 So, our program was established 10 years ago, we were reauthorized by Congress in 2012, and our vision is the global ocean and its coasts free from the impacts of marine debris. So, this is a very big, broad goal, and we go about it in a few different ways. Within the Marine Debris Act, we have legislative mandates, so these are the things that we are required to do. The first is to identify, determine the sources of, assess, prevent, reduce, and remove marine debris, just a short thing to do. The next thing is to provide national and regional coordination, that is my job here in the region, to reduce the adverse impacts of lost and discarded fishing gear, to conduct outreach and education, and to address severe marine debris events. So a severe marine debris event would be something like the Japan Tsunami, or Superstorm Sandy, and the debris that was caused by those events, and we can only address those things when Congress asks us to, so we don't respond right away, but if Congress says, hey, we need your help with this, we will show up. We are, one thing I should note, we are a non-regulatory part of NOAA, so NOAA Fisheries is a regulatory agency. We are not, we're part of the National Ocean Service, so our goal is to provide science to policy makers, so that they can make decisions about different issues. Of course in this case, we're talking about marine debris. And as Senator Whitehouse noted, we are small, but I like to think mighty. Our budget is fairly limited, but we're still doing a lot of work around the country. So we take these legislative mandates, and we address them through five program pillars. The first is removal of debris, the second is research, the third is prevention of debris through education and outreach, emergency response to those events, like I was mentioning, and then regional coordination. So as the regional coordinator, it's my job to make sure that those first four things are happening within the region. We have coordinators around the country, so if you have an interest in debris issues in California or the Pacific Islands or Alaska, we have a coordinator that deals with those issues there, so feel free to reach out to me, and I can put you in touch with any of them. We heard from Dr. Whitehouse where marine debris is coming from. So again, land-based sources are the majority of the debris that's ending up in the ocean. It comes from littering or storm drains, illegal dumping, that leakage process where things aren't being captured by a trash or waste management system. And then there are also ocean-based sources. These come from commercial and recreational fishing operations, derelict and abandoned vessels, and offshore industries such as aquaculture or oil drilling. You've seen this slide already, you may see it again this afternoon. This is a pretty popular one, and we're really starting to find out more about this issue, and we're getting maybe not solid numbers, but very good estimates about what is happening and how much is out there. So when these kind of things come out in the press or in publication, it's really great for us to be able to cite them so that we have something that everyone, a common language that everyone's speaking with. And the things I want to call attention to is we're talking in this graphic just about plastic waste in the year 2010, and the estimate is in the box there of about eight million metric tons. And you heard, I think, Senator Whitehouse say that that is the equivalent of five grocery bags of trash per one foot of shoreline around the world. That's a really alarming, alarming number. We know that there's a lot out there. What is it doing in the environment? So the NOAA marine debris program's priority is to address species and habitat impacts. We also focus a bit on human impacts, but a lot of that science is still developing. These are better known issues with marine debris. So from a paper we put out in 2015 on species entanglement with debris, in the United States, at least 115 marine species are impacted by entanglement. If you look in the literature, this number of species could be larger. We were just dealing with what was available at the time, and in the United States, particularly. All six marine species have been confirmed to ingest marine debris. This was from a paper we put out about ingestion of debris. And just in a quick Google, I found this article on national geographic about how a small fragment of a DVD case was enough to kill a whale, unfortunately. Over one-third of seabird species ingest plastic. This is a Lason albatross. They inhabit the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. There are no humans inhabiting that area, but there is plenty of trash that ends up where they're feeding, and then they end up feeding their chicks a combination of actual food and marine debris. And that's where we get these images of seabirds with large amounts of debris in their stomachs, which is not great for their survival. As I mentioned, we talk a little bit about human impacts. So there are also economic losses from marine debris. And I know that this image is a little bit small, but the basic concept is we studied the perceptions that people have in Orange County, California about the cleanliness of their beaches. And we found that if the municipalities reduced the amount of trash on beaches, they could potentially save $148 million. And that is because people are choosing to take their money elsewhere because of their perception or the reality of what kind of trash is found on the beaches in their communities. Another study that we're working on now, that the idea is to take a coastal tourism data set that was gathered after the Deepwater Horizon incident and pair that with marine debris counts on beaches around the country. I think in this region, the beaches we're focusing on are in southern Maine and Cape Cod, but hopefully that data set will be made available so that people can continue the analysis to look at how coastal tourism might be affected in their communities due to marine debris. Derelict or ghost fishing, we've heard about this. This is when gear that was being actively fished is no longer being checked on. Perhaps it's been separated from the surface because of a line cut that separates the buoy from the gear on the bottom. And this gear continues to fish. Depending on the type of gear, it can be several months to several years. And as a result, that gear is impacting both the species that was the original target of the gear, as well as any sort of bycatch that ends up in that gear because it's not being checked and that bycatch is not being thrown out of the gear. Just a few weeks ago, we released a study that looked at the Chesapeake Bay and the study found that there was a 12% to 20% loss rate of crab pots every year. The study estimates that there are at least 145,000 derelict pots in the bay. At the loss rate that they estimate, it's probably a lot higher than that, but that was what they were able to confirm. And those derelict pots catch over 6 million crabs a year and kill over 3.3 million of them. So some of the crabs were able to come into the trap and then leave, but the ones that get stuck in there represented about 4.5% of the 2014 catch level. And the study also looked at our removals of derelict fishing gear good. So there's a lot out there. If there's 145,000 derelict pots there, we're not necessarily going to be able to go out and pick up every single one. But through targeted removals in zones where there are a lot of derelict gear, the study found that this increased the harvest by over 38 million pounds, which is valued at $33.5 million. So my guess, I have a strong guess that the actual removals did not cost $33.5 million. So there is a good return on the investment that's made when removal programs are funded. Marine debris also causes habitat destruction, abandoned and derelict vessels, particularly after storms or docks that end up floating up into marshland can really devastate the environment there. But also navigational hazards, Senator Whitehouse talked about the Valvo Ocean Race, and this is actually a picture on the right hand side of one of the teams from last year clearing debris off of their keel while they're underway, not the safest maneuver and also something that slows them down and could cause them to lose time in this race, which even though they're sailing around the world, it's a very neck and neck kind of thing. This is an issue, invasive species transport is something that we learned a lot more about following the Japan tsunami because of the amount of debris that was floated out of the coastal area in Japan and entered the ocean. And that debris has ended up on the West Coast and in Hawaii, and we're able to look at the species that are present on that debris, and they're often not native to where that debris ended up. We haven't seen a case yet that documents those invasive species establishing themselves, but it's certainly a concern when something like what's in the picture here shows up on your beach. You have to go through a completely different procedure than if you were just doing a coastal cleanup. You actually need to disinfect the debris and scrape off all of the organisms and dispose of them like they're hazardous waste, basically. So our program in the Northeast, I'm going to get a little bit into some of the project that we're supporting here and also how our program works on those five different pillars that I described at the beginning. So the Northeast region is New York, New Jersey, up through Maine, and I am the staff member for this region, so small and mighty. I would say that the key issues here in no particular order are derelict fishing here, consumer debris, and storm debris. Certainly we have a large commercial and recreational fishing industry here, and there just is a percentage of gear that is lost accidentally every year. Consumer debris, we have large population centers close to the coast, so anything that escapes the waste management infrastructure is probably going to end up in the ocean. And then storm debris, I think Superstorm Sandy, and I'll show you some pictures of the work that we're doing still related to Superstorm Sandy. So one of our pillars is prevention, and this is mostly done through education and outreach. I think that prevention is the key thing. We can do all the cleanups we want in the ocean, but if we don't actually stop what's getting out there in the first place, you're just going to be doing those cleanups over and over and over again. So our education and outreach partnerships include the International Coastal Cleanup with the Ocean Conservancy, we have a smartphone application that we supported the development of at the University of Georgia, and we have competitive grants about $600,000 per year to fund education and outreach partnerships. We also have school activities, some of you probably saw the 2018 Marine Debris Art Contest calendar, I'm sorry I didn't bring more, I have a very limited supply, but our 2019 calendar contest is open now. So if you have kindergarten through eighth grade students or know of teachers that might be interested, their students can submit artwork to the competition. And on our website we have a whole suite of curriculum and activities for kids, and you'll hear a little bit more about a project that we supported this afternoon to work with college students on Marine Debris. So this is a particular project in Salem Sound, so this is Salem, Massachusetts. Salem Sound Coast Watch worked with teenagers to address different issues that the teens noticed in their community, and the two things they chose to focus on were shoreline debris and cigarette butts. And so they put out different receptacles for both to try to encourage the use of those receptacles and reduce the amount that was ending up in their waterways. We have other projects with the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation, they're working with teenagers, the University of Hartford who you hear from this afternoon, and the Hudson River Community Sailing School in New York City, and they're also working with teenagers to address debris issues in Manhattan. Our removal projects involve the removal of