Panel Presses New Ocean Safeguards

A commission authorized by Congress and appointed by President Bush has issued a gloomy report on America’s oceans, urging the government to intervene in hundreds of ways -- from curtailing pollution to controlling coastal development -- in order to nurse the ailing waters back to health.

The 450-page report from the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy details what has gone wrong: seafood contaminated with bacteria and chemicals such