Interview
REAR ADM. ERIC JONES Commander, Coast Guard District 7 BY EDWARD LUNDQUIST
Coast Guard Outlook: I’d like to talk to you about the scope and magnitude of the district you command, the team you lead to manage the activities, and how you approach the Coast Guard missions in your district. Let’s start with your area of responsibility. Rear Adm. Eric Jones: As you know, the Coast Guard is organized with two areas: essentially everything east of the Rockies is Atlantic Area [LANTAREA], and everything west of the Rockies is Pacific Area. There are nine districts, five of which are here in LANTAREA. Our command, the Seventh District – headquartered here in Miami and serving the southeast United States – is a particularly interesting one. It goes from South Carolina through Georgia, down to Florida, and then it also includes Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, which amounts to about 1.8 million square miles, including the exclusive economic zone off of the territories in the Caribbean. It also includes 32 foreign nations and territories, with which we work a lot.
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Coast Guard OUTLOOK
Rear Adm. Eric Jones, commander, Coast Guard District 7. trans-shipment point for cargo to the Bahamas, Haiti, and the Caribbean. The Port of Jacksonville serves as the lifeline to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, with several Jones Act trade companies that keep those territories supplied from the mainland. With all of that, we obviously have a lot of aids to navigation work to maintain. We’re on the southwest border for the United States, and so we also have a lot of border responsibilities here. It’s definitely the highest operational tempo district. Let’s talk about some of your assets available to you, and some of those missions you just mentioned in more detail. First of all, our cutters are more than ships … they are the right team, the right training, the right partnerships,
U.S. COAST GUARD PHOTO BY SEAMAN ERIK VILLA-RODRIGUEZ
Are you responsible for all of the Coast Guard’s missions? We face the same challenges of the other districts, as well as many that are unique to the U.S. southeast border and the nations of the Caribbean. We do all 11 of the Coast Guard’s missions – except icebreaking. Our Maritime Force Protection Unit Kings Bay provides critical transit security to the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines – which are strategic assets for our nation. We’re one of two districts with that mission. We have a well-known counter-narcotics and migrant interdiction responsibility. We have one of the busiest recreational boating areas in the country and it’s year-round here, it’s not seasonal. We have a lot of fisheries in our area of responsibility, as well as a lot of marine safety and prevention that’s driven by the fast-growing ports here in Savannah, Charleston, and Tampa. You also have the three largest cruise ship ports in the world, which obviously are a little quieter right now. Regarding maritime commerce, Florida is a huge