large to medium-sized debris, including derelict fishing gear. We have about one to $1.4 million per year for this program, and since 2006 we funded over 100 projects. I'll show you some particular projects here in the northeast. This was done with Hofstra University on Long Island, and they cleared 85.6 metric tons of debris from a local salt marsh there. The American Latoral Society is also working in a similar area in Jamaica Bay near New York City, and this was a project they had a few years ago, and they worked with volunteers to target things like the medium-sized boat, small boat that's in the bottom picture there, and that ended up with 36 metric tons removed. They have an ongoing project, and their target is 59 metric tons, again things like these small boats, or a tire with a boot still on it because the person didn't want to pay their parking fees. Extension of Long Island, they had a project a few years ago where they were removing derelict lobster traps from Long Island Sound, and that resulted in over 4,000 traps being removed. They just wrapped up another project that removed just under 4,000 traps, and again we're trying to remove as many as we can, we're probably not going to get all of them, but to help the population there to reproduce and not get killed off by this derelict gear. Clean Bays is working in the Providence River here in Rhode Island. They've removed over 60 metric tons of debris to date, and this project should conclude in a few months. Their hope is to get over 100 metric tons. So we talk a lot about other countries and how much trash is perhaps entering the oceans. Again we don't want to point fingers because we also have issues here, and there's plenty to do here on our shorelines. We have other projects to look at derelict fishing gear removals with Stockton University in New Jersey and the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts. We're also a partner in a public-private partnership called the Fishing for Energy Partnership, and this program is nationwide, so this map is only showing you our locations in the northeast, but this is a program that allows for no cost disposal of fishing gear by commercial and recreational fishers at different bins located at ports throughout the country. So this is a partnership between Covanta Energy, Schnitzer Steel, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and our organization. And this program started, I believe, in 2007, and to date we're over 3 million pounds, so over 1,300 metric tons of fishing gear has been disposed of in these bins at these port locations. This program also supports a grant program that looks at gear technology and gear modifications to either prevent gear from being lost in the first place or to disable that gear after it's been lost to prevent the mortalities that happen. Emergency response. So I am currently managing our projects for Superstorm Sandy, and we worked with all of the effective states. This came to us and gave us supplemental funding to work with the states. So Delaware, through Rhode Island, and we've partnered with each state and New York City to do removals of debris that was not cleared by either FEMA funding or any other kind of emergency funding. So to date we're over 375 metric tons. I think that by the time all the final reports come in, that number will probably double to 700, 750. And these were the big things, things like houseboats that had sank in the marina area, a part of a porch that ended up in a marsh in Connecticut. And this was a naval anchoring device that was floated from one part of Jamestown to another part of Jamestown, and that has been removed at this point. And this thing weighs a lot. We're also working with states, so a lot of the removals after the fact are very after the fact. So we're working with states to address plans. So how did they plan for the next marine debris event? And who does what in that situation? So we've created plans with, I believe, Florida and most of the West Coast states. We're working on the Gulf States next, and then we'll kind of move our way up the coast into the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. So eventually we will do one of these for Rhode Island. And it's a really nice document that shows a flowchart of what kind of emergency was it, was there a disaster declared, and then you kind of follow what agencies have authority as a result of the different things that can happen following an event like that. These are not intended to address the chronic debris that we've been talking about of consumer debris and things that just kind of happen all the time. But we are working on that as well through regional planning efforts. I have an effort that's ongoing in the Gulf of Maine, so I'm working with Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, and a little bit of Canadian representation to address debris issues in the Gulf of Maine. My hope is to move that process after it's further along and to do the same thing for Connecticut and Rhode Island, and then eventually New York and New Jersey. And a bunch of these plans are already available, so if you're interested, they are on our website. So winding down here, we also do some research, which was another one of our pillars. We have a research grant competition that is currently open, and it's accepting applications through, I believe, the middle of December. So if you have partners in academia, we have particular priority focuses that we're looking at, so definitely check out our funding opportunity and let me know if you have any questions. But other projects that we've done have looked at microplastics, how much is there, and are there better ways to do microplastics, quantification, and analysis in the laboratory. I mentioned the socioeconomic studies that we're doing. We've looked a little bit at plastics and the chemicals that tend to be attracted to those plastics once they're in the ocean, and fishing gear research as well. So I won't show this video to you now, but I think for a government program, we're fairly cutting edge in our social media and outreach in that we had a trash talk video series that premiered for World Oceans Day last year and won a regional Emmy award in the Chesapeake, Maryland area, so that was a big thing for our office. And these videos are available to stream or download. They're definitely geared at kids, but it's a really good general introduction to what is marine debris and what are the big questions that people have. And the most popular page on our website is about the Pacific Garbage Patch. So it doesn't matter where you are in the country, that's probably something you've heard of, and that's a lot of people's entry point to the issue. So then we hope that they will stay engaged with our materials and move to think about the other issues in their region and that they can have an impact on. So I encourage you to check these out. And these are all the ways to get in touch with us. Our website, our blog, our social media presences, and that's my email there on the top, again, our website. And then the Clearing House is where you can get more information about any of the projects I've talked about and many that I have not addressed here. So everything is presented in a map format and you can click around and see where we've done work. Thank you very much. Thank you, Keith. We do have time for one or two questions. There are questions from the audience. Keith, that was outstanding. Thank you very much. Last Memorial Day weekend, I was in Hampton Beach. And I was supposed to have a romantic beach walk. It turned into a beach cleanup. And I had two handfuls of garbage. I mean, we kept going to the garbage cans, going to the garbage cans, but I saw two state troopers and I walked up to them and I said, with two handfuls of garbage, and I said, don't you have any enforcement mechanisms on this beach for debris? And he said, lady, all we care about is underage drinking and drugs. That's not our problem. So I wrote to the town and said, this is your primary source of revenue and you're not taking care of it. Why can't you do something like a $250 fine for littering on the beach? Because that's what cleaned up our highways. And I don't know whether it is an opportunity for reducing debris on beaches. But to have them, if they gave out 10 fines in one day, the word would get out. What can we do to implement something like that? Yeah, that's a great question, a great comment about kind of the issue. My wife also hates walking on beaches with me because I end up doing a beach cleanup instead of walking. All of those decisions are primarily made at the local level. So our goal is to provide the information that policymakers need to make decisions. So our hope is that this new economic study about coastal tourism will have information that can influence people's decision. I can't speak to what the results are going to be because I don't know. But if it shows that coastal tourism is impacted by debris on the beach, well, you would think that the local Chamber of Commerce or the local decision makers and lawmakers would want to make a change that could reduce that because you're hurting your businesses, you're hurting your community, as well as the environment. And I think everybody comes out this from a very different perspective of maybe we care about the environment and we want to be green and good to the environment. Other people are not looking at it that way. So I think there are other ways that we need to reach them. Generally, we stay out of local and state-level decisions about policy that would impact marine debris. But we try to encourage them to look at the information that we provide. Dr. Chilino, how do you think Tuesday's election results, particularly in... That's funny. Particularly the congressional races, will affect either the refunding of your department or its future. So I am generally advised to not comment on these type of things. I can say that our program has either been level-funded or our funding has increased slightly over the past few years. As Senator Whitehouse mentioned, it's generally a bipartisan issue. No one is saying that we should be throwing, at least that I've heard, that we should be throwing trash in the ocean or not dealing with these issues. So I think the prospects are good for our program to continue and to continue to grow. And we're always happy when we get money so that we can... Most of what we do is through partnerships and grants. So it benefits the local organizations that do this work when we're able to give that money out to them. Yeah, thanks. I just wanted... You mentioned the sort of severe marine debris events and the removal of vessels, derelict vessels or abandoned vessels. Just curious, in terms of how that's paid for, do you work in conjunction with, say, U.S. Coast Guard or ACOE in the Rec Removal Act so that the person abandoning the vessel has any responsibility to cover the cost of the removal? So typically the removals that we work on are done at the state level. We certainly coordinate with other federal partners to make sure we're obeying any rules and regulations. We have an abandoned and derelict vessel info hub on our website which actually goes through the regulations in each state and lays out, do they have a definition for what these vessels are? Do they have a fund in order to deal with those? And I believe we're going to talk this afternoon a bit about the Rhode Island Abandoned and Derelict Vessel Fund. So some states have mechanisms, some don't. Sometimes organizations will approach us and will provide funding. But certainly if we can recoup costs through insurance or other means, we would do that rather than just spend taxpayers' dollars. Thank you. All right, thank you. So we have some new technology at the law school that we're in the first few weeks of. So we're trying to troubleshoot a few things. I appreciate your patience. Our next speaker today is Jonathan Stone, the executive director of Save the Bay and Narragansett Bay. He grew up in suburban Boston, spending his summers on Buzzards Bay where his passion for the water and nature was born. He moved to Rhode Island in 1976 to attend Brown University and went on to earn an MBA from Harvard