ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the nature of intergovernmental relations by describing the key policies for fisheries, marine mammals, offshore hydrocarbons and minerals, marine pollution, and coastal resource management. Many of the policies behind the management efforts were the product of the burgeoning amount of environmental legislation passed during the 1970s, much of which was directed at ocean resources. The growing realization that fisheries were regional resources whose management required interstate planning and implementation precipitated a series of regional state marine fisheries commissions. Unlike the case of marine fisheries where an increased federal management role evolved over forty years, the domestic management of mammals shifted abruptly from one almost entirely dominated by state governments to one in which the federal government became preeminent. The internal dynamics of each intergovernmental area are anticipated to have had as great an impact as any attempt to forge a single system of intergovernmental relations for ocean and coastal resources and activities.
