The Coast Guard’s earliest official involvement in protecting natural resources began in 1822, shortly before the new Territory of Florida was added to the nation. In passing the new act for “the preservation of timber of the United States in Florida,” Congress moved to protect a species of sturdy live oak, native to the southeastern United States, that was the material of choice for building American warships. The law banned timber harvesting on federal lands, and mandated the forfeiture to the United States of any vessel whose owner or master knowingly transported timber taken from these reserves. Revenue cutters were charged with patrolling the coasts of Florida to enforce compliance with this law.

As little as a few decades ago, the ocean’s fisheries seemed inexhaustible, but surges in demand, along with climate change and rising ocean temperatures, have ramped up pressures on an increasingly valuable – and fragile – resource.

Since the early 19th century, the agency’s mission to safeguard the nation’s natural resources has expanded considerably; the Coast Guard is charged with protecting living marine resources and the sea itself. Like the 1822 law, many of its earliest duties were aimed at preventing the depletion or extinction of economically valuable species. Among these species were the many marine animals on which Americans relied for food.

Congress noted as early as 1871, when it established a U.S. Fish Commission, that many of the nation’s most valuable “food fishes” were rapidly diminishing, and for decades, the legislature and the White House worked together on measures to preserve these species. Many of these measures were implemented on an ad hoc basis, and many assigned new regulatory or enforcement responsibilities to the Revenue Cutter Service and, later, the Coast Guard.

The current system of active fisheries management – management plans determined by regional councils; evaluated, approved, and implemented by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS); and enforced by the Coast Guard – was not implemented until the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The law created the 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), extending outward from U.S. shores, that effectively quadrupled the offshore fishing area controlled by the United States.

As little as a few decades ago, the ocean’s fisheries seemed inexhaustible, but surges in demand, along with climate change and rising ocean temperatures, have ramped up pressures on an increasingly valuable – and fragile – resource. According to the NMFS, while the overall value of fish landed at U.S. ports was a little more than $5.1 billion in 2012, the international trade in coastal marine fisheries contributed about $70 billion annually to the U.S. economy. At the same time, 39 commercially and recreationally important fish populations are experiencing overfishing, and another 43 populations remain at unhealthy levels.

With the stakes so high, the Coast Guard’s enforcement role has never been more important. Under existing statutes and treaty agreements, the service is charged with preventing illegal encroachment into the U.S. EEZ by foreign fishing vessels, ensuring compliance with U.S. laws and regulations, and helping to monitor and enforce compliance with international agreements.

The vastness of the U.S. EEZ – at 3.36 million square miles, the largest in the world – has led the Coast Guard to develop relationships that extend its reach, including the bilateral shiprider agreements that allow law enforcement officers from other nations to exercise their authority while aboard a vessel under a partner nation’s flag. These agreements have proven especially valuable in the service’s largest area of responsibility: the 14th District, which extends from the Hawaiian Islands nearly 4,000 miles westward to Guam, and more than 2,500 miles south to American Samoa. In the spring of 2014, for example, the Coast Guard cutters Assateague and Sequoia participated in Operation Rai Balang, a joint fisheries patrol involving the United States, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The cutters traversed more than 7,500 miles over a period of 40 days through the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas Islands’ EEZ and surrounding high seas.

A few weeks later, the interdiction of a vessel illegally fishing on the high seas of the North Pacific illustrated the importance of international agreements that apply to the ocean expanse that lies beyond any nation’s EEZ. While operating a joint patrol with the Coast Guard’s 17th (Alaska) District, a Canadian maritime patrol aircraft, with Japanese spotters aboard, detected a 191-foot-long fishing vessel, the Chinese-flagged Yin Yuan, in the ocean 625 miles east of Tokyo, Japan, on May 22. The vessel exhibited physical characteristics of large-scale drift net fishing.

The United Nations has banned high seas drift net fishing since 1992, and the United States is one of many nations cooperating in the joint enforcement of this ban. Drift net fishing is an indiscriminate and destructive method of netting pelagic fish – and any other living creature that happens across the often miles-long expanse of what Cmdr. Chris Barrows, deputy chief of the 17th District’s enforcement division, calls a “yawning gate of death.”

The spotters relayed their sighting information to the CGC Morgenthau, which was patrolling in the area, with Chinese shipriders aboard, as part of a multilateral fisheries law enforcement operation. On May 27, the Morgenthau interdicted the fishing vessel and assisted the boarding by Chinese law enforcement officers, which uncovered a half-ton of salmon and multiple violations on board. The Chinese law enforcement officials summoned their headquarters in Beijing, and the vessel was transferred into the custody of the Chinese coast guard on June 3.

 

Marine Environmental Protection

Through its Marine Environmental Protection Program, the Coast Guard develops and enforces regulations to keep invasive species out of the maritime environment, to prevent unauthorized ocean dumping, and to prevent oil and chemical spills into the ocean and waterways. The service’s involvement in environmental protection can be traced to the Refuse Act, a section of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, that outlawed the “dumping of refuse” into navigable waters and gave the Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers joint enforcement authority. The Clean Water Act of 1972 provides the current framework for the Coast Guard’s Marine Environmental Protection Program.