University and launched a career in manufacturing both in Seattle and Boston, two great cities. But his love for the ocean brought him back to Rhode Island in 1989 where he promptly joined Save the Bay as a member and a swimmer and we couldn't have been happier to get him back here in Rhode Island. In early 2008 he retired from investment banking and in 2009 took the mantle at Save the Bay as Save the Bay's fourth executive director fulfilling a personal mission to dedicate his time and experience to protecting and restoring Narragansett Bay. Under Mr. Stone's leadership Save the Bay has championed the passage of Rhode Island's cesspool phase out law and the first major expansion of the Wetlands Protection Act in more than 40 years. He launched a South County coast keeper program at Save the Bay embarking on a long-term study of water quality in the Pawtucket and Little Narragansett Bay and initiating by state call to action to protect the important bodies of waters on the Rhode Island and Connecticut border. Mr. Stone will be focusing on how marine debris is affecting Rhode Island. Please join me in welcoming Jonathan. Great. Thanks, Julia. What a great lineup and I feel a little bit like I'm on Google Earth. When you load up Google Earth and it's a picture of the globe and then you type in, say, Bristol, Rhode Island in the satellite zooms in on Bristol that's a bit like this program today. The sequence is great. It's great to follow Keith who's really given you kind of a regional perspective on the marine debris problem and of course Senator Whitehouse and Dr. Whitehouse have given you a much more global picture. So this whole topic is really depressing. I got to say, it's very depressing. So I'm going to try and offer hope. That's what Save the Bay is about and I'd like to tell you a little bit about the organization for those of you who don't know much about us. Save the Bay is one of the oldest environmental organizations in the country where one of the oldest coastal conservation groups in the country where started in 1970, same year as the US EPA was founded and we started with really one singular mission which in the ocean state was pretty easy to rally people around which is to say our mission is to protect and improve Narragansett Bay. 90% of the population of the ocean state lives within 10 miles of Narragansett Bay and without the Bay there would be no road island. You have to have a bay to have an island. So it really is a tremendous honor and advantage, honor for me to be at Save the Bay and advantage for Save the Bay because so many people who live in this part of the world care. We never have people who might be on an opposing side of an issue to where we stand not at least willing to embrace the idea of the importance of Narragansett Bay and that is not true elsewhere in the country. So we do have a, we're very blessed with that advantage. A couple of things about the organization and then I'll get to the specifics on marine debris. We do three main things in life. We, our heart and soul is as an advocacy organization and that can mean different things to different people but for us that means mobilizing the body politic, mobilizing citizens like all of you to care because without public support it's very difficult for elected leadership or elected officials to make the tough challenge, the tough decisions necessary to protect or clean up or improve Narragansett Bay. So all things start with local politics and I appreciated the question that came earlier about fixing your local beach. I can answer that one for you I think maybe. So we're really a grassroots organization and that's evident in our budget, our membership, our funding. We get virtually no funding from the state and the federal government. About 3% of our funding comes in the form of federal grants. About 97% of our funding comes from people like you, donors, members, funders, foundations. We have three locations. We have an education facility in Providence. We have an aquarium and education facility in Newport which is fun by the way, visit please and we have a small office in Westerly, Rhode Island where we, Julia mentioned our little Narragansett Bay initiative where we house that effort. We have three keepers. We have a water keeper, sorry, we have a bay keeper, a South County coast keeper in a Narragansett Bay river keeper and that's under license with the water keeper alliance. We're an unusual model with a water keeper program or a water keeper alliance and our model works well for us. We sort of do, we do three basic things. I mentioned environmental advocacy. That role includes public policy work. It includes an important role we play as a watchdog. State and federal and local government is empowered to protect the environment and our state agencies, certainly at the federal level, this is true, are constantly deprived of the resources they need to do their job. So one of the things we feel we can be helpful on is to advocate for more resources for the state agencies particularly coastal resources management council and the Department of Environmental Management to protect water quality and public access and other things that we care about. We also do habitat restoration. This is another important part of our program. We are principally focused on coastal habitat and this would be included salt marshes, ill grass beds, shorelines of all types including highly eroded and eroding shorelines like the South County beaches. We also work on extensively in the watershed and I'll touch on the watershed in a second. Our work in terms of habitat restoration in the watershed is principally focused on restoring river connectivity, tributary connectivity that remains either fish passage or dam removals on our important rivers that brings fresh water into Narragansett Bay. And last but not least, we run an environmental education program. We have about 15,000 public school kids who go through our program every year. We also reach about 25,000 members of the general public, families, kids and visitors to the state through our public programs in our aquarium. And the whole purpose of this educational effort is to inspire the next generation of Bay stewards. You are the present generation, the next generation will be making even tougher decisions that we've had to make. So let me talk about Narragansett Bay more specifically in the marine debris problem. You have to characterize the problem by understanding Narragansett Bay itself in the watershed. We are the most heavily urbanized watershed on the East Coast. 1600 square miles, we have two million people living in the Narragansett Bay watershed spanning two states and it is both heavily urbanized and heavily suburbanized. And so all of the things, all the sort of environmental impacts that occur in the watershed eventually flow downstream and end up in our beautiful Bay. So to fix problems in the Bay, you have to fix problems in the watershed. And that might be a little easier in Bristol than it is in Worcester. I've given a talk in Worcester and people in Worcester don't first think about the Blackstone in the context of what it delivers to Narragansett Bay. They think about the Blackstone River in terms of their own community, which is only natural. Of course, that's how you would think about it. Thank goodness for federal law, by the way. That's why we have the Federal Clean Water Act. So the watershed is an important issue as it relates to this topic of marine debris. So just keep that image in mind as we kind of flip through this. Marine debris, you've seen lots of great pictures about all kinds of marine debris. Marine debris in Rhode Island is not part of the Pacific gyre. It is not part of the tsunami. It is wholly owned locally. This is our problem and we have to solve it. So we save the Bay as living proof of sort of the Think Globally Act locally movement and that's what we're about. And we hate, we do beach cleanups every year. We do more than 150 beach cleanups every year. I wish we didn't do any, but we do and we have to. And so our goal in life is to no longer be in the beach cleanup business. We do it, we have to and there's an important reason why we do it. But we all, you've heard all of us here today talk about the importance of prevention and I'll get to that in a minute. Here's some examples, pictures of the kinds of debris we get. And you've seen other pictures from prior speakers. We are a partner with the Ocean Conservancy on the Rhode Island portion of the International Coastal Cleanup. We do lots of other beach cleanups around the Bay all year long, including Earth Week. But the Coastal Cleanup is neat because it's one weekend. And this is data from this year. We collected just under 15,000 pounds more than seven tons of trash along 65 miles of coast. We engaged 2,200 people in this effort. And again, the sad part of this story is that these are the same beaches we cleaned up in April and Earth Week and the same beaches we cleaned up a year ago during the Coastal Cleanup. So this is a recurring problem that we need to fix. The good news is that we have 2,200 people a year who are learning a lot about marine debris, trash, and stormwater as they show up and help us do what we can do. Trash items in Rhode Island are a little bit different. I think we're talking about an enclosed body of water for most of our cleanup work. So we do not have a commercial fishery in Narragansett Bay other than we used to have a lobster fishery. We do have wild harvest of co-hogs. So the fishing gear problem is more of a coastal issue than it is an in-bay problem. Most of the materials you can see on this slide are things that we use and consume every day. And I think Keith made a good point at, I think you call it Keith, consumer related debris and trash. That's what we find most of all in Narragansett Bay. And it's all stuff that we as individuals use. It's not industry, it's not other sources, not fishing, not industry. So this is where we have to focus our attention in terms of solving this. I did ask our volunteer coordinator, if you looked at weight, where's all the weight here? Obviously 47,000 cigarette butts doesn't weigh a lot. It's quite an annoyance. Weight can be all over the map, depending on how many tires you're finding. And I found I was in beach cleanup at Oakland Beach a month ago and we had car fenders on the beach. So who knows where that came from? Okay, so do I click this? Black shift. Oh, hold on, sorry. Which one do I click here? Oh, I see, yep. There we go. Volunteer and internship manager at Save the Bay and I manage our shoreline cleanup program. We're here in East Providence, Rhode Island. I'm July Lewis, I'm the volunteer and internship manager at Save the Bay and I manage our shoreline cleanup program. We're here in East Providence, Rhode Island at Bold Point. It's one of the sites we do a lot of shoreline cleanups. I'm seeing out there when I'm doing cleanups, getting a lot of plastics more and more every year and they become literally part of the environment. Like it's like a mulch littering the ground. This stuff wasn't deposited here. This could have been washed into the bay miles and miles away and this is where it ends up. And it's just part of it. It's like I said, it's just a mulch just going way down. You just find plastic, more and more plastic. So I wanted to throw that little picture in. July Lewis is a gem of a person who runs our volunteer program. And this is a new phenomenon. These microplastics are basically, we have not seen this. We did not see this 10 years ago. So we have this stuff that we can't even clean up anymore. So we're done. We cannot clean up these bits of plastic that are now really being embedded in the coastal environment and that's a sad statement of Ferris and just puts more emphasis on the importance of prevention. You've seen some pretty ugly pictures of impact of marine debris, particularly small plastics on wildlife. We have observed plastics and bluefish, striped bass, we've observed osprey chicks strangling on fishing line that's brought by the parents to the nest. And of course the derelict pot, lobster pot issue is an important impact too. And of course impact in human health is just as real. So you've seen similar