This article is part of a series from the Center for American Progress exposing how the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda would harm all Americans. This new authoritarian playbook, published by the Heritage Foundation, would destroy the 250-year-old system of checks and balances upon which U.S. democracy has relied and give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives.
Just a few days ago, the Biden-Harris administration took steps to designate the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, which would conserve 5,600 square miles of ocean off the coast of California. This win is the result of years of advocacy from Indigenous groups and the ocean conservation community. National marine sanctuaries such as Chumash Heritage safeguard some of the nation’s most biodiverse habitats as well as submerged cultural resources like shipwrecks and historical sites. They also contribute significantly to coastal economies by supporting research, tourism, and recreation.
However, Project 2025, the extreme conservative playbook from the Heritage Foundation, would strip away this essential tool for ocean conservation and endanger these areas of national importance. The document provides a policy blueprint for a far-right presidential administration to pause designating new national marine sanctuaries, consider opportunities for mineral extraction in existing sanctuaries, and radically restructure the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). New analysis from the Center for American Progress finds that Project 2025 puts 1,370,350 square miles of ocean and freshwater habitat—an area more than twice the size of Alaska—at risk.
Marine sanctuaries are a win for people, nature, and coastal economies
The national Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuary Act allows the secretary of commerce to create national marine sanctuaries to protect oceanic and Great Lakes areas of national significance from drilling, mining, and other development. The law came about as a response to a catastrophic oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, in 1969—the largest ever in U.S. waters at the time. Pressure from an improperly reinforced well resulted in an oil slick the size of Chicago, killing thousands of sea birds in a famously biodiverse area. Following public outcry, the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuary Act was passed three years later.
Today, NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries currently manages more than 620,000 square miles of America’s marine and freshwater habitat, with this number likely to more than double in the next few years with the addition of several proposed national marine sanctuaries. When managed effectively and equitably, marine sanctuaries can be an extremely useful tool for safeguarding marine and freshwater ecosystems, cultural resources, and coastal economies. Different sanctuaries have varied levels of protection, but all ban extraction of minerals and fossil fuels—which causes massive disruption of the sea floor, chronic air and water pollution, and risks of catastrophic events like the Santa Barbara spill. Some national marine sanctuaries also limit other harmful activities, such as vessel speeding and fishing.
The national marine sanctuary system currently generates about $8 billion annually in local coastal and ocean-dependent economies.
In addition, the national marine sanctuary system serves to protect important cultural resources. Currently designated sanctuaries include more than 430 shipwrecks and submerged aircrafts, and they also help preserve areas of cultural importance to Indigenous peoples. For example, the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary protects humpback whales sacred to Native Hawaiians, and the soon-to-be designated Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary will include Indigenous ancestral village sites.
These protected areas provide important contributions to coastal economies. In fact, the national marine sanctuary system currently generates about $8 billion annually in local coastal and ocean-dependent economies by supporting activities such as commercial fishing, research, tourism, and recreation.
National marine sanctuaries are unique in that the designation process prioritizes community engagement. They can be created in two ways: 1) by an act of Congress or 2) through a highly participatory community-led process led by NOAA. This latter process begins with local community groups identifying and nominating an area that holds national significance; NOAA then creates a draft designation and environmental assessment, which the public gets to review and provide comments on before the final designation.
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At a time when we should be investing in programs to combat declining ecosystem health and climate change, Project 2025 would dismantle the agency and tools to do so.
In total, Project 2025 would endanger 1,370,350 square miles of proposed and existing national marine sanctuaries—more than the land area of Alaska, Texas, California, Montana, New Mexico, and Arizona combined. The policies proposed by Project 2025 would prevent the designation of at least five proposed sanctuaries: Chumash Heritage, Lake Erie, Hudson Canyon, Pacific Remote Islands, and Papahānaumokuākea. They would also affect seven sanctuaries that have been designated or expanded in the past decade: Mallows Bay-Potomac River, Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast, Lake Ontario, Thunder Bay, Greater Farallones, Cordell Bank, and Flower Garden Banks national sanctuaries.
