In early 2009, President Bush established three marine national monuments around a number of US territorial islands and wildlife refuges in the Central Pacific Ocean. These isolated places harbor hundreds of marine species and contain some of the most pristine coral reefs on earth. A 121-foot fishing boat sank on Palmyra Atoll in 1991, and an 85-foot fishing vessel ran aground and sank on Kingman Reef in 2007, both of which are located within one of these monuments. The two shipwrecks are leaching iron into the water, which in turn stimulates the growth of a nuisance anemone-like organism that overgrows and kills corals. At least 740 acres of coral habitat have been destroyed so far and the devastation continues at a rapid pace.

The Department of the Interior’s US Fish and Wildlife Service, the manager of the national monument, has failed to remove these wrecks despite the extensive damage they are causing.

Scientists say failure to remove these fishing vessels threatens the health of the reefs, and consequently the organisms that depend on them for protection, reproduction, and feeding. Please urge Department of the Interior Secretary Salazar to remove the two shipwrecks immediately.

Sign our petition today to encourage removal of these shipwrecks! Please pass along to your friends too!

CJS Appropriations Bill to the Senate floor!

As early as today, the Senate is scheduled to take up three appropriation bills in a collective package. Marine Conservation Institute is paying particular attention to the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Bill, as it allocates funds for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Tell your Senators TODAY that you support funding at enacted Fiscal Year 2010 levels for NOAA conservation and management programs, such as the National Marine Sanctuaries Program, Marine Protected Areas Program, Coral Reef Conservation Program, Deep Sea Coral Research and Technology Program, and Marine Debris Program, as well as efforts to combat ocean acidification, develop a coastal and marine spatial planning framework, and support recovery efforts for the Hawaiian monk seal.

***Marine Conservation Institute is particularly concerned about an effort to remove funding for Regional Ocean Partnerships, a grant program that facilitates the cooperation and integration of ocean and coastal resources management between local, state, and federal agencies.

Call Your Senator Today!

The following is from Environment & Energy Daily:

Senate to take up trio of spending bills -- Reid

Jason Plautz and Amanda Peterka, E&E reporters

Published: Thursday, October 13, 2011

The Senate today is scheduled to take up a trio of fiscal 2012 appropriations bills with the aim of completing them before a scheduled recess at the end of next week, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said late yesterday.

The three spending bills -- Agriculture; Commerce, Justice and Science; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development -- will be packaged together as a single vehicle, but Reid said they would be divisible so that members could offer amendments to specific pieces. He said his goal was to get a vote on the package by the end of next week, because the Senate had a scheduled recess the following week and would then have to work on the continuing resolution, which is scheduled to expire on Nov. 18.

"My goal is to get as many of these appropriation bills done as we can before we leave here this year," Reid said.

Reid also implied that other spending bills could see movement in a similar form, but he declined to say which bills may come up or when.

Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa), the House Appropriations Committee's transportation subpanel chief, said yesterday that he hoped the Senate's move would smooth the way for talks between the chambers on setting a top-line number for that spending bill. As the Nov. 18 expiration of the current stopgap funding bill approaches, Latham added, a conference on today's "mini-bus" between the House and Senate could become a candidate "to carry" other fiscal 2012 spending bills.

But asked if Senate passage of its appropriations trio would heighten the prospects for an omnibus spending bill as opposed to a continuing resolution (CR), which tends to make broader, across-the-board cuts to federal agency budgets, Latham demurred.

"I don't know if one bill matters that much," he said. "Obviously, if we could conference it, it would be very good."

One House appropriations subpanel chief whose politically volatile spending bill has yet to receive even a markup in the Senate, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), also welcomed the Senate-side movement yesterday. "I don't know" if passage of the transportation, commerce, and agriculture bills bodes well for bicameral spending cooperation, Simpson said. "We'll see how the conference goes."

The transportation bill, which passed the Senate Appropriations Committee by a 28-2 vote, sets budget authority at $55.3 billion in fiscal 2012, $100 million below 2011 enacted levels. The bill maintained funding for several Obama administration initiatives, including a transit grant program, the TIGER livability grants and a sustainable communities initiative.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) shepherded in an amendment in the full committee that devotes $100 million to high-speed rail, which was zeroed out in the original bill. High-speed rail, a signature Obama administration initiative, also saw cuts in a House appropriations bill and saw its funding zeroed out in the budget deal last spring (E&E Daily, Sept. 22).

