The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

Ferry operators were upset that aquaculture operations and wind farms such as the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts might upset their routes.

Environmentalists said they didn’t want decades of restoration work overlooked while the federal government favors a controversial liquefied natural-gas terminal in Mount Hope Bay.

The head of a fishermen’s wives group in Massachusetts said she had been waiting 33 years for the federal government to take a more unified approach to restoring fisheries and cleaning up coastal waters.

More than 250 people from Maine to South Carolina crowded a public hearing at the Rhode Island Convention Center on Thursday and 70 of them requested time to officially comment on a special Ocean Study Task Force created by President Obama to recommend a new, national ocean policy to better protect the country’s oceans.

Nearly every speaker welcomed and supported the effort. It was a sharp counterpoint to the national health-care debate. In this case, parents, environmental advocates, educators, scientists, fishermen and teachers called on the federal government to do more to protect the oceans.

Christopher Swain, a New Englander who has swum thousands of miles to call attention to water pollution, told two admirals as well as top officials from the Department of Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that he spends a lot of time face down in cold, dirty water.

“I can’t see how anybody doesn’t see how the oceans are important,” Swain said.

Mr. Obama appointed the task force in June and gave it until Dec. 9 to recommend a new, national ocean policy and a marine spatial planning program, one that maps uses in coastal waters much as zoning does for land-based communities.

Nancy Sutley, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and chairwoman of the task force, said Rhode Island and Massachusetts are national leaders on marine spatial planning.

Jane Lubchenco, a noted marine biologist who heads the NOAA, said she believes a national ocean policy “says clearly to the nation that healthy oceans matter. We need to ensure we have healthy oceans and healthy coastal communities. I think it is a remarkable statement that reflects what the president articulated in his June memo — that healthy oceans matter.”

At the hearing, the third by the task force and the only one on the East Coast, everyone seemed to agree with Lubchenco.

Two Native Americans said they wanted federal bureaucrats to communicate better with them. Researchers said more needs to be spent on monitoring ocean conditions, and educators said more money is needed for education. One fisherman complained that the government mismanages fisheries, and several people spoke out against the Cape Wind project.

Edward Fratto, head of a consortium of emergency-management agencies, said the federal government should publish annual reports on sea level rise and climate change, so people can better plan responses.

Cindy Zipf, head of Clean Ocean Action, a group working to clean up New York and New Jersey’s coastal waters, pointed to music coming from an event next door and said the task force should follow that lead. It’s time, she said, to: “Rock ’n’ roll!”

For more information, and to submit further comments, go to www.whitehouse.gov/oceans.

plord@projo.com