Panel Says Health of Seas in Peril

[Achilles Tang]

Panel Says Health of Seas in Peril

Sun Sep 22, 6:52 PM ET

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

Six months before the first man landed on the moon, a presidential commission urged Congress to use more "fully and wisely" a different sort of vastness, one teeming with life but just as mysterious and far closer to home — the world's oceans.

More than three decades later, a second presidential commission, led by a retired admiral who headed the Energy Department in the first Bush administration, says the urgency is even greater than when the Eagle landed.

"The oceans are in trouble; the coasts are in trouble; our marine resources are in trouble. These are not challenges we can sweep aside," said James Watkins, sounding more like a lifelong environmentalist than a former chief of naval operations and national security expert.

Since the last commission's report in early 1969, pressures have increased on coastal areas that are home to half the nation's population. Ocean resources once thought boundless are now recognized as having limits.

About 40,000 acres of coastal wetlands providing essential spawning, feeding and nursery areas for three-fourths of U.S. commercial fish catches are disappearing each year, says the new U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, now halfway through an 18-month study.

Of the fully assessed U.S. fish stocks, 40 percent are depleted or are being overfished, the commission says in an interim report being released this week. Also, 12 billion tons of ballast water from ships are spreading invasive alien species to new locales around world.

The panel points to a need for consolidating the federal and state governments' myriad and often conflicting policies affecting oceans.

"Individuals who work and live on the water, from fishers to corporations, face a Byzantine patchwork of federal and state authorities and regulations," the commission said. It cited more than 140 federal ocean-related laws administered by nearly 20 different agencies and commissions.

"We're already assuming that there has to be a national ocean policy coordinating body," Watkins said.

The commission found that:

_Ocean pollution, largely from farmland and urban runoff, and human populations are increasing so much near shorelines that proper coastal management is overwhelmed.

_Fish stocks continue to be depleted, and the advice of scientists too often is ignored at the expense of fisheries and the long-term sustainability of the fishing industry. There may be a need, for example, to more closely regulate aquaculture, the fish farming industry.

_Not enough study has been given to the interaction between oceans and climate change, particularly in the Arctic Ocean.

The presidential commission's work is being augmented by a similar effort by the independently financed Pew Oceans Commission, which plans to make recommendations next year.

The Pew commission has been looking at, among other things, a need for federal agencies more often to consider the effects of their actions on marine ecosystems and ocean life as a whole, rather than focusing just on fish.

Karen Garrison, who co-directs the oceans program in San Francisco for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said she hopes the Watkins commission also recognizes the importance of management based on overall habitat.

"A key question may be whether they're really willing to look at the limitations of our current laws, and recommend new mandates that will protect our ocean ecosystems for the future," she said.

Watkins' commission follows in the long silent footsteps of the Stratton Commission, which on Jan. 9, 1969, released its 300-page oceans report just days before Lyndon Johnson handed over the White House to Richard Nixon.

Its recommendations led to creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1970 and the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1976 and Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976.