Yesterday President Barack Obama signed an executive order adopting many of the recommendations put forward by the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force.  The order sets forth policy guidelines for managing the ocean, U.S. coasts, and the Great Lakes, and mandates that executive agencies follow these new guidelines.  The order also creates a National Ocean Council to “ensure that executive departments’, agencies’, or offices’ decisions and actions affecting the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes will be guided by the stewardship principles” described by the Task Force.