Does the United States really protect one-third of its waters? This is math.

But others say that’s not the case.

Advocates say some of these areas still allow commercial fishing and lack the protections needed to save marine ecosystems that face serious threats.

Brad Sewell, oceans director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that’s just an exaggeration of the numbers.

The disagreements came as the White House on Friday outlined U.S. progress toward President Joe Biden’s ambitious goal of protecting at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality said preliminary statistics outlined in the newly released atlas show that about one-third of the U.S. ocean area is currently protected.

Rick Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a statement that we are making bold progress in protecting our oceans.

However, exactly which areas on the map should be considered protected areas has been a controversial topic.

The White House said most of the 26% of U.S. waters are officially designated as marine protected areas, where human activities are often restricted to protect wildlife.

But that third of the figure also includes parts of the ocean where just one type of fishing, called bottom trawling, is banned to protect coral and other seafloor life from the nets that scrape the seafloor. Other types of commercial fishing in these areas, including large swathes of New England and the mid-Atlantic, are still allowed.

These are some of the measures, he added. We are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis. What we urgently need is not partial measures, but comprehensive, complete and adequate measures.

Matt Lee-Ashley, chief of staff for the Council on Environmental Quality, said the Biden administration is using a more inclusive definition of conservation rather than focusing strictly on protected areas, but he added that the work of protecting marine areas is not yet done and the administration is concerned about conservation. Marine areas are open. The White House said the current atlas is in beta.

Lee-Ashley said there is still much work to be done to develop the data and information needed for more accurate estimates.

Sewell said he was grateful the government was willing to listen to our point of view that they needed more accurate protection numbers.

John Hochevar, director of ocean campaigns at Greenpeace USA, warned that claiming that one-third of America’s waters are already protected is a huge mistake because we’re definitely not there. He worries the United States could set an example for other countries as they try to achieve their own conservation goals.

Biden’s 30% conservation goal, known as 30×30, joins an international effort to protect nearly one-third of the world’s land and oceans as a refuge for the planet’s wildlife as it faces a growing extinction crisis.

Hochevar said it’s bad enough to mislead the American public with creative accounting methods. But it also risks opening the door for other countries to try to pull off similar shenanigans.

Marine ecosystems on which people rely for survival face multiple threats, including rising temperatures, acidification of seawater and increasing plastic debris.

In terms of terrestrial ecosystems, the White House said that everything is on track, but has not yet achieved the 30% land protection goal, noting that about 13% of U.S. land is permanently protected.