On a cool, sunny April day, I found myself submerged for the first time in my life in the vibrant kelp forests of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. Thirty feet below the surface the sunlight filtered through the dense canopy of kelp, casting a mesmerizing glow on the ocean world. As I followed my dive buddy through the towering stalks, I marveled at the diversity of life thriving in this underwater jungle. Despite the low visibility, I watched California sheephead and Garibaldi dart in and out of the kelp, spent time with a sheep crab, a horn shark, and an octopus, and delighted as the occasional sea lion zipped past. This dive was not just a journey into the cool California depths, but a glimpse into the potential of nearshore habitats to support both marine life and coastal communities.
The United States and Canada have more kelp habitat than any other countries in the world, yet kelp only live in 2.2 percent of American and 6.4 percent of Canadian waters. These narrow bands of habitat are small in area but are vital as spawning, nursery, and feeding grounds for ocean life, including resident and migratory species. Kelp forests have enriched Native communities for millennia and support modern communities and economies up and down the coast. Yet according to the Kelp Forest Alliance’s State of the World’s Kelp Forests Report, less than 10 percent of kelp in both countries is safeguarded within a marine protected area (MPA).
How is this possible? One reason is that for much of the past two decades, the focus of the ocean conservation movement has been on designating large, remote MPAs in order to meet the global campaign to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030—often referred to as 30×30. Area targets may disincentivize prioritizing areas in the nearshore and coastal zone, such as estuaries, tidally influenced wetlands, and submerged habitats like kelp, because these places tend to be much smaller than pelagic realms. The data bears this out as 99 percent of the U.S. MPAs are in the U.S. Pacific territories and Hawaii.
The United States current MPA network largely focuses on protecting pelagic habitats, while overlooking many nearshore areas. Several of the most vulnerable habitats in the country—and those that are the most important to peoples, cultures, economies, biodiversity conservation, and carbon sequestration—are near highly populated coastal communities. This proximity can create threats to coastal habitats through development, pollution, and overexploitation, but it also provides opportunities for ocean advocacy. These habitats are crucial for people and wildlife but may not rank as important if the only goal is to maximize conservation area.
While the focus of 30×30 has been effective in raising awareness and setting ambitious conservation goals, the United States needs a new ocean conservation strategy. Achieving a healthy, sustainable ocean and addressing the threats of climate change, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, habitat destruction, and unsustainable fishing practices, require conservation goals that go beyond 30×30. Moving forward, the ocean community needs new strategies to ensure that the United States is investing in conservation policies that are geographically representative, just, and effective, benefiting all Americans.
Nearshore Ocean Progress
On May 5th, members of the America the Beautiful for All coalition—including my organization, the Center for American Progress—published a report proposing strategies for going beyond 30×30 and delivering nearshore ocean progress. Our framework offers conservation opportunities that can help more effectively protect vulnerable ecosystems, provide benefits for coastal communities, create jobs and support working waterfronts, and build popular support for ocean conservation. It highlights case studies of how state and local policies have effectively protected six key habitats: kelp forests, coastal wetlands, oyster beds, seagrass meadows, coral reefs, and beaches and dunes. These success stories demonstrate the importance of state- and community-led efforts to protect nearshore habitats and provide a blueprint for ocean progress.
An ocean strategy focused on nearshore and coastal conservation can grow a better networked, more influential ocean conservation movement in the United States as 40 percent of Americans live near the coast. Major components of this new strategy are a renewed focus on effective nearshore conservation that works for this 40 percent, offering policies that can be advanced at the state, territorial, Tribal, and local levels at a time when there is a lack of federal leadership on ocean and coastal conservation, and modeling a framework for designing future conservation goals that prioritizes equity, community, and human rights-based approaches.
Focusing on nearshore habitats brings new challenges. Many coastal conservation efforts must contend with the complex political, social, and environmental systems facing habitats near population centers. Our new strategy needs to address conservation costs and benefits both to ecosystems and human social needs. This will require innovative collaboration, participation, and empowerment of diverse stakeholders in ocean decision-making and management and new strategies such as restoration and climate adaptation in addition to fisheries management and traditional MPAs.
Angelo Villagomez is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, focusing on Indigenous-led conservation and ocean justice. Angelo spoke at the Salazar Center’s 2025 International Symposium on Conservation Impact during the session “Keystone Ideas and Imperatives: North America’s Marine Biodiversity,” where he and fellow panelists explored the importance of North America’s oceans for connectivity, biodiversity, and coastal economies. This blog reflects on novel ideas and approaches for effective marine and coastal conservation in North America.
