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• Open for Business
• 10 Questions for the Coastal Storms Program
• Coastal Groups Show Interest in Organized Land Conservation
• Committee Charged with Plan to Keep Waterfronts Accessible
• Miller to Specialize in Water Quality
• Sea Urchins Spawn Learning
• Asian Fishermen Net Loan, Gear Information at Business Workshop
• Volunteers Can Learn to be Oyster Gardeners
• Featured Publication
• From the Director

Sea Briefs is a report on the results of the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium.

Editor: Laura Bowie

This newsletter is available in PDF format from:
masgc.org/seabriefs

MASGC supports applied, interdisciplinary marine science research, education and outreach efforts to foster the sustainable development and management of the Mississippi and Alabama coasts and nearshore ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico

Mississippi-Alabama
Sea Grant Consortium
703 East Beach Drive
Ocean Springs, MS 39564
Phone: 228-818-8838
E-mail: seabriefs@masgc.org
MASGP 09-011-01

Guest Editorial
We are all connected: Ecosystem-based management
concepts as a model for collaboration

ROBERTA ARENA SWANN, Interim Director,
Mobile Bay National Estuary Program

Ecosystem-based management is a process that integrates biological, social and economic factors into a comprehensive strategy aimed at protecting and enhancing sustainability, diversity and productivity of our natural resources.

When the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (MBNEP) was established, it provided Alabama’s coastal communities with a mechanism, through its Management Conference, for bringing together the capabilities of resource managers, scientists, the business community, concerned citizens and elected officials to protect and restore Alabama’s coastal environment and way of life. In the same way that ecosystem-based management integrates biological, social and economic factors, the MBNEP conference joined together to create a Comprehensive Conservation Management Plan (CCMP). This Herculean effort outlined actions that would improve water quality, sustain living resource populations, protect and restore critical habitats, mitigate the impacts of human uses and increase knowledge about our estuarine environment. Implementation of the CCMP was largely dependent on MBNEP, MASGC, Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR) and others working together.

Seven years have passed since the CCMP was approved and its implementation begun. In that time a unique partnership has evolved to lead community-wide environmental actions. What started as informal sharing of projects such as oyster gardening and the Clean Marina program led to a unique relationship between MBNEP, MASGC and ADCNR. Funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the State of Alabama, these three programs have joined forces to promote community planning, estuarine research and other activities with a team approach that reduces duplication and allows individual strengths to be exploited. This approach has been a role model for collaboration, locally, regionally and nationally. This partnership has not only strengthened the abilities of MBNEP, MASGC and ADCNR to undertake larger projects, it has established a higher standard within the Management Conference for working together across agencies.

As the MBNEP Management Conference continues to implement the CCMP with fewer and fewer resources available, improved coordination among different community interests and development of new partnerships will be paramount for bringing necessary resources to the table.

Organizations cannot be successful if they work in isolation. By joining forces, MBNEP, MASGC and ADNCR leverage their individual efforts threefold in supporting important research, community sustainability, public awareness and environmental education. As ecosystem-based management is based on consideration of every aspect of an ecosystem, successful protection of our coastal environmental resources will happen only when organizations and interests involved recognize that each is connected to the other. Those connections, if managed with coastal conservation in mind, will pay high dividends in the future.