By the 1970s, the largest non-naval ships on the ocean were the world’s oil tankers. Stiffer international rules concerning oil pollution, in the form of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, were seen in 1973; in that same year, the Coast Guard developed a National Strike Force to bring technical expertise and advanced equipment to combat spills worldwide.

Over the past few years in Alaska, where warming Arctic Ocean temperatures have exposed the shore of the North Slope to longer ice-free summers, the Coast Guard has been projecting its presence northward through Operation Arctic Shield. Each of these operations has involved a component aimed at evaluating oil spill capabilities in the uniquely challenging American Arctic, where several oil companies have been granted exploratory drilling permits in recent years.

The Coast Guard’s role in maritime oil spills was permanently altered in the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The oil tanker grounded and spilled more than 10 million gallons of crude oil within five hours, covering an unprecedented 11,000 square miles of the water’s surface and killing hundreds of thousands of marine creatures. The Exxon Valdez spill led to the passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), which greatly expanded federal oversight of maritime oil transport while placing the responsibility for preventing and cleaning oil spills squarely on private-sector operators.

OPA 90 remains one of the Coast Guard’s most significant legislative mandates. It created a comprehensive system for preventing, responding to, and paying for oil pollution incidents in U.S. waters that involves expanded regulatory authority, response and enforcement capabilities, potential financial liabilities, and research and development programs. The law requires tanker operators, for example, to submit “plans to prevent spills that may occur” and a “detailed containment and cleanup plan” to the Coast Guard for approval.

In the 21st century, climate change and technological innovation have opened new frontiers for North America’s oil and gas industries. Domestic production – both offshore and inland – has hit record levels and continues to grow, a boom that has increased demand on the nation’s Marine Transportation System (MTS) to support the movement of oil and gas, refined products and chemicals, and related goods. This surge in maritime commerce will challenge the Coast Guard’s capacity to ensure safety, security, and environmental stewardship in a way that allows the nation to enjoy the full economic benefit of this American energy renaissance.

The Coast Guard’s role in the comprehensive system for pollution prevention and response involves several activities, including patrolling and managing waterways; inspecting vessels, cargo, and port facilities; preparing for and responding to incidents; and conducting investigations. Recent developments have underscored two key characteristics of this system: It’s multifaceted, involving partners from both the public and private sectors. It’s also heavily focused on preventing spills from occurring in the first place.

Over the past few years in Alaska, where warming Arctic Ocean temperatures have exposed the shore of the North Slope to longer ice-free summers, the Coast Guard has been projecting its presence northward through Operation Arctic Shield. Each of these operations has involved a component aimed at evaluating oil spill capabilities in the uniquely challenging American Arctic, where several oil companies have been granted exploratory drilling permits in recent years.

In August and September 2014, Arctic Shield provided a platform – the CGC Healy, a floating laboratory and icebreaker – for a team of researchers to study the problem of potential oil spills in the Arctic. The operation involved people from 13 different agencies, including the Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the nonprofit Marine Exchange of Alaska. Areas of study included the movement of oil in ice and the Arctic water column; the use of unmanned airborne and underwater vehicles in tracking spills; the capabilities of electronic communications systems; boat operations; navigational safety; and NOAA’s Arctic Environmental Response Management Application, a Geographic Information System tool for helping emergency responders and managers deal with environmental incidents in remote locations.

As the Arctic has opened to fossil fuel exploration, hydraulic fracturing and other technologies have created a boom in oil production from regions in the interior, including the tar sands underlying a large swath of the Canadian province of Alberta, and North Dakota’s Bakken Shale formation. Both these regions are extracting crude oil at a rate that is taxing the ability of transport systems to get it to refineries.

One solution proposed by operators is the shipment of oil by barge over the Great Lakes and perhaps out the St. Lawrence Seaway. An Indiana-based energy company has investigated the possibility of upgrading a dock near its Superior, Wisconsin, refinery to enable the offloading of crude oil onto barges.

In 2011, the Coast Guard awarded $2.5 million in research grants to three companies and encouraged them to develop technologies that could detect and recover sinking oils. That research is ongoing.

The prospect of Great Lakes crude shipments is controversial: While it would bring economic benefits and jobs to the region, it also carries risks, as some concerned citizens – and the Coast Guard’s 9th District (Great Lakes) – have pointed out. The crude oil extracted from Alberta sands is a heavy bitumen, so viscous it has to be diluted in order to flow through pipelines. According to Jerry Popiel, an incident management and preparedness advisor for the Coast Guard’s 9th District, the diluent in this mixture can evaporate once a spill occurs, leaving the heavy oil to sink straight to the bottom. “In fresh water, depending on conditions and product type, it can be on the surface for maybe a week to three weeks,” he said, “and then it can sink.”

