Who Does the Ocean Belong To?
- Melina Olmo
- Jun 4
- 8 min read
Who Does the Ocean Belong To?
A dialogue on development, ecology, and the coast we share
The ocean, for me, has always been home.
Positioned where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico sits at one of the most biodiverse marine crossroads on Earth. Every summer, visitors arrive to swim, surf, snorkel, and sail in these waters — drawn to exactly what we, as Puerto Ricans, have always known: this ocean is extraordinary. It is worth everything.
And that, precisely, is where the conversation gets complicated.
Everyone wants a piece of what makes this place extraordinary — the developer, the tourist, the government, the fisherman, the surfer, the scientist. The disagreement is not about whether this ocean has value. What is disputed, urgently and right now, is who gets to decide how that value is used — and whether the decisions being made today will leave anything worth coming back to.
That question has no easy answer. But it deserves an honest one.
A commons under pressure
Puerto Rico's constitution is clear on one point: beaches belong to the public. Every single one of them. Underlying that principle is a concept as old as environmental law itself — the commons. Shared resources, managed collectively, for the benefit of all.
That principle is being tested.
In the years following Hurricane María, tax incentive programs accelerated a surge of outside investment along Puerto Rico's coastline. Development arrived fast, with capital, and in many cases without sufficient ecological conditions attached. The Maritime-Terrestrial Zone — the constitutionally protected coastal buffer that separates private property from the public shore — has come under increasing pressure. The most recent legislative challenge is House Bill 25, authored by the Puerto Rico Builders Association, which proposes to redefine and shrink that buffer, opening it to private development. The bill remains under legislative review.
According to World Bank development indicators, only 1.9% of Puerto Rico's territorial waters are formally protected — well below the global average, which is itself far below the international 30x30 target. The gap between what the law promises and what the coast currently reflects is real, and growing.
But here is what the commons also teaches us: it can be defended.
When owners of the Sol y Playa condominium in Rincón illegally constructed a private structure on Los Almendros beach — a critical nesting site for endangered leatherback sea turtles — the community fought back. Years of grassroots protest and legal action followed. The Puerto Rico Supreme Court ultimately ordered the complete demolition of the illegal structures, affirming that public domain cannot be privatized by private capital, regardless of its scale. The law held. The beach remains public.
The question this moment is asking is not whether protection is possible. It is whether we will require it — before the next structure goes up, not after.
What we are losing underwater
Puerto Rico is surrounded by over 5,000 square kilometers of shallow coral reef ecosystems. These reefs are not decoration. According to NOAA Puerto Rico's coral reefs absorb up to 97% of wave energy before it reaches the shoreline — acting as the island's first line of defense against hurricane storm surges. They are the nurseries where fish are born. They are the reason millions of people get in the water here every summer.
They are disappearing.
According to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network a body of over 300 scientists tracking nearly 14,000 ocean sites across 44 countries — the Caribbean lost nearly half of its coral reefs between 1980 and 2024. Hard coral cover across the region fell dramatically, with Puerto Rico showing no major recovery. Three mass bleaching events have struck since 1998, the most recent in 2023–2024. Stony coral tissue loss disease has been spreading across Puerto Rico's reefs since 2019, and a 2022 mass sea urchin mortality event caused macroalgae to overtake areas that coral once covered.
Beneath the reef crisis is a quieter one. Blue carbon science — the study of carbon stored in coastal marine ecosystems — shows that the mangroves and seagrass meadows lining Puerto Rico's coast are among the most powerful natural climate tools on Earth.
According to NOAA's blue carbon research, coastal wetlands like mangroves store far more carbon per acre than even tropical rainforests. A single square mile of mangrove forest holds as much carbon as the annual emissions of 90,000 cars. Every cleared mangrove, every drained wetland, every coastal construction permit issued without ecological review is not just an environmental loss — it is carbon released, and coastline left undefended.
And in these waters, there is one more invisible threat: ghost nets — abandoned fishing gear that never stops catching. According to marine conservation data, some Caribbean reefs already have as many as 15 ghost nets per hectare, destroying an estimated 3.5 square kilometers of coral reef annually. Here in Puerto Rico, Conservación ConCiencia leads ongoing underwater cleanups removing thousands of pounds of abandoned gear from deep reef systems. This is what local ocean stewardship looks like — neighbors doing the work, quietly, without waiting to be asked.
A dead reef cannot absorb a storm surge. A privatized beach cannot draw a tourist. A coastline stripped of its natural infrastructure does not recover on a developer's timeline — or anyone else's.
The reef, the mangrove, the clean shoreline — these are not background. They are the product. Lose them, and there is nothing left to sell, visit, or protect.
The false choice
There is an argument that gets made, quietly and not so quietly, whenever environmental protections are proposed along a coastline like Puerto Rico's: that development and ecological health are in opposition. That you can have the economy or the reef, the hotel or the beach, the investment or the commons. That growth requires sacrifice.
