Building Ocean Policy, Part 1

Ocean policy extraordinaire Maggie Ostdahl is back for part two. Part one traced how US ocean policy took shape, flaws and all. Now Sarah Winter Whelan turns to the present: in a tough, anti-environmental political climate, how do we protect the policies we do have so we can live to fight another day? They dive into why this is long work that spans generations, and discuss whose voices must be centered when we get the chance to build better ocean policy.

Who wrote the rules for our ocean, and who got left out? In The Salt Line’s first guest episode, ocean policy expert Maggie Ostdahl joins Sarah Winter Whelan to dig into the bedrock laws that protect US waters, from the Clean Water Act to NEPA. Maggie explains why the people who wrote them shaped who they serve, and why we still have to hold the line on imperfect policy.

Ocean conservation has a politeness problem and Sarah Winter Whelan is done being "Midwest nice" about it. In the first episode of The Salt Line, Sarah introduces a new podcast filled with "salty" opinions about ocean policy. She lays out how decades of policy have left too many voices out of the room and why that has to change. She then takes us to Upwell, the ocean justice conference in Washington DC, where Mia Glover, Zanagee Artis, Alexcia Best-Gill, and Maggie Ostdahl weigh in on what we should keep, shed, and build from scratch to reach a more just, healthier ocean.