The National Marine Sanctuary System, Actual and Potential
In April 2017, President Trump issued Executive Order 13795, which among other things is designed to promote oceanic oil and gas exploitation. The order requires the secretary of commerce to
refrain from designating or expanding any National Marine Sanctuary [NMS] . . . unless . . . the expansion proposal includes a timely, full accounting . . . of any energy or mineral resource potential within the designated area—including offshore energy from wind, oil, natural gas, methane hydrates, and any other sources . . . deemed appropriate—and the potential impact the proposed designation or expansion will have on the development of those resources.
The National Marine Sanctuary System as of 2017.
Further, the secretary of commerce, within 180 days, in consultation with the secretaries of defense, interior, and homeland security, shall conduct a “review” of all NMSs. The review is to consider an analysis of budgetary impacts of NMS management; the adequacy of required federal, state, and tribal consultations before designation; and the “opportunity costs associated with potential energy and mineral” exploitation.
Notice that there is no requirement to review the economic benefits of NMS designation, which include ecosystem goods and services (several of which can be quantified in dollars) and avoided climate change due to keeping fossil fuels safely in the ground.
The National Marine Sanctuaries Act of 1972, as Amended
In 1972 Congress enacted the National Marine Sanctuaries Act (NMSA). Since then the statute has been amended and reauthorized six times, each being a generally weaker incarnation of the former. As first conceived in the wake of the first Earth Day in 1970, national marine sanctuaries (NMSs) would be the oceanic analogue of national parks and wilderness areas. But by the time Congress enacted the National Marine Sanctuary System (NMSS) into law, it was a multiple-use—not a preservation—statute. An onshore analogue of an NMS is a national forest in the National Forest System.
NMSs have been established to protect shipwrecks, whales, coral reefs, and other things marinely spectacular. “Sanctuary” is generally a misnomer, though, in that NMSs are not true sanctuaries from all extractive uses. Most NMSs were established by the secretary of commerce in the process mandated in the NMSA. Surviving this process means that most NMSs come out the other end of the bureaucratic meat grinder as compromised. While oil and gas exploitation is generally banned (sometimes NOAA doesn’t do so, but Congress always steps in and does so ban), other extractive uses are often not.
In fact, NMSs are managed for multiple uses, as long as those uses are deemed compatible with the purposes of an NMS. In fact, in an NMS, no use is expressly forbidden by statute, but rather it is the secretary of commerce, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who decides what’s allowed or not. Extractive uses, such as fishing, can be regulated or—if politically possible and ecologically necessary—prohibited. NOAA, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, includes the National Ocean Service (NOS), the low-profile federal agency entrusted with the administration of NMSs.
The Scope and Size of National Marine Sanctuaries
The thirteen NMSs are found in U.S. waters of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. The sanctuaries range in size from the 1 square nautical mile surrounding the sunken U.S.S. Monitor off of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to the 13,581 square nautical miles in the American Samoa NMS. In 2017, the National Marine Sanctuary System encompassed 620,692 square nautical miles (~526 million acres), though actual NMSs constituted only 38,118 square nautical miles (~32.3 million acres).
That’s because the NOAA Office of Marine Sanctuaries considers the enormous Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (582,574 square nautical miles) a part of the National Marine Sanctuary System, although it is not technically a national marine sanctuary. Some NOAA maps depict Papahānaumokuākea as a national marine sanctuary, but the official paperwork (the stautorily defined process) for it to be established as a national marine sanctuary by the secretary of commerce has not been completed, nor has Congress established it as an NMS, another path to NMS designation. The process to establish a Northwest Hawaiian Islands National Marine Sanctuary was initiated by the Clinton administration. However, in 2006, President G. W. Bush used authority granted by Congress to establish the Northwest Hawaiian Islands National Marine Sanctuary. In 2007, renamed it the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
Offshore Washington is the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. Offshore California are several national marine sanctuaries with more in the works. Offshore Oregon is missing in action. Source: NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries Program.