pictures here about some of the causes. These are pretty much suburban urban issues. And I wanna spend particular attention on the litter in the polluted stormwater problem in the ocean state. We save the base and never shied away from big intractable problems that cost a lot of money. In fact, the cleanup of near against bay is a story about how you overcome big intractable problems that cost a lot of money. So I look at this, we have a list of things we'd like to do. So at least we have a list. So I say that's my first point of hope is we have a list, we know what we need to do. And in fact, if we did all of these things on this page as it relates to stormwater, we would solve probably 75% of the problem we see. So let me touch on a few of them. CSO means combined sewer overflow, abatement projects, Newport, Fall River, Providence all have combined sewer and stormwater systems. That's what a combined sewer system is. And these abatement projects can capture runoff, can capture runoff that contains trash and debris before it gets to the ocean. So investment in these combined systems has a critical impact on water quality. The Narragansett Bay Commission, which operates the largest wastewater treatment district in the state has completed two phases of a three phase consent decree stormwater abatement project. And the first two phases have had a dramatic, dramatic effect on water quality and marine debris in the ocean state. And interestingly, guess who paid for that project? The ratepayers in the Narragansett Bay service district. Guess who didn't pay for that project? Residents of Bristol, residents of Warren, residents of Jamestown. So one of the funding challenges that we have as a state is the inequity that can come with how we pay for various aspects of environmental cleanup. The pollution moves, the ratepayers don't move. Second issue here is MS4 stands for municipal separated storm and sewer systems, which is gotta leave it to EPA to come up with great names for things that mean, this is like polluted stormwater is what this means. We meaning the state of Rhode Island, in the state of Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Department of Environment and Management is delegated by the EPA to oversee the municipal stormwater program. And the DM needs to do a better job of holding municipalities accountable for their obligations under the Federal Clean Water Act to protect the environment from pollution. However, we are not so naive as to think it's just simply people not wanting to do the right thing. In fact, people in the cities and towns in our state do wanna do the right thing, but they need money to do it. So we realize that a separate initiative has to be to help cities and towns find resources. That's where the Enterprise Fund bullet comes in. Roads turn out to be great conduits for trash. And if you don't clean out your storm drains as the Rhode Island Department of Transportation didn't do for 20 years, you have a lot of pollution. And it was just announced a year ago that the EPA entered into a consent decree with RIDOT to take care of the stormwater problem. They should have done it 10 years ago. Now they're getting around to it. And we need to be willing to support the DOT in actually completing that work. And green infrastructure is another way of capturing runoff before it hits the bay. So these are some examples of stormwater investments that we think can be effective. And Keith mentioned public engagement and public education. These are some obvious things and some less obvious things that we need to do. Public education is crucial both because our own personal behavior affects water quality, affects the bay. And because if we support our elected leaders in doing the right thing, we can achieve statewide or region-wide policy change. So obviously emphasis on reduced reuse recycle is crucial for marine debris. Save the Bay publishes periodically what we call the Bay Friendly Living Guide, which is really a guide for homeowners and families to understand what they can do themselves to improve water quality. And that includes things like trash. Our volunteer program, Save the Bay has over 4,000 individuals who volunteer for us every year on various aspects of protecting the bay. And these are all households. We only have a million people in the state. We have about 250,000 households. So we're reaching a lot of households and that's important. And Ditto for our school programs, I've described some of the numbers. I put consumer behavior incentives here because there's been a lot of talk in the state about banning shopping bags, for example, plastic shopping bags. We've looked really hard at this issue. And the challenge that you find is that all shopping bags, if thrown away, have environmental impacts. So, and the impacts both are local as in plastic and also global as in greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production transportation of bags. We think the European model, which has proven much more effective in assigning fees for bags of any kind, is a more effective way to incentivize without banning, incentivizing behavior. And this has proven to be much more effective. Many of the Scandinavian countries have adopted this model of charging 10 cents for a bag. It doesn't matter what kind of bag it is, plastic, paper, and so forth. So that's an example of consumer incentive and then signage. I'll tell you a little story. We have a group of high school kids, I'll wrap up in one sec, Julia, that we work with in Central Falls, which is a very poor community in the northern part of the state. And we have a program with them on the Blackstone River where they assess themselves, human impacts on the Blackstone River. One of the human impacts is that high school kids go to the marsh, Lawn Steele Marsh, and they do what all high school kids do. They drink beer, they have parties, they have fun, and they, by the way, leave their trash there. So the students that we work with said, oh my God, this is terrible, we gotta do something about this. And so our first mission was, well, go to the DPW director in Central Falls, and they did, and they got, I would say, a rude version of the cold shoulder. Like, I don't have time for this. So they decided to hand draw signs that were hand drawn by high school kids, and they posted the signs at the favorite partying spots, and the sign said, please pack out your trash, your peers, basically. And guess what happened? The trash went away, because the peer pressure was more powerful than cleaning out the trash bins. So I'm going to, I think I'm gonna wrap, oh, here's just a slide about volunteers, I can't emphasize the importance of volunteer programs for us, and I guess my final point would be, thanks for listening, and please think globally, act locally. Thanks for having me up here. We do have a couple of moments for questions. Hi, thank you. In regards to trash at the beach, at facilities, I know that Fort Adams is a carry-in, carry-out facility, and Third Beach in Middletown, also after a lot of discussion in the council, is also a carry-in, carry-out, but they're hesitating at Satchewas Beach because of, on the obvious suspects, enforcement issues, behavior changes, is Save the Bay is one of your initiatives working towards, this is, I don't, an unknown, I don't know if there are other state facilities that are carry-in, carry-out, but that seems to be the lowest hanging fruit to change local behavior as people cutting back on trash from picnicking and a daily thing at our beautiful beaches. Yeah, that's a great, great point, and I'm a big believer in the carry-in, carry-out movement, especially when the message being sent to carry-in, carry-out is not the state, it's not Save the Bay, it's your neighborhood association, or as in, I go every year to Oakland Beach in Warwick to do clean-ups there at the ICC, and there's a boat ramp at the beach at Oakland Beach, and the boat ramp is littered, I mean, it's just incredible how much trash boaters toss off the boat, they get out, they have a nice day on the bay, or they're, whatever, that a lot of trash ends up by the boat ramp, and I have this opinion that signage there by boaters, sort of a friend of the boat ramp approach would be much more effective than the state or the city even saying, please pack out your trash. That's important too, but I do think local ownership of a problem is a big incentive or a big way to encourage better behavior. Jonathan, you said that Save the Bay prefers the approach of giving consumers a choice to buy shopping bags or to bring their own. If they're banned, they're banned, there's no downstream problem. If consumers have a choice, they're not banned, they still have a choice to use and create a downstream problem. Is what you're referring to or inferring that you think the state house is more apt to pass a consumer choice bill rather than a banning bill or is that really your choice to allow consumers to make that decision for themselves? Well, this is one of those issues where there's sort of many ways to skin a cat and bans have the effect, if they're put in place, of eliminating a certain type of bag, but you're not going to eliminate the use of bags because people need to carry stuff. So the question is what kind of bag, ideally what you want is somebody who's shopping for whatever it is to come into the store with their own bag, right? That's the end behavior that we would like to encourage. So I'll give you an example, if you get a whole foods, they don't have plastic bags, but they'll double bag your groceries in two very high quality, very heavy paper bags. Those paper bags are produced probably in Canada or the Western US. They're shipped by what? By truck to whole foods in Providence at enormous cost in terms of fossil fuel emissions, just the transportation of those bags. And then if they're thrown out and not reused, you haven't solved, you've solved a problem, you don't have plastic getting into the environment, but you've created another problem. So I guess my view is that you wanna be careful about the unintended consequences of banning one particular type of bag and driving people to use another bag that may be just as damaging perhaps in other ways, but just as damaging. So when you hit people's pocketbook, behavior tends to change. And if you do it in the right way, you can change positively. So again, I'm not saying we know the answer, that's sort of where we're headed with it in terms of that particular problem. I'm wondering if there's any particular town in the state of Rhode Island that is a good example for legislation and execution that the rest of the state should be thinking about modeling. Is there anybody who's particularly, we set up a policy, we came up with the ideas, we executed it, and now we're reaping real benefits and that everybody else should be looking at. Is there anybody like that right now? Well, yeah, I think one of the messages today, I hope you're taking away, is that this whole problem, particularly as it relates, let's focus on the stormwater problem. Let's leave aside marine derelict fishing gear, stuff resulting from abandoned boats, things of that nature. Just the stormwater problem, it's a very complex problem. So some communities have really taken a lead in addressing one of the core fundamental issues with stormwater and that is money. It costs money for the DPW department to hire trucks to clean out the storm basins or to build green infrastructure to capture runoff. So even if there's a political will to do the right thing, there may not be a political will to pay for it. So I would point to a couple of communities in the state that are working very hard at creating what are called stormwater enterprise funds. Bristol is one of those towns, Middletown is another, West Warwick is another. We learned recently that the new city manager Newport is actually very interested in exploring this concept of a stormwater enterprise fund. And we have a group of communities in the northern part of the state around Providence, Cranston as examples are also interested in really tackling the fundamental money issue associated with polluted stormwater. So I would pick those as communities that are trying to lead on