Recent history – a 2010 pipeline rupture that discharged an estimated 834,000 gallons of diluted bitumen or “dilbit” along a 35-mile extent of Kalamazoo River, the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history – has led many community members to greet the possibility of Great Lakes dilbit barges with alarm. The cleanup of the Kalamazoo River delta, conducted largely through dredging operations, continued well into 2014.

In 2011, the Coast Guard awarded $2.5 million in research grants to three companies and encouraged them to develop technologies that could detect and recover sinking oils. That research is ongoing. As a 2013 report from the nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes pointed out – and the Coast Guard 9th District Commander Rear Adm. Fred Midgette has publicly affirmed – these capabilities don’t yet exist.

The comprehensive system for oil spill prevention and response mandated by OPA 90, however, involves people, resources, and planning working together in an incident command structure. The fact that oil sinks doesn’t change anything about this system; it simply requires a different tactical approach – one that’s still being researched. That people are talking about the issue before bitumen is loaded onto a Great Lakes barge, Popiel pointed out, is a sign that the system is working.

“We’ve been up front about saying this is something that needs to be worked on,” he said. “We, the industry, the responsive parties – all of us together need to figure out a better way to do that. And the Coast Guard is encouraging action, rather than alarm, on this issue.”

Marine Protected Resources

About a half-century after it was tasked with protecting the nation’s timber resources in 1822, the Revenue Cutter Service was sent to the new territory of Alaska to launch the legendary Bering Sea Patrol. With authorization and funding from Congress, the cutters enforced a ban on the hunting of fur seals, whose valuable pelts placed the seals at risk of extinction. This was the Coast Guard’s first authorization for the protection of a marine protected species – an authority since expanded by laws such as the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the amended Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Presence, engagement, and execution have always been important goals for the Coast Guard – but the increasing size and vulnerability of these protected areas has refocused and sharpened the priorities expressed in “Ocean Steward.”

The Coast Guard does more than merely enforce laws: It’s an active partner in promoting healthy populations of marine protected species. It helps NOAA in the operation of the North Atlantic Right Whale Sighting Advisory System, designed to reduce collisions between ships and the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale along the East Coast. It partners with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rescue and rehabilitate wounded Florida manatees. For the past several years, Coast Guard personnel have assisted volunteers from Fort Lauderdale’s Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in the offshore release of sea turtle hatchlings. In April 2014, a Coast Guard aircrew from Air Station Barbers Point flew an endangered Hawaiian monk seal from Kauai to Oahu on a C-130 Hercules aircraft for emergency surgery. In September, a crew from the CGC Kukui participated in a multi-agency effort to translocate 28 endangered Laysan ducks – a species that once ranged throughout the Hawaiian islands but was, until recently, restricted to a single tiny island in the archipelago – to establish an independent population on the distant Kure Atoll.

The Coast Guard’s mission to protect and preserve marine resources, however, isn’t limited to animal life; the Coast Guard is charged with supporting the sustainable management of federal marine protected areas, including National Marine Sanctuaries and Marine National Monuments.

In terms of area, federally managed marine resources have grown exponentially in recent years. The Obama administration’s September 2014 expansion of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, a reserve spanning islands and atolls far to the south and west of Hawaii, created the largest marine reserve in the world: 490,000 square miles of some of the most pristine marine habitat on Earth, including coral reefs, vegetation, seamounts, and species not found anywhere else. The reserve includes some of the world’s most vulnerable habitat, highly sensitive to impacts from climate change and acidification.

The most recent version of the Coast Guard’s strategic guidance document for its Marine Protected Resources Program, “Ocean Steward 2014,” reflects an appreciation of the complexities involved in managing such resources. It identifies “Effective Presence” as one of its three primary goals, but acknowledges that the variety of regulated activities, distributed over an increasingly vast network of marine protected areas, means enforcement alone won’t be enough: “Even with the best planning,” reads “Ocean Steward,” “there are not enough vessels, aircraft and supporting capabilities to interdict all violations of protected resource regulations.”

The document’s other goals are aimed squarely at closing this gap. Through “Enhanced Engagement,” the Coast Guard cultivates outreach, education, and partnerships to leverage results with the help of other stakeholders. Through “Exemplary Execution,” the service establishes meticulous Protected Living Marine Resource Plans that target activities and protocols at the district level.

Presence, engagement, and execution have always been important goals for the Coast Guard – but the increasing size and vulnerability of these protected areas has refocused and sharpened the priorities expressed in “Ocean Steward.” According to Steven Tucker, who manages the Coast Guard’s Marine Protected Resources Program, these resources have never been more critical to the national interest. “We need to provide for an intact ecosystem for the future,” he said. “We’re coming up on a period of more dramatic change in environmental conditions than we’ve seen in hundreds of years – and in order to be able to respond to that change, the environment and the organisms in it are going to need to be healthy and substantially free of other stressors. It’s our national heritage. If we squander it, or ignore impacts, or fail to take care of it, then we’re derelict in our duties as people.”

This article first appeared in the U.S. Coast Guard 225th Anniversary publication, a special edition of Coast Guard Outlook.