Sea Grant Spotlight: Meet Kate Mulvaney

Ocean conservation takes Knauss Fellow from Philippines to Washington, D.C., by way of Rhode Island

Kate Mulvaney’s three years in the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer showed her the pitfalls of overzealous and poorly planned environmental regulations.

The islands of the Philippines have numerous marine protected areas, which people are not allowed to pass through, Mulvaney said. The island she worked on was surrounded by a marine protected area, and people couldn’t leave their homes or get to the mainland without breaking the law.

“When I got there, it (the marine protected area) was completely ignored,” Mulvaney said.

Mulvaney’s Peace Corps project involved the establishment and monitoring of the marine protected area and community-based enforcement of the regulations in a place where police enforcement is weak. She was assigned to a local university, where she taught environmental education and marine biology as part of an effort to instill appreciation of marine resources and promote stewardship. She also conducted informal education with fisherfolk, who were encouraged, through participation, to support marine protection.

The project succeeded in persuading the local community to comply with and enforce the marine protected area, including turning in people who fished in the protected waters. However, once the area restored itself, “it looked good, so everyone started to fish in it,” Mulvaney said.

“I have heard that marine protected areas have a 25 percent success rate in the Philippines. I don’t think it’s that high,” she said, “Almost every coastal town has one; I can think of five that were sustained.”

However, she feels that the marine protected area she worked on succeeded as a community awareness tool and “serves as a reminder that although fishery resources are renewable, they are finite.”

“When I arrived on the island, I heard bomb fishing; when I left, people were turning in dynamite fishers. To catch maybe two per year doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a step in community awareness that is significant,” Mulvaney said.

Teaching at the university was also fulfilling, she said. When she arrived, armed only with an undergraduate degree in marine biology, some of her students were older than she was. Now many of them have gone on to work in different agencies.

“It’s pretty amazing to see what they’ve become and to see the decisions they’ve helped people make,” she said.

When Mulvaney entered the Peace Corps, she had been accepted as a URI oceanography graduate student. Her time in the Philippines prompted a change of heart, and she instead pursued a master’s in marine affairs at URI.

Entering the Peace Corps “was the best decision for me. It helped me understand that there’s a whole dynamic to protecting oceans that mostly involves people,” she said.
“I’m still a science dork, but I like dealing with people and the mechanisms for engaging people in marine conservation.”

This summer, she is working for URI assistant professor Tracy Dalton on a project with URI professors Graham Forrester and Richard Pollnac conducting socioeconomic surveys of communities in the Caribbean affected by marine protected areas.

In December, Mulvaney will be heading to Washington, D.C., for “Placement Week,” where she will find where in the federal government she will be working as a 2009 John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow. She said she looks forward to the chance to “immerse myself in ocean policy in the center of the action.”