Newly Released Draft Plan Will Guide Coastline And Ocean Management

A regional planning group issued a sweeping ecosystem-based ocean draft plan Wednesday to guide federal agencies in New England. The draft Northeast Ocean Plan has no regulatory power, but since it was developed by a group created by presidential order in 2010, the reams of science behind the plan will guide the federal agencies that help manage the coastline and oceans of New England, according to Betsy Nicholson, a member of the regional group that wrote up the plan and regional director for coastal management for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The science is drawn from hundreds of data sources, and often packaged into easy-to-use interactive maps to understand the cumulative effect of disparate industries, such as looking at how marine mammal habitat intersects with regional shipping lanes or the location of marine industry job clusters or beach renourishment projects.