1998 Year of the Ocean Marine Education U.S.A.: An Overview 



The U.S. Coast Guard, as previously mentioned, has a significant and important role in 

 informal marine education. The principal responsibility rests in the Office of Navigation, Safety 

 and Waterway Services. The specific responsibilities include enforcement of federal laws and 

 regulations (and dissemination of knowledge about them), supervision of local Coast Guard 

 Auxiliary operations, establishment of pleasure craft safety standards, administration of public 

 education and training programs (especially regarding handling of all vessels and pollution 

 control), and liaison with other organizations and state and local agencies concerned with boating 

 safety and water pollution. The Boating Education Branch administers an extensive public 

 information program which includes distributing literature, offering courses, and making 

 announcements for the media. Recreational boating represents a $20 billion dollar industry in the 

 United States with a 10 percent annual growth rate. The main problem for the USCG is its 

 multiple responsibilities. It does an outstanding job with limited resources. 



The Department of the Interior's National Park Service, through some of its parks, 

 monuments, and national seashores, maintains site specific programs in informal marine 

 education. There are visitor centers at each of these sites with educational exhibits, special 

 programs, nature hikes, and book stores. The National Park Service has a World Wide Web site 

 called The Learning Place (http://www.nps.gov/interp/leam.htm) with many educational 

 materials, especially for teachers. 



The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides and supports a wide array of 

 marine education mechanisms that reach targeted technical audiences, children, the general 

 public, and industry groups. EPA's Marine Debris Curriculum, available in both English and 

 Spanish, provides lesson plans and activities to help teach grade school students about marine 

 debris, where it comes from, how it can harm the environment, and what they can do to help 

 reduce the amount of debris entering marine waters. The National Estuary Program contains a 

 public outreach and education component, and all 28 estuary programs around the country 

 include a Citizens Advisory Committee to educate citizens about threats to their estuaries and 

 involve them in devising solutions to those threats. Numerous training courses are offered to 

 EPA constituent groups on topics such as coastal resource protection at the local level, 

 consensus-building for watershed planning, and volunteer monitoring in estuarine waters. 

 Technology transfer is also emphasized in many of EPA's ocean and coastal programs such as an 

 effort underway in the wider Caribbean to share low-cost methods for managing land-based 

 sources of marine pollution, and EPA's support of the Coastlines newsletter to provide local 

 communities with a source of applied coastal management techniques and contacts to protect 

 their coastal watersheds. 



K-9 