this issue. Hi, I'm Mike Wallace from Portland, Maine. You mentioned, I can't talk with that, the trash bags. The last couple of years, Portland has attacked this problem head on and they've put on a nickel deposit on trash bags, little, the T-shirt bags. It's a huge brouhaha, we're not gonna work, it's done all sort of stuff. It's worked out beautifully. The Hanifers, the larger shopping centers have gotten about an 80% reduction in their trash that's out there. The litter on the streets has been eliminated virtually. One of the big issues was, was it going to be a tax or was it going to be a fee? A nickel is not a whole lot. So basically what they came up with is there'll be a charge of a nickel apiece for trash bags but the store owner keeps it because who's gonna do the bookkeeping to keep one cent out of that 20% out? It makes no sense whatsoever. But I mean, I've got, you mentioned whole foods. I don't shop there, but they do a nice bag. Is it, I can't afford that, their price isn't. Well, you have a 20 year old truck. But it works. Natural Resources Council of Maine was instrumental on that. And if anybody has any questions, I can help you out, put you in touch with the people that actually did that. It was a pretty seamless transition once they got over the hurdle. You mentioned peer pressure. That's what it's all about. People generally want to do the right thing if they're given a path that's comfortable. Thank you for that. Yeah. Thank you everybody. All right, so we're gonna shift gears again here and really boil down into some law and policy for this very legal oriented audience. So our next panelists, we will have two for this presentation. Our Carleen Leiden-Clouse, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the North American Marine Environment Protection Association and her colleague, Maggie Carey, the Regulatory and Government Affairs Director for NMEPA. Carleen is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of NMEPA and leverages off her experience as a marketing and communications professional in the commercial maritime industry with over 39 years of experience. She specializes in identifying, developing and implementing strategic marketing and communications programs that increase the visibility and effectiveness of NMEPA, as well as develop the educational resources promoting marine environment protection. She works to develop strategy alliances between industry regulators, conservation groups and educators to save the seas. In 2015, Carleen was appointed as an ambassador by the International Maritime Organization, IMO. She is a member of the Women's International Shipping and Trading Association where she serves as press officer for the International Organization and the Connecticut Maritime Association, the Marine Society of New York, thank you. Carleen had many, many associations. I told her it was very hard to pick which ones to highlight. She's also the Chief Executive Officer of Morgan Marketing and Communications, the Executive Director of the New York Maritime Incorporated and the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Merchant Marine Policy Coalition and Consortium for International Maritime Heritage. And joining her up on the stage will be Maggie Carey, the Regulatory and Government Affairs Director of NMEPA. And she is an attorney with a background in maritime law and environmental policy. An avid scuba diver, she has a strong passion for ocean conservation. She grew up in South Florida and attended the University of Miami while working on charter dive boats. She's the graduate of American University, Washington College of Law and spent a year studying maritime law at Tulane School of Law. Prior to NMEPA, Ms. Carey worked with the Pew Charitable Trusts on their project to end illegal fishing, globally campaigning for solutions to end the very serious threat facing our oceans. So please join me in welcoming both Carleen and Maggie. Thank you. First, I'd like to thank Julia and the University of Roger Williams University and your Marine Science Program in Law School for inviting us today. We were delighted to write a paper, to be invited to write a paper and then found out we'd also be presenting. We are missing one of our co-authors today, who is an attorney, her name is Joan Bonderiff with the law firm of Bentlank, Rome and she's in their Washington DC office. We're sorry she couldn't be with us today. What you did not hear in my background is a law degree and that's because I'm not a lawyer but maybe you'll recognize this. Well, as I mentioned earlier, that's become these romantic beach walks has become the bend and snap. It's ruined my aerobic workout too. I'm also very happy to be back in the state of Rhode Island, the ocean state. My mother was born and raised in Pawtucket. So I grew up visiting Rhode Island every year of my life from Michigan and my mother was in the third car to go over the Hope Bridge when it was open in 1929. And she's very proud of that today. And I love this state. In fact, I used to summer in Little Compton just down the road with my children. So it's really a nice opportunity for us to be back. But today we're talking about plastics in the ocean and it has truly become the environmental plague of our time. Nemepe, as you heard, we are based in Southport, Connecticut, but we cover Canada, the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. And this week I was down in Tampa, Florida with CleanGolf and I was asked, why did you create Nemepe? And it's basically because I was in Greece, I was talking to the executive director of Helmepe, the Hellenic Marine Environment Protection Association. And I asked him, why is there Nemepe in North America? And he was, this was 10 years ago and he was a lifelong smoker and he said, ah, Carlene, it is because your country, she is too fast. Nobody can wrap their arms around it. And when an arrogant Greek tells me I can't do something, I generally try to prove him wrong. At any rate, I came back to the States and I talked to my maritime industry friends. I talked to ship owners, I talked to the Coast Guard, I talked to classification societies. And universally they said, they thought developing Nemepe in North America was a great idea and we did. We started out with 33 companies that were FOCs, for those of you in maritime law, that may sound like flags of convenience. In this case, it was Friends of Carlene's. And now we're up to 165 members in growing. We have members in Canada, the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean and overseas. People who trade to the United States or North America are welcome to join us. What is important is their commitment to our mission. And our mission is to preserve and protect the marine environment. We also demonstrate maritime industry's commitment to environmental protection. We engage maritime businesses and regulators and conservation groups and students to promote saving our seas. And we work to educate the public. Let's talk a little bit. Because I'm a maritime ambassador, I'm almost required to talk a little bit about the maritime industry itself. There were over 50,000, actually they're closer than 90,000 merchant ships trading internationally, transporting nearly every kind of cargo. Your clothing, and I'm gonna get into TMI, including your underwear comes by ship. We don't make underwear in the United States anymore. Your energy comes by ship. Your iPhones, your cars, your computers all come by ship. It is truly the end. And the world's fleet is registered in over 170 nations. And that creates its own complications, but it's one that we get through. We deliver more than 90% of the world's goods and energy, more than 90%. And while I'd like to have you imagine taking shipping out of the equation, I think those of us who are, it's like the emperor's new clothes, we wanna keep them on. Another point I wanna bring forward is that shipping is the most environmentally benign mode of transportation. And particularly when compared to land-based industries, it is a minor contributor to marine pollution from human activities. And I was speaking with someone in the ladies' room, by the way, it is a thrill to come to a conference where there's a line in the ladies' room because our industry is also more than 90% male. So rarely do I ever have a line in the ladies' room. And I was speaking with a woman in the ladies' room and I said, well, you might wanna think about getting into shipping. And she said, most likely not because I'm a real conservationist. Well, those aren't disparate goals. When you're working in an industry that is most environmentally benign of transportation, you can be an advocate for that industry and not compromise your own personal views. Do we have room to grow? Absolutely. In fact, just last week at the International Maritime Organization where all of our regulations emanate, there was a meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee and it was one of the most outstanding meetings I think they've ever had. It was historic because I'm happy to tell you that as a result of that meeting by 2020, there will be a 0.5% global cap on sulfur globally. Now, within the United States and North America, we have an emission control area where it's 0.1% within 200 miles. But think about it, shipping is going from 3.5% to 0.5% in 2020. There is also, and watch this space, there's also was approval for a NECA, Nitrous Oxide Emission Control Area in the Baltic and the North Sea. Well, this is where the SICA, Sulfur Emission Control Area began in the Baltic and the North Sea. And just two or three years later, the EPA created an ECA here in North America. So watch this space because it wouldn't surprise me if EPA was moving towards creating a NECA for North America. There is also mandatory documentation of the fuel that is consumed by ships in order to get a benchmark for the emissions from ships. By 2019, all ships will be required to document their fuel use. And that will be leading to a greenhouse gas emission strategy by 2023. And finally, last week, they also discussed the ratification of the Ballast Water Management Convention. That happened in September. The United States has a different set of protocols and different testing methods. But you saw Keith's slide about scraping the barnacles and the shellfish and the organisms off of ships coming in. This is for Ballast Water, but it is an awareness of what we do, what shipping's responsibility is in terms of its effectiveness and impact on the planet. This will give you a sense of how environmentally efficient shipping is when you're comparing CO2 emissions, for instance, from one mode of transport to another. The top graphic is for container ships. The bottom is airline. The red lines indicate there are CO2 emissions per ton. I also wanna mention that ports are gateways to commerce. That's how commercial shipping interfaces with the public is through our ports. And our ports also work to reducing their emissions through clean truck programs, as well as the cargo handling equipment that they use in the port. So getting back, I mentioned earlier, the IMO, the International Maritime Organization is the global regulatory body that regulates the maritime industry. It is a UN agency. Oftentimes environmental groups will come to me and say, we wanna go after your industry. I said, great, where do you wanna start? Well, first off, your industry isn't regulated. And I said, well, have you ever heard of the IMO? Well, no. Well, have you ever heard of Marples, the Marine Pollution Regs? No. Well, have you ever heard of the United States Coast Guard? And I get a yes for that. And in North America, in the United States, most of you are probably aware, is that while shipping is regulated by the IMO, enforcement, regulations without enforcement don't do anything. The principle enforcement of IMO regulations are through flag state administrations, the country where the ships are registered, but we also have port state control. And in the United States, that is the United States Coast Guard. So you have regulations, you have two levels of enforcement. Now, marine debris, we've seen the definition. You're not gonna get your CLE credits for seeing it again. But some of the plastic