In addition, Project 2025 would dismantle NOAA and eliminate or privatize many of its functions, such as providing data on weather and natural disasters. The playbook would also break up the National Ocean Service—which houses the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries—and send some of its duties to other agencies. The national marine sanctuaries program is already underfunded compared with the nation’s other protected areas programs, and this restructuring would make it even more difficult to manage and enforce existing regulations.
Lastly, Project 2025 states that it would “harmonize” the National Marine Sanctuaries Act with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act—the primary law managing fisheries in the United States. Project 2025 claims that the designation of sanctuaries conflicts with fishing interests, even though all U.S. national marine sanctuaries allow some fishing. In fact, it has been argued that, even now, the sanctuaries system is not doing enough to curb damaging fishing in these fragile areas.
The intent here is clear: Project 2025 is putting industry before conservation by weakening protections where they should be strengthened.
Proposed sanctuaries at stake
Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary
On September 6, 2024, NOAA released the final environmental impact statement for the proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, an ecologically and culturally important area off the coast of California. This area encompasses thriving ecosystems supported by three major nutrient-rich upwellings. Deep submarine canyons serve as gathering areas and migration lanes for whales and dolphins. Protecting this diverse area would preserve many different types of habitats, including kelp forests, rocky intertidal regions, spawning areas and rookeries, estuaries, and high coastal dunes. Many vulnerable species, including snowy plover, southern sea otter, Chinook salmon, and the leatherback sea turtle, also rely on this valuable habitat. The area also includes several heritage sites of the Chumash people, including evidence of astronomical observatories and other cultural resources. NOAA undertook meetings and workshops with local Indigenous groups, as well as government-to-government consulting, to identify priorities for the designation.
The sanctuary designation would block new oil and gas drilling in this area as well as associated alterations to the seabed, harassment of wildlife, discharge of sewage and bilge water, and disruption of cultural resources. Protection of this area is urgently needed to address threats from fossil fuel extraction and climate change, exemplified by the 2015 Refugio Beach oil spill, which occurred close to the proposed sanctuary and contaminated thousands of acres of habitat. Designation of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary is estimated to generate $23 million in local economic activity and almost 600 new jobs.
Hudson Canyon National Marine Sanctuary
In 2022, NOAA began the process of designating a marine sanctuary in Hudson Canyon—although Tribal nations in the New York region are advocating for the proposed sanctuary name to better reflect the longtime stewards of these natural resources. Henry Hudson, after whom the canyon is named, is considered to have enabled the colonization of New York and subsequent genocide of Indigenous peoples.
Stretching roughly 350 miles and reaching depths of 2 to 2.5 miles, Hudson Canyon is the largest submarine canyon along the U.S. Atlantic coast. It is home to a plethora of marine wildlife, including 200 species of fish and 17 kinds of marine mammals. Vulnerable species, including sperm whales, sea turtles, and deep-sea corals, also rely on the canyon for habitat. Importantly, Hudson Canyon supports a thriving regional economy by feeding commercial and recreational fisheries and tourism. Just 100 miles from New York City, this sanctuary would be a unique opportunity to improve access to and education around the ocean for one of the most densely populated and diverse areas in the United States.
All in all, the designation of this marine sanctuary would remove threats from drilling and mineral extraction while supporting conservation of the area’s natural and cultural resources. It would also provide an opportunity to collaborate with Indigenous groups to highlight Indigenous residence and stewardship of the region for the past 10,000 years.
Conclusion
Ocean conservation has all-around benefits for wildlife, cultural traditions, and coastal economies. However, at a time when we should be investing in programs to combat declining ecosystem health and climate change, Project 2025 would dismantle the agency and tools to do so. In addition to its threats against national marine sanctuaries, the playbook also proposes repealing the Antiquities Act and overriding key environmental protection laws. Project 2025 and the policymakers that intend to implement its extreme plan are willing to risk some of America’s most biodiverse and critical marine habitats to sell to the highest bidder.
The author would like to thank Angelo Villagomez, Jenny Rowland-Shea, Steve Bonitatibus, and Keenan Alexander for their contributions to this column.