It is possible the rail money, which has been derided as pork by some Republicans, will be the target of budget-cutting amendments, but an Appropriations Committee spokesman said the committee had not yet heard what amendments would come up on the floor.

A House bill that passed the transportation subcommittee set levels at $55.15 billion, although it attracted the ire of observers because it made severe cuts to transit and livability programs, including cuts to state-supported Amtrak routes.

Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee expressed frustration that the funding levels for transportation were relatively low but said they were constrained by the income from the federal gas tax. Legislators on the Senate Finance and Environment and Public Works committees are working on a reauthorization bill that could mean a new funding source.

The Senate will also consider a $5 billion budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that boosts funding for the agency's weather and climate satellite program.

The measure gives $920 million to the satellite program, known as the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). The program had been slashed deeply in the 2011 spending cycle.

"The committee cannot deny that these satellites are a national asset crucial to predicting weather," reads the Appropriations Committee report on the spending bill. "As a result, more than one-third of NOAA's 2012 appropriation is provided for satellite acquisitions in this bill."

Other NOAA programs will see administrative and overhead reductions to make up for the increased funding for the satellite program. NOAA's overall budget would be about a half-a-billion-dollar increase over the agency's fiscal 2011 budget but about half a billion less than what President Obama requested.

The NOAA budget is included in a larger measure that funds the Commerce Department, Justice Department and other science agencies and was approved 16-14 by the Senate Appropriations Committee. It is $5 billion below what Obama requested and $626 million below 2011 levels (ClimateWire, Sept. 16).

The Senate will also take up an appropriations measure that allocates about $19.8 billion to the Agriculture Department, Food and Drug Administration and related agencies. The measure calls for a cut of $6.8 billion from the level approved for fiscal 2011 (E&E Daily, Sept. 8).

Conservation groups strongly opposed the measure when it was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee in a 29-1 vote. It cuts USDA's conservation spending by 12 percent, or $726 million, from the levels authorized by the farm bill. Cuts would affect programs that help farms set aside land for conservation and make environmental improvements.

The reductions are less, however, than in the appropriations bill that the House passed in June, which reduced conservation programs by $1.1 billion.

The Senate's measure also slashes funding for the Rural Energy for America Program, which helps farmers make energy-efficiency improvements, by almost 50 percent.

On the floor, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is expected to offer what she termed the "Frankenfish amendment," which would block FDA approval of genetically modified salmon. The amendment is the same as one that was added to House appropriations measure.

"There's no reason to believe that we'll be able to keep these genetically modified fish contained," Murkowski said at an Appropriations Committee markup on the bill.

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), chairman of the agriculture appropriations subcommittee, opposed it: "I believe it is a slippery slope and could dissuade investments in other biotechnology products."

The Senate floor is also expected to consider an amendment that would transfer $15 million from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which administers many of USDA's conservation programs, into dam maintenance.

Reporter Elana Schor contributed.

Environment & Energy Daily, under “Appropriations”

http://www.eenews.net/eed/

Deep-Sea Fisheries News Story Features President Elliott Norse

Marine Conservation Institute's President Elliott Norse was lead author on a recent paper published in Marine Policy on the unsustainablity of deep-sea fishing. The results have been getting incredible press, and it continues in this excellent news story from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This story talks about deep-sea fishing and aquaculture, and features Elliott looking his dapper best in his interview.

Click here to view the news video.

National Ocean Policy Hearing

On July 19, 2010, President Obama issued Executive Order 13547, “Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes,” known as the National Ocean Policy. The executive order establishes a national policy to protect, maintain and restore the ecological health of our ocean, coasts and Great Lakes, and to promote sustainable uses of these waters to strengthen coastal economies. The executive order establishes a National Ocean Council to implement the policy. The Council is an outgrowth of the previous White House Committee on Ocean Policy created by President George W. Bush in 2004.

Yesterday, the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing to discuss the economic impacts of the National Ocean Policy (NOP). Specifically, the hearing focused on how the National Ocean Policy would impact jobs and energy production. Marine Conservation Institute strongly supports the National Ocean Policy and the implementation tool called Marine Spatial Planning (MSP). Click here for FAQs regarding MSP and the National Ocean Policy.

Decline and recovery of coral reefs linked to 700 years of human and environmental activity

Historical reconstruction reveals humans contributed to both degradation and recovery of coral reefs

		IMAGE: This photo demonstrates several colonies of Montipora sp coral located in Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, that are being overgrown and smothered by the alien invasive algae Gorilla Ogo (Gracilaria salicornia), and... Click here for more information.