items are most common type of marine debris. And it accounts for 60 to 80% of all marine debris. But I wanna talk a little bit though, how did NMEPA get involved in marine debris? Why is it that a maritime industry organization, industry-led, cares about marine debris? We care about it because that is the environment in which we live and do business, the same as all of you. We have a vested interest in keeping it clean. Now, we started with a marine debris poster. And we also, you'll see outside, I use this, we put it onto a bag that's made out of recycled materials and is continually used. I use it as a briefcase. And I'm going through an airport and I think I'm having a good hair day because people are looking at me and it's not my hair, they're looking at my bag. But this talks about the decomposition of plastic and other materials in our environment. And this is where our board of directors started to get us engaged in marine debris. As a result of that, we developed an MOU with NOAA. Very kind and very generous in talking about the funding that NOAA has. It's not enough. It just isn't. They are mandated to do environmental education on marine debris and they're not given the resources to do it. So they depend on partners like NMEPA to go into communities and educate on marine debris. We have developed the Educator's Guide to Marine Debris and the Educator's Guide to Marine Environment. And that is for K to 12 and that's STEM enhanced, a STEM and NGSS enhanced. So you're given the mandate Keith but not given the money to do it. So organizations like ours support your efforts. We also dove into the plastic problem and I've got all of these flyers out and in the room out there. And just to give you a sense, this flyer alone is in English and Spanish and through our partnership with the OAS has been delivered in every country in the hemisphere. We have over a quarter of a million physical copies and hundreds of thousands of downloads. So we don't know exactly where it all goes but we're happy that it's out there. That's our goal is to get it out there. So we know that plastic was invented in the mid 1800s. It's petroleum based. It's lightweight, strong, durable and cheap. And it's also littering our shores. And as you heard earlier, Dame Ellen MacArthur said there will be more plastic in the seas than fish by 2050 unless industry cleans up its act. So the plastic production as you saw in Sander Whitehouse's document is escalating. What I also wanted to mention is, and Sheldon mentioned we have to develop the technology for it to become something that is biodegradable. But one of the questions that was over here in terms of what is being done about plastic in the oceans like the gyres, why can't we just go and scoop it up? Because plastic does denigrate but it pelletizes. You can't just scoop it up. It becomes pellets and microscopic pellets that go into the water column, which is how the fish are eating them and moving forward. So after that, I'm gonna let Maggie Kerry who's gonna give you some law. This is exciting. You're gonna actually validate your CLE credits. I'll try to validate your CLE credits but I'm not really positive that's gonna happen. But we'll try. So first, before I talk about law, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about marine debris. Everyone here pretty much that's spoken today has mentioned that it's pretty much an upstream problem so far and that was documented in a UN Global Environment Facility Report that is predominantly associated with poor management practices on land. They've talked about sources already today, improper dumping, litter, sewage, runoff, beachgoers leaving their trash. But at sea, we're not totally wrong way out of the woods. At sea sources, ghost fishing that's been talked about a little bit today as well. Fads are one of my big things. Fads are not awesome. They're not cool, trendy things. They are fish aggregating devices. For some reason, fish tend to congregate underneath fads so they're a very popular method for fishing especially for tuna and in the South Pacific and in the Indian Ocean. They're primarily catching mahi mahi, marlin, skipjack, yellowfin and big eye. I don't think they know why they congregate great underneath them but they do. And then, so when the fishing vessel operators, they go out with these fads, they're built from non biodegradable synthetic material or basically trash, piles of plastic sometimes. Sometimes they're more sophisticated and there's two different types. There's drifting and they're moored. The drifting ones are just thrown off the ship and they try and mark the coordinates but they don't stay if they're drifting so the fishing vessel operators might not be able to find them. And then they just become derelict fishing gear. 81,000 over 121,000 are estimated to be deployed annually and we don't actually know the total number of fads that are deployed. But one study found that a particular fleet had lost 10% of the fads that they deployed. So when you don't retrieve these fads, they can have devastating ecological impacts such as entangling marine mammals and wildlife and they also eventually break down into smaller materials such as the microplastics. Okay, shipping, the shipping industry, it's not totally off the hook as well, at least in the past we haven't been. Historically, sailors dispose of their waste at sea and this was back in the time when Christopher Columbus was crossing the ocean, throwing away their food waste, it wasn't such a big deal but once our materials started to change and plastics were developed, that obviously changed. And in 1973 the international community came together, the international shipping community for the most part and they agreed to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships which is the long name for Marple. So a little bit of why plastic is such a problem. We've talked about this already today as well. In one review of literature, found documented encounters between marine debris and 693 different species for a total of 44,000 encounters and 92% of these encounters were with plastic debris, 17% of the species were on the IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, on their threatened or near threatened list. They can transport non-native invasive species when they float around and they break down into microplastics and microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic, less than five millimeters in the diameter, anywhere basically from the size of a virus to an ant. They're manufactured small or become microplastic when larger plastics break down. Examples, we've talked about exfoliating beads in soap and also one that I find particular interesting are fibers from machine washing of fleece and have no fear because Patagonia is working on this. So plastic is really durable. That's when it breaks down into these microplastics. It doesn't actually break down all the way. Breaking down plastic requires a chemical process, which I'm actually not familiar with, but I know that it doesn't occur in the aquatic environment. So. And this is scary to me. One recent study found that every square kilometer of ocean contains over four billion plastic fibers. And the EPA said, has stated that every bit of plastic ever made still exist. We've actually seen these pictures already today too. They're very popular ones, apparently, have good taste. But marine wildlife from zooplankton to whales and just microplastics directly are either via the food chain. The study that Dr. Whitehouse mentioned, one fourth of fish guts contain plastic. And the chemicals that are contained in plastics, they can cause immunotoxicology responses, such as reproductive disruption, endocrine disruption, and altered gene expression, and probably a host of others that we don't even know yet. So now the legal part, which is great. I'm more of environmental conservationist than a practicing attorney, so bear with me. So there's the Clean Water Act, which I'm sure all of you guys are familiar with if you're here today. It's a basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the US and regulating quality standards for surface waters. Makes it unlawful to discharge any pollutant from a point source into navigable waters until a permit is obtained from the EPA. Has a large definition of pollutant, I wanna mention. It does not mean sewage from vessels, and it also doesn't mean, doesn't mention anything about plastics as a pollutant, so. In 2012, actually, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the EPA to begin regulating plastics as a pollutant under the Clean Water Act, and the EPA's response was to pledge to take steps to curb plastic pollution in our ocean. So, so a little ways to go there. The Closal Zone Management Act, I know CZMA, we have some specialists of CZMA in the room. They, you know, authorized the state to develop a plan for its coastal zone broadly defined to include coastal waters and adjacent shorelands inland to control uses that have a direct and significant impact on coastal waters, provides enhancement grants, it's safe to develop plans to reduce marine debris. Rhode Island has undertaken the ocean planning processes, I understand. It, but the CZMA, I don't believe it does not grant no any enforcement tools. There's the Shore Protection Act of 1988. I wasn't familiar with this act, to be honest. It was enacted as Title IV, the Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988, and it prohibits the transportation of municipal or commercial waste within coastal waters by vessels without a permit. The Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act, the Beach Act of 2000, amended the Coastal Water Act and inquires the EPA to develop performance criteria for testing, monitoring and notifying public users of possible coastal recreation water problems. And I'm familiar with this where I live, I believe, because I've been at the beach when they shut down our water. The Beach Act focuses on water quality, not marine debris. The water quality is the pathogens and it doesn't define plastic as a pathogen, so that's not really considered here. Then we have the Marine Debris Research Prevention and Reduction Act. It was passed in 2006 and has two critical purposes, to help identify, determine sources of assess, reduce and prevent marine debris and its adverse impacts on the marine environment and navigation safety, and to develop a Federal Marine Debris Information Clearing House, which NOAA has done. NOAA and the Coast Guard share implementing responsibilities, provides $2 million in grants for community-based marine debris removal and directs the United States Coast Guard to take actions to reduce violations of Marple Annex V, which is the prevention of pollution from ships annexed, and we'll talk about that in a minute. Oh, now. So Marple is the main international convention addressing the prevention of pollution from ships. There's six technical annexes, and Carleen's really the specialist in Marple, to be honest. Different annexes contain different special areas with, that have different stricter controls on operational discharges. Most annexes have them, but they're different. These are the annexes, annex one, related to oil, annex two, noxious liquid substances in bulk, annex three, prevention of pollution by harmful substances carried and sea in package form. Annex four, prevention of sewage, and annex five, the prevention of pollution by garbage from ships, and annex six is air pollution. Just go back. The United States, we have ratified Marple and then individually ratified all of its annexes except for annex four. Another main convention of the IMO is the London Dumping Convention and its associated protocol, which is the London Protocol, and that's implemented in the United States for the Marine Protection Research and Sanctuaries Act. The NPRSA generally prohibits the transportation of material from anywhere for the purpose of ocean dumping. The transportation of material from anywhere for the purposes of ocean dumping by U.S. agencies and U.S. flag vessels. And dumping of material transported from outside the United States into the U.S. territorial sea. Marple is implemented in the United States by