6.15.2009 9:30 AM

Obama Declares June Oceans Month

Amid the applause for a new federal oceans policy, scientists and advocates warn of our oceans' downward spiral. Try these 6 things you can do to protect the oceans.

Photo: Martin Ruegner/ Getty Images

By Dan Shapley

Friday, President Obama launched a new ocean protect initiative that aims to unify the management of U.S. ocean territory, coasts and the Great Lakes. Currently, 140 U.S. laws and 20 federal agencies are involved in oceans management, which has lead to regulatory "chaos," as Sarah Chasis, the director of the Ocean Initiative at the Natural Resources Defense Council, put it.

The high-level attention to oceans policy can't come soon enough, and won praise from the NRDC and other major environmental groups.

"In 2003 and 2004, two national commissions, the Pew Oceans Commission and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, called for the establishment of a national policy to better protect our nation's valuable ocean, coasts and Great Lakes. President Obama is showing leadership in taking important steps to develop such a policy," Chassis wrote in her blog.

Why so overdue? Another dismal accounting of the threats facing the oceans is warranted: Overfishing, global warming, ocean acidification, polluted runoff, toxic chemicals, habitat destruction threaten to send the oceans spiraling into a mess that won't support life as we know it today. Already most food fish is fully exploited or over-exploited, according to the United Nations. By mid-century most food fish stocks could collapse, according to one warning, and according to another, we're on a trajectory that will result in a return to "a primordial stew" of jellyfish and algae -- if we don't do something.

Just in the last week, experts warned Congress about new threats to marine life, including pharmaceuticals and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Meanwhile, the Senate has moved to open the coasts to expanded offshore drilling. And in the latest indication that ocean acidification is a real and present danger, there are signs that Pacific oysters may be imperiled in waters that produce one-sixth of the nation's catch. (Oysters are a true superfood, offering healthy portions of both iron and Vitamin B12, but overharvesting, contamination, ocean acidification and a host of other environmental threats make their place on our plates perilous.) Finally, there's a reminder that global warming is already affecting the oceans.

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