Whither the U.S. National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan?

The need for a statutory framework to manage valuable marine resources in the United States is highlighted by problems such as fragmented ocean governance and increasing conflict over the use of ocean spaces. On July 19, 2010 President Obama signed Executive Order 13547 to create a National Ocean Policy (NOP) for the United States. A subsequent Implementation Plan, released in 2013, set up hundreds of actions to be accomplished between 2013 and 2025 to address economic, community, scientific and other issues. Progress implementing the NOP appears to have stalled. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the NOP and its Implementation Plan, and then discuss what needs to be done to bring the vision it set forth to fruition.