STONY BROOK, NY and STANFORD, Calif., Oct. 3, 2011–Changing human activities coupled with a dynamic environment over the past few centuries have caused fluctuating periods of decline and recovery of corals reefs in the Hawaiian Islands, according to a study sponsored in part by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University. Using the reefs and island societies as a model social-ecological system, a team of scientists reconstructed 700 years of human-environment interactions in two different regions of the Hawaiian archipelago to identify the key factors that contributed to degradation or recovery of coral reefs.
"Historical reconstruction reveals recovery in Hawaiian coral reefs," which was published online today in the journal PLoS ONE, concludes that historical changes in human societies and their relationships with coral reef ecosystems can explain whether these ecosystems exhibit patterns of sustainability and resilience or decline and degradation. Dr. John N. Kittinger, lead author of the study, was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa when the reconstruction was conducted. He is now an Early Career Social Science Fellow at Stanford University's Center for Ocean Solutions.
"Our reconstructed ecological changes included an intensive review and assessment of archaeological deposits, historical observations of ecosystem conditions, and modern ecological and fishery data," said Dr. Kittinger. "Using these data sets, our findings demonstrate that we can't always view environmental degradation solely through the lens of simplistic cause-consequence relationships. In the historical recovery periods we uncovered, we found that human agency is partly responsible for environmental recovery, which shows that not all human-environment interactions lead to irreversible deleterious outcomes and that degraded ecosystems may still retain the adaptive capacity and resilience to recover from human impacts."

		IMAGE: This photo shows Hawaiian chubs (Kyphosus species) and other reef fish swimming near the healthy Acropora cytherea species coral reefs found at French Frigate Shoals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.... Click here for more information.

"This reconstruction shows that human-environment interactions need to be included when considering the factors that contribute to the degradation of an ecosystem," said Dr. Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Science and Professor at Stony Brook University. "Understanding past interactions can be crucial in determining best practices for present-day management of coral reef ecosystems."
The analysis suggests that in the Main Hawaiian Islands marine exploitation was highest in the early period after Polynesian settlement more than 700 years ago. By 1400, however, reef-derived protein sources became less important than those derived from domesticated animals, and a suite of coral reef resource conservation strategies was implemented by Native Hawaiian societies, allowing reefs to recover. This recovery continued as traditional reef-fishing subsistence practices were abandoned through the post-European contact period after 1778 due to the introduction of epidemic diseases to the Native Hawaiian population. By the early to mid-1800s, however, reefs again went into decline due to overexploitation, land-based pollution, and other factors associated with changes in demography, economic systems, and new technologies. The analysis shows that negative impacts continued and intensified to the present day, exhibiting only a brief reprieve in the 1940s due to the closure of nearshore marine areas during World War II.
"Reefs in the Main Hawaiian Islands have been declining for more than 150 years, and similar degradation that has occurred in other reef ecosystems indicates that we may be approaching a tipping point or threshold, beyond which recovery is doubtful," said Dr. Kittinger. "If we look at historical ecosystem recoveries, reversing this decline will require protection of a broad range of habitat types over large areas, such as marine no-take reserves. Additionally, appropriate institutions and policies will need to be in place to effectively engage the diverse community of ocean-users in Hawai'i in collaborative marine ecosystem stewardship."

		IMAGE: Taken during a biennial survey of the Northwestern Hawaiian Island coral reefs, this photo shows healthy cauliflower or rose corals (Pocillopora spp.) corals and a Ringtail Wrasse (Oxycheilinus unifasciatus) found... Click here for more information.

Unlike the Main Hawaiian Islands, researchers found that coral reefs in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) have long functioned as a geographic refuge due to their isolation and limited human population. They also benefited from cultural protection as a sacred ancestral homeland in Native Hawaiian society. The analysis shows that they did, however, suffer from some of the same negative impacts of the post-European contact period as coral reefs in the Main Hawaiian Islands. After World War II, however, reefs in this region began to recover from historical impacts due to human depopulation in the area, conservation efforts, and decreases in commercial activities involving the reefs. NWHI reefs are now among the most diverse and abundant coral reef ecosystems in the world, and provide an example of how healthy reefs that have recovered from human impacts can look.
"The substantial resilience and adaptive capacity of coral reefs demonstrated in this study provide reason for hope and suggest that we should not dismiss the possibility of bringing even the most degraded reefs back to health," said Dr. Pikitch.