APS, the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships. It requires ships to have certificates of compliance without which they could be detained from departing or prevented from entering the United States to maintain on-board refuse record books and shipboard management plans. And to display placards notifying the crew and passengers are the requirements of annex five to the Marple Convention and of annex four to the Antarctic Protocol. In the United States Coast Guard has the enforcement authority to, for Marple, am I going back the wrong way? Yes, so the, sorry about that. The MPPRSA authorized whistleblower payments for those on-board ships to report violations of the ship or their fellow crew members of the Marple violations. And now half of the Marple cases in the United States originally originate from these whistleblower cases. The MPPRSA also directed EPA in the Department of Commerce to study the adverse effects of the improper disposal of plastic articles on the environment and on waste disposal as well as the various methods to reduce or eliminate such adverse effects and required them to submit a report to Congress on the effects of plastic materials on the marine environment. And finally, the MPPRSA authorized NOAA and EPA to jointly commence and conduct a public outreach program to educate the public on the harmful effects of plastic pollution, the need to reduce such pollution, the need to recycle plastic materials and the need to reduce the quantity of plastic debris in the marine environment. And with this, NOAA and NMEPA have partnered as Carline briefly mentioned our NOAA marine, our NMEPA marine debris program and we're gonna talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. Another thing that the IMO does is these emission control areas which Carline mentioned where the sulfur requirements are lower, these ships are required to use low sulfur fuels and these ECAs. They also, the IMO also does particularly sensitive sea areas and countries petition the IMO to have a particularly sensitive sea area in their water or internationally designated by the IMO and it recognizes an area that needs special protection because of the ecological or socioeconomic or scientific reasons which may cause the area or to be vulnerable to damage by international maritime activities and each area has its own associated protected measure that comes with the designation and it's unique to each PSSA. There are, I believe 14 currently in effect in the United States we have two, we have the sea around the Florida Keys and I'm gonna try and say this. Papahana Namuna Kua Kaya National Marine Monument. Marine National Monument, thank you. And I think the associated protective measures are these are in the keys that there's some no anchoring areas that are to remain 50 miles offshore and there is a few others with them. And now I'm gonna send it back to Carlene, thank you. Sandra showed you earlier some packaging options for apples. At least there were six or eight in those apples. The laws may be working in term in some cases. I will tell you that Marple Annex V was revised almost two years ago and now off of ships you can't throw anything except a macerated banana peel, that's about it and that's three miles out. So they used to be able to throw dunnage overboard wooden materials, nothing nada. But we've got packaging options that really aren't viable, individualized banana maybe they're from Whole Foods. I don't know, I don't shop there either. But it's really enforcement is the key. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the role of the shipping industry in ports. There are proactive measures that individual organizations have embraced such as the cruise line industry of America has an incredibly advanced waste management best practices and procedures policy. They truly, especially when they're sailing out of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, when they are going to the islands what they're taking out, they're bringing back and they're really looking at the life cycle aspects of garbage including concessions with the local waste management that actually recycles the garbage and they sell it. I visited that plant, everybody says oh you're in the shipping industry, it's so exciting. Yeah, I get to go to waste management plants it's really wonderful. There are a lot of shipping groups too such as NMEPA that work on policies to comply with all applicable regulations and cooperate in the case of any investigation. Now we run conferences at least three times on a regional basis, meaning North American basis but then we also go into individual regions to talk about some of the marine environment protection protocols that industry needs to explore, adapt and embrace. And those end up being extremely useful opportunities for all of us to get together. Now Joan and Maggie included the whistleblower impact because they're really excited about it. I am up to a point, whistleblowers have been useful in terms of identifying particularly in Marple Annex I which is oil. What isn't good about that process is some seafarers when there is an oily water separator bypass going on will travel to 10 to 15 ports waiting to get to the United States. So they're continuing that process, that procedure of not treating their oily waste until they get into the United States in its payday. So whistleblowers are useful in identifying areas that need to be addressed and adjudicated. But at the same time, good business practices, best practices is better than that. So you've seen this slide in terms of what the plastics in the marine environment do. I also wanna talk a little about port recycling facilities. It is a Marple Pull requirement. So Marple has a number of pieces to it. Let's take Marple Annex V for instance, which is garbage. Not only do ships have to embrace management technologies on board the vessel and hang onto that garbage, but ports are required to have port waste reception facilities, and guess what? That's many cases where this whole program falls apart because the Coast Guard will authorize, they call them COA, Certificates of Adequacy, within ports and ports have checked the boxes. But in some cases, in order to discharge your oily waste, you are required to move your ship from one side of the port to another. In other cases, it becomes a financial opportunity. If you have only one or two providers of the services, then it becomes financially burdensome in order to implement, do your part in terms of Marple. So one of the things we work with with the Coast Guard is raising the awareness of the shipping community about reporting in adequacies in ports. Because unless the Coast Guard knows about these inadequacies, they can't prosecute, they can't enforce. So we are encouraging all of our members certainly, but certainly the industry writ large, to report these violations and inadequacies so that it can be addressed, and the Coast Guard will address them. There is a database that the IMO maintains, but it's dependent upon shipping to report. I do want to just go back there for a second. One of the things I'm excited about is something that just happened this week. I learned about a month ago when I was in the Caribbean, I was in Cayman, and that's sort of like, again, you're in a great industry, you get to go to Cayman, you get to sit in a hotel for three days. And what I learned though, which was horrifying to me, here in the States, we take it for granted that Marpole is universally embraced and executed, and you know that's not true. In the Caribbean, the Marpole conventions have been ratified by 86% of the 28 Caribbean nations. They've only been implemented in 25% of them. A lot of the countries don't have the legal framework to embrace Marpole. Maggie kept saying, well, Marpole is adopted in this country through apps. We have legal mechanisms for bringing Marpole into play here in the United States, but a lot of these countries don't have the legal mechanisms for doing that, and also where there is, and there in some countries, there is commercial interest in not having Marpole enforced, somebody's making money. What I'm excited about is I just learned about a program this week that there's going to be a Caribbean risk assessment for shipwrecks, and the OAS has partnered with one of our partners, and we're gonna partner with them to see what we can do about getting more Marpole implementation in the Caribbean, and get some resources so that these countries can better embrace Marpole. And by the way, yes, I can't bore you for hours with all of this. Just wanna give you a little bit more information about NMEPA, we're a shipping industry-led group working to save our seas by helping the maritime industry and conservation communities communicate. One of the features that we represent is we're a portal. We're a way for the academic industry to talk to shipping. We're a way for the conservation community to talk to shipping. Sometimes we're a way for shipping to talk to shipping. We did an event out in Long Beach, and they have out there, I'm sure, you've heard about it, CARB, California Air Resource Board, and we had a panel where we had a member of CARB there, and we also had somebody from the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, and they'd communicated through emails, and they'd worked on projects through emails. They'd never met face to face. And at one point, the woman from CARB turned to the fellow from the PMSA and said, is that what the shipping industry's challenge is with adopting this protocol? We never fully understood it. So think of us in many ways as a portal. Our members, as I mentioned earlier, come from primarily North America, but we also have international members who trade to North America. And as I mentioned also, we host a number of industry events. We do environmental intelligence in maritime seminars in Houston, in Norfolk, in Anchorage, in New Orleans, in New York, in Washington, in Long Beach. We also host World Maritime Day Observance, and this year it was in New York City, but we rotate between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Next year it will be in Mexico. I suggest you attend. National Maritime Day is observed every year in Washington, D.C., as close to May 22nd as possible, and that's our Safety at Sea Conference, where we do talk about solo safety life at sea. We talk about STCW, seafarers training, certification, and watchkeeping, as well as the Maritime Labor Convention. We are at the Connecticut Maritime Association conference and exhibition. Again, that's going to be March 20th to 22nd. It's a day trip from here. They would love to have you come and learn more about the industry. And we also attend multiple shipping and offshore conferences. We educate seafarers, poor communities and students. The seafarers, working through our network with North American Maritime Ministry Association, we've been able to distribute our Marine Debris guides, as well as this is our Marpole training handbook, which I thank you for the National Efficient Wildlife Foundation. We were given a grant to develop a Marpole training book for mariners. It wasn't just a list of what the Marpols are. In language that was easy for them to understand, it wasn't just the what. It was the why. What are the impacts on the marine environment? Why is this important to you? And we've also, the top poster is an environmental crime poster relating to oily water separators and urging seafarers not to do it. We also work with port communities in distributing our marine debris materials, both our plastics articles, our decomposition of marine debris in the environment. We host events with regional partners. And just this year, in terms of our actual hands-on, we reached 23,000 people with our internship groups, with boys and girls clubs, et cetera. We work a lot with children. I mentioned our two educators guides. Our educators guide to Marine Debris and our educators guide to the marine environment we're working on, the educators guide to the marine industry. And these are K through 12 curriculum for educators. We partner with NOAA, with the United States Coast Guard, with Sea Research Foundation, with Ocean Conservancy. We participate in the annual Ocean Coastal Cleanup. We have