Government collaboration and stakeholder engagement through Regional Ocean Partnerships

Summary: Regional Ocean Partnerships (ROPs) allow coordination between states, federal agencies, and tribes on shared priorities. Several US regions have trusted and longstanding ROPs (including MARCO in the Mid-Atlantic, NROC in the Northeast, GOMA in the Gulf, and WCOA on the west coast), all of which have been facilitating government-to-government collaboration and stakeholder engagement for nearly 10 years. I would like to speak specifically about MARCO, and how Federal agencies can leverage the collaboration space and data sharing tools developed by MARCO to efficiently work with Mid-Atlantic states and tribes, to advance the 2018 Decadal Vision and the 2022 Areas for Immediate Opportunity outlined in the SOST report. MARCO’s collaboration spaces and other tools include but are not limited to:

1. The Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal is a publicly available, interactive data visualization tool that provides access to over 6,000 spatial data layers for fishing grounds, marine life habitat, a vast range of human uses, oceanographic information, and more.
2. The Mid-Atlantic Committee on the Ocean, which seeks to enhance the vitality of the region’s ocean ecosystem and economy through increased communication and collaboration between State agencies, Federal agencies, Tribes, and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council. Many MACO activities build upon the 2016 Mid-Atlantic Regional Ocean Plan. As new activities and challenges arise, the committee is poised to continue to support coordination and transparency on offshore and coastal issues.
3. MARCO’s topic-specific working groups, co-led by states and federal agencies and/or tribes and composed of governmental and nongovernmental actors, around topics that currently include marine debris, ocean acidification, offshore wind energy, maritime commerce and navigation, and recreation. Additional work groups are being scoped for ocean conservation and increasing diversity, equity, inclusion in the Mid-Atlantic blue economy.

Finally, I would also like to discuss opportunities for the SOST to become involved with MARCO and MACO, including: coordinating offshore wind transmission coast-wide; standardizing monitoring; identifying ecosystem services that ocean habitats provide (such as but not limited to climate change mitigation, marine carbon dioxide removal); convening regional ocean partnerships nationally to share lessons-learned on federal agency involvement, and how they work across states/regions/tribes.

Sector: Regional Ocean Partnership
Organization: Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO)
POC: Avalon Bristow, abristow@midatlanticocean.org
Other Contacts: Kim Cole, kimberly.Cole@delaware.gov