles of regional ocean planning. Everyone who had a stake in the process had a seat at the table.

This type of coordination is the heart of regional ocean planning. It’s simply about making sure everyone has a say in what in happens in our busy waters, including those of us who value protecting wildlife and natural habitats. As we have more happening in the Gulf of Maine, more ships, more whales, more renewable energy development, we need to be careful to organize these activities in a way that also protects existing commercial and recreational uses.

The pioneering Massachusetts and Rhode Island state ocean use plans are serving as the building blocks of New England’s regional ocean plan for federal waters. CLF is at the vanguard of ocean planning, innovating in New England what has become a national policy initiative intended to improve stewardship of vulnerable marine wildlife and habitats with responsible ocean uses.

Understandably, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (which seems to be the first oil spill to have a Facebook page) has been the subject of intense interest on this blog (repeatedly), in New Orleans (which incredibly finds itself in the cross-hairs of ANOTHER disaster) and in nearby Florida, where brilliant and acerbic environmentalist Carl Hiaasen (buy his books, especially the ones for kids) makes his mark on the subject.

But here is a different angle on the disaster. Consider the recent episode here in New England where a quarter of the population of Right Whales were spotted feeding in an area where whales are not normally found. This reminds us that putting an inherently dangerous activity like oil and gas drilling anywhere in the ocean is like playing Russian roulette with the lives of the animals that live in the ocean and our oceans generally.  A lesson that is playing out among the sea turtles who rely on the Gulf of Mexico as a safe place to reproduce.

So what can we do? The first thing is to not open up even more of our coastline to drilling, especially as part of a climate bill that is intended to protect and restore our environment. But the ultimate answer is to reduce use of , and therefore demand for, oil. And that means, more than anything else, reducing our gasoline consumption. How do we do that? Building smart walkable communities with transit options and using far more efficient cars would be a great start.

We have the seen the enemy and it is us . . . but it doesn’t have to be that way forever.