Troubled waters make headlines

Boat/US Magazine, July, 2003 by Ryck Lydecker

After plumbing the depths of ocean policy for over two years, a panel of leaders in marine science, industry, education and government is calling for sweeping changes in U.S. marine resource management.

Having taken the nation's temperature on ocean and coastal issues in a series of public hearings, workshops and focus groups since July 2000, the Pew Oceans Commission released its recommendations June 4.

In a nutshell, the commission, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and three other private foundations, says "America's oceans are in crisis." And to address the problem, it called for "fundamental changes in ocean policy and governance" that would protect and restore the marine ecosystem."

The commission, chaired by Leon Panetta, former congressman and White House chief of staff, endorses an "ecosystem approach" to managing our coastal oceans, rather than the species-by-species methods traditionally used. It also calls for creating regional management councils with broad regulatory mandates, which could have important implications for boaters and saltwater anglers.

Meanwhile, the presidentially appointed U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy is expected to reach similar conclusions when it releases its findings later this year.

That commission, chaired by retired Navy Adm. James D. Watkins, took a "big picture" look at the oceans by including topics such as ocean research and engineering, maritime transportation and port security in its mandate. By contrast, the Pew Oceans Commission focused on living resources like fish and other marine life as well as their habitat.

Nonetheless, at least when it comes to the critters that live in our seas, the operative word from both commissions is "crisis." Will it take a crisis to focus public attention on ocean problems as well as muster the political will to address them at all levels of government?

Possibly, says Pew Commissioner, David Rockefeller, Jr.

"I'm reluctant to use that word to describe the overall situation, to say that we've mined the oceans and that it's all over," says Rockefeller, a seasoned bluewater sailor and ocean racer. "In most cases that's not true. The seas are resilient but not endless. They respond to what we do to them, for good or for ill."

That "endlessness," he says, had been the marine environment's undoing throughout much of the 20th century.

"We've had a concept, globally, that the oceans are in a way infinite, that you can't hurt them," Rockefeller adds. "Mystery has been the emblem of our relationship with the oceans; not a lot of basic understanding, but a lot of fascination."

That fascination is, at least in part, what drove the last comprehensive examination of ocean policy 35 years ago when the Stratton Commission convened by President Nixon looked to the sea as an untapped source of protein and renewable energy as well as potential cures for human disease.

That commission's work did produce positive strides in ocean science research as well as a number of federal policy initiatives, like creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that effect recreational boating and fishing to this day.

"It was important to have a focus on the oceans back then but, unfortunately, I think we've taken some wrong turns since," Rockefeller says.

U.S. ocean policy wasn't kept up to date during the 1970s and '80s as signs of change and damage to living resources began to show, he explains.

"In part, international issues drove the Stratton Commission," Rockefeller reports. "Concerns like 'Who's fishing in my waters?' and 'Foreign fishermen are taking all our fish' lead to overhauling fishery management through the Magnuson Act of 1976 and the establishment of the 200--mile limit in 1983.

"As a result of the Magnuson Act, the government financed a fishing fleet that was capable of accomplishing the very destruction that we claimed others were doing in our waters, the damage to the stocks that we were trying to stop," he adds.

The Magnuson Act also created eight regional Federal Fishery Management Councils to manage U.S. fish stocks. Since commercial interests have dominated the councils, that put the fox in charge of the hen house, Rockefeller maintains, and many sportfishing organizations agree with that assessment today.

But the Pew Commission now points to those councils as a model for the regional "ocean ecosystem councils" it envisions to implement "enforceable regional governance plans."

The large geographic scale of ocean ecosystems and their living resources lend themselves to regional management, the Pew reports says, while coastal development and pollution control is best addressed and managed at the "watershed level," that is to say, around river systems and estuaries.

The vehicle to create the regional councils, the Pew Oceans Commission says, would be a comprehensive National Ocean Policy Act from Congress to protect and restore marine resources and possibly create an independent federal ocean agency.

The Stratton Commission, three decades ago, proposed a similar agency--a "wet NASA"--but when Congress balked, President Nixon created NOAA, a more limited agency within the Dept. of Commerce, by executive order.