our own drawing contest, which is based on the IMO's annual maritime theme. And again, that's K to 12. And we've just completed our calendar and we're very excited about that. And we co-sponsor a Marine Science Fair with the American Salvage Association. We work with boys and girls clubs around the country with the New England Science and Sailing Center, NEST, which is right in Stonington nearby. And we continue to develop new materials and we try to get them into different languages. Our educators guide to marine debris is also in Spanish. And we have a junior website featuring morgue and the manatee. Now you all know about the manatee that was off of Cape Cod, right? Wasn't that exciting? I mean, it shouldn't have been there, but it turns out it was a pregnant manatee. And I am also on the board of Mystic Aquarium. So she was brought to Mystic and airlifted by the Coast Guard. So some of my favorite collaborators were involved. I'd like to also mention that we have NMEPA chapters around the country. And we have high school chapters. We have university and maritime academy chapters. And certainly if your law school would be interested in developing a chapter, to be more involved possibly in focusing on regulations and enforcement, that would be interesting. Certainly something we'd like to talk to you about. And again, moving forward in 2017, we're gonna continue to expand our partnerships and our member base, including the Caribbean. We're going to continue to deliver original content and curriculum for our programs. And we're going to distribute our programs and materials nationally and internationally. So and work to develop our chapters. So, come on Maggie, come on up. We didn't think it was enough to tell you more about law or to give you more information that you already have about marine debris and to tell you about NMEPA, which I can again bore you for hours about. We also wanted to come forward with some recommendations that perhaps we can all talk about either now or as Julia mentioned, you're gonna have a chance later today to talk about some recommendations. So, I'm gonna do the first six and then Maggie's gonna do the rest, but recommendation number one, to establish a better funded public outreach campaign administered by NOAA and EPA with support from the public and private sectors, including organizations such as NMEPA. Increasing penalties for improper land-based disposal plastics by amending the Clean Water Act and MEPERPKA, is that how you, it's the best I can do. I couldn't do PAPA economy either. Number three, build industry and public coalitions to tackle the problem of plastic marine debris. Number four, establish a program of awards and recognition for cleanup campaigns and champions, similar to the EPA's Energy Star program and create beach sponsorship programs. You know, you see this part of the highway is sponsored by Whole Foods, this part of the highway. How about creating beach sponsorship programs? Set a goal to reduce plastic in the manufacturing sector by 50% by 2030, phased in over the next 15 years. How about that for a goal? And number six, fund research on a plastic that will degrade or can be recycled. Number seven, amend the Clean Water Act to include marine debris as a regulated pollutant. Number eight, amend the Beach Act to include plastics and other forms of marine debris. Number nine, expand the scope of U.S. regulations for ECAs to include plastics and marine debris and recommend the same to the IMO as well as identify PSSAs, particularly sensitive sea areas, where the most stringent regulations available under MARPOL for preventing the dumping of plastic and marine debris should be applied. Number 10, increase funding for NOAA and EPA marine debris programs. Done. Number 11, manage plastics with a life cycle approach, including during the manufacturing process and provide incentives to increase the number of port waste reception facilities and waste recycling programs. And last but not least, number 12, my favorite. Support the establishment of registration and license requirements for all fish aggregating devices, fads, and hold fishing vessels and their operators accountable for the retrieval of the fads they deploy. And these are done by, also include our colleague, Joan Bondaroff, so. Karleen, thank you, thanks very much. A lot of really encouraging news there, but one thing, Karleen, you said that was kind of disturbing and that was when you were discussing the cruise shipping industry and operating your time in the Cayman Islands and the fact that some of these states that are recipients of large numbers of Americans who get on board international ships, flying flags from all over the world, but they're getting on them in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Port Everglades, where I assume that all the debris is properly cared for in a US port. But what you seem to be saying is that some places, those ships might be stopping in their week-long or 10-day cruise and simply dump on the stuff over the side, not in the ocean, but on shore where there are not appropriate shore facilities to receive the waste generated by those passengers. Did I misunderstand you or is that happening? A little bit. What I did say is what they leave with, they come back with. In other words, the cruise industry is the most visible part of the commercial maritime industry and they hold themselves to one of the highest standards in the world. So no, they're not leaving their garbage on these islands because these islands can't take care of their own garbage. What they have developed is waste management systems on board that compact the waste. So whatever they take, they've loaded in Miami, they return with, and they discharge in Miami. And they're operating within the ECA system, so they're using low-low self-refuel or scrubbers. Primarily because they're operating almost exclusively within the ECA, they're using scrubber systems and they do not have, the discharge, if you ever see water going overboard from a cruise ship, you could probably drink it. In fact, I've been told by, in fact, I know this is true, when they travel up to Alaska, the wastewater that is treated, it's treated twice on board vessels before it goes into the water, is cleaner than what the city of Anchorage is discharging. And frankly, they're developing the mechanisms. The cruise industry operates at a very high standard. You will find that the, I would say the top, the ships operating under the top 10 flags are operating at a high standard. It's the flag of Nepal that I would worry about. That great ocean nation of Nepal. Oh, well. So my question is kind of related to Marple. I was wondering, I didn't see anything in those annexes about lost shipping containers. I was wondering if there's any sort of regulation or accountability measures in regards to lost shipping containers. Okay, first off, I'd like to say that the environmental community has misinformation about the number of containers that go overboard annually. There are tens of millions of containers shipped every year, and less than 600 go overboard. And they generally go overboard because of extreme weather issues, because containers are obviously secured. And it's usually in extreme weather conditions that they go overboard. Does a container operator wanna lose a container? No. This is a, think of it from a commercial standpoint. There are not only environmental hazards involved, but you've got property issues. That container could be carrying computers, and you've got a loss of value, so there are insurance issues. So the incidence of losing containers is very extremely low, and it's certainly not something that any container shipping company wants, because they're the ones that, or their insurance companies have to pay. But for some reason, the environmental community has this vision of container ships just saying, oh, we're gonna push that one overboard, we're gonna push that one overboard, and no, we don't want that one. No, it's a commercial venture. They're desperately trying to hang on to every container that they've got on board, because they're responsible for it. Hi, a question for you. On Narragansett Bay, Save the Bay is in early discussions with a couple of port operators on building support for a Greenport initiative. We have three major port facilities in the state, or on Narragansett Bay. And so my question for you is, sort of two-part question, is there a nationally recognized set of best practices that define the Greenport initiative? We certainly are aware of a number of great examples of Greenports, and I think port complex of the Delaware River, Vancouver, Long Beach are all examples of Greenport programs. So I'm wondering first, is there a kind of national set of embraced best practices that kind of illustrate what a Greenport movement is? And the second is, I realize the Greenport initiative, Greenport movement addresses Marine debris, addresses lots of other issues as well. And it would seem to me that might be your 13th recommendation perhaps. Anyway, we appreciate your perspective. Absolutely, and you'll be pleased to know that earlier this year, within the last three to four months, EPA has published an entire book on Greenports. They've done an extensive study. They focus mostly on emissions because that was of concern to the local communities, but it also includes Marine debris and other uses and noise, which is another factor. So I would look on the EPA website and you'll find that they have worked very hard on Greenport's best practices and what they're looking for in terms of guidelines. There are a number of practices. One is called, and be wary of this one actually. We only have one cold ironing station on the west, on the east coast, and that's in New York, but the west coast embraced something called cold ironing, and it's called cold ironing because you plug into shore power and you turn your engines off and the iron literally goes cold. But my challenge is, where is the source of that shore power? Because if it's up in Seattle, Seattle and Tacoma are great because those are hydropower places. But if you're talking about LA Long Beach, you're generating more energy. You just move the problem to a different place. So again, that's another strategy that is discussed, but I'm a little skeptical about it, depending on the area where it's deployed. Who's hungry? Oh, got a piece of ham. I don't know what I am. So I'll make this very, very fast. So are we to believe that environmentalists who continue to claim that the shipping industry and the merchant marine industry is not clean, as you say, does not care? That that is erroneous information or are we to take it case by case? A few years ago, Time Magazine reported that 60% of the ships that were plying the waters off the coast of Alaska were actually dumping refuge and sewage overboard. And environmentalists after that called on the EPA to implement stronger regulations. Has that changed? I mean, what truly? Absolutely, it has changed. You will have outliers. And as I mentioned, particularly in flags that aren't reputable and the Coast Guard is enforcing Marple on even those flags. If they trade within US waters, the Coast Guard has the authorization to inspect them and charge them. The DOJ is actually the mechanism for charging, that the US Coast Guard will report them to DOJ and they will be prosecuted. I would say that the industry is so much farther along the path, partly because of organizations like ours, because of the awareness of the need to protect our seas. I would say enforcement has had a great deal to do with it. There are outliers that I don't understand. The DOJ started prosecuting the early water separator cases in 1992. And they still happen. In this, you know, ships trading in this country. One, one, two, three a year. But it's still happening because somebody didn't get the memo to stop doing this. But the degree to which it is being practiced has changed infinitesimally. You know that plastic graph we saw? The industry has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. There's room to change even further, but we've got the regulations in place. In the United States, we have the enforcement mechanisms and the Coast Guard is using it.