The evidence says otherwise.
Across the hospitality industry, a different model has been proving itself — not as idealism, but as business. LEED certification, the internationally recognized green building standard developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, has been studied extensively. A peer-reviewed analysis comparing 93 LEED-certified hotels against 514 comparable competitors found that certified properties showed superior financial performance across hotel types.
A property reducing energy and water costs by 30% can recover its green construction premium in under two years. Higher daily rates, stronger guest loyalty, lower operating costs — the financial case for sustainable coastal development is not a concession. It is a competitive advantage.
The most striking example of what this looks like in practice is not in the Caribbean — not yet. Desa Potato Head in Bali, currently ranked among the world's top 50 hotels, operates at 97.5% zero waste to landfill, earned UN Climate Neutral Now certification, and runs one of its most popular guest experiences around a tour of its own waste management system. It has 225 rooms, six dining venues, and a beach club that hosts international artists. It is not a modest property making modest compromises. It is proof that sustainability, done seriously, becomes the attraction itself.
Closer to home, a January 2026 analysis published by HVS, one of the hospitality industry's leading consulting firms — made the case directly for the Caribbean: nature-based defenses like mangrove restoration and coral reef rehabilitation reduce storm surge impacts while enhancing biodiversity. Protecting the ecosystem, in other words, is the infrastructure investment. For a coastal hotel on an island in a hurricane belt, that is not an environmental argument. It is an engineering one.
The question, then, is not whether developers can build profitably while meeting ecological standards. They can. The question is why those standards are not required — and who bears the cost when they are not.
What fighting for the ocean looks like
"Nunca paren de luchar por sus ecosistemas," said Ricardo Laureano of VIDAS, when the Jardines Submarinos de Vega Baja y Manatí marine protected area was established in October 2024 ("Never stop fighting for your ecosystems") — a 202.7 square kilometer protected zone covering coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass beds, protecting more than 14 endangered species including the Greater Caribbean Manatee. It took 16 years of grassroots organizing to get there.
It is worth asking what that fighting looks like. Because the answer is different depending on where you stand — and all of it is necessary.
For the scientist, it looks like drone mapping and planting protocols. At the University of Puerto Rico Aguadilla, Vida Marina's NOAA Loíza Coastal Restoration Project achieved a 72% mangrove vegetation recovery rate along historically vulnerable shorelines, using over 290 community volunteers and techniques engineered to hold against wave action.
For the neighbor, it looks like showing up night after night. Amigos de las Tortugas Marinas has patrolled beaches since 2001, protecting leatherback sea turtle nests from poachers, predators, and the coastal light pollution that disorients hatchlings finding their way to the sea.
For the local business owner, it looks like building an economy that depends on the ocean staying healthy. Isla Mar Expeditions in Rincón runs educational ocean expeditions teaching visitors to identify coral diseases and participate in citizen science. La Parguera Eco-Tours guides travelers through bioluminescent bays on low-emission vessels, teaching the science of what makes those waters glow — and what kills it. These are not businesses extracting from the ocean. They are investing in it.
For the developer willing to look honestly at the evidence — it looks like building to a standard that protects the asset your guests came to see. The reef, the mangrove, the clean shoreline are not the backdrop. They are the product.
And for the policymaker, it looks like requiring all of the above — before the permit is signed, not after the damage is done.
Fighting for an ecosystem does not have one face. It has many. The question is whether enough of them are in the room at the same time.
What this moment asks
If you are visiting Puerto Rico this summer — swimming, surfing, sailing — ask whether the businesses you choose are locally owned, whether what you spend is staying in the community, whether your presence is leaving something behind or just taking something away. Small questions. Real consequences.
The Jardines Submarinos took 16 years. Sol y Playa took years of protest and legal battle. The 72% mangrove recovery in Loíza took students in the mud, drone by drone, planting by planting. None of it was easy. All of it was worth it. And none of it was done by people who agreed on everything — only by people who agreed on this: that what they were protecting mattered more than who got the credit.
The ocean doesn't care who is right. It only registers what we do.
That is not a comfortable observation. But it is an honest one — and it belongs to all of us equally. The developer and the activist. The tourist and the fisherman. The policymaker and the student with mud on their boots. The question of what we owe this ocean, and what it will cost us if we get it wrong, does not have a single answer. It has many — and the conversation is better when more voices are in it.
More than a day of awareness, World Ocean Day is the beginning of a conversation that should not stop. The ocean is our protector and our sustenance; its future depends on what we choose to do from here.
Between apparent paradoxes, how do we find that common ground to nurture and protect our ocean? Share this, bring your perspective, and let's think about this together — here in the comments and across your networks.
Share this article on your social media and let's continue this conversation about development, ecology, and the coast we share on LinkedIn @CulturaDiplomatica.
© 2026 . Who Does the Ocean Belong To? A dialogue on development, ecology, and the coast we share. All rights reserved.
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