THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
REPORT FROM THE CABINET: AN OCEAN POLICY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY September 2, 1999
At the National Ocean Conference last year in Monterey, President Clinton directed the Cabinet to report back with recommendations for a comprehensive ocean policy to guide federal efforts in the 21st century. In a report presented today to Vice President Al Gore, entitled "Turning to the Sea: American's Ocean Future," the Cabinet recommends nearly 150 actions to protect, restore, and explore America's ocean resources. The Vice President, in accepting the report, launched a high-level task force to oversee implementation of key recommendations.
Recommendations from the Cabinet include:
Sustaining Economic Benefits
- Create new incentives to reduce overfishing, allowing fish stocks
to recover and become more commercially viable.
- Develop guidelines for environmentally sound and sustainable
aquaculture and promote domestic and international compliance with them.
- Increase support for sustainable harvesting and testing of marine
resources with potential pharmaceutical benefits.
- Help state, local and tribal governments adopt and implement
sustainable development plans for coastal zones.
Maintaining Global Security
- Work with the Senate to ensure that the United States joins the Law
of the Sea Convention as soon as possible.
- Improve U.S. capability to conduct surveillance, detection,
identification, classification, and interdiction of maritime threats
before they reach U.S. shores.
- Coordinate initiatives to maintain and exercise freedom of
navigation.
Protecting Marine Resources
- Coordinate federal programs with "smart growth" initiatives at the
local level.
- Coordinate efforts among federal agencies to effectively address
polluted runoff and other sources of coastal pollution.
- Strengthen efforts to protect and restore essential fish habitat as
required by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management
Act.
- Examine the concept of marine wilderness areas and its application
to U.S. marine protected areas.
Discovering the Oceans
- Improve coordination of data collection among coastal, open-ocean
and seafloor observation stations and expand their data gathering
capabilities.
- Integrate relevant ocean science disciplines to advance basic and
applied research in ocean and coastal issues.
- Support expansion of underwater exploration by federal agencies and
through private exploration initiatives.
- Establish a nationally coordinated effort to improve and promote
ocean science education.
To oversee implementation of the Cabinet recommendations, the Vice President announced a new high-level Oceans Report Task Force. The Task Force will prioritize the recommendations, appoint lead agencies for implementation of key recommendations, and meet quarterly to review progress. The Task Force will be co-chaired by the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Deputy National Security Advisor and will include high-level representatives of agencies with responsibility for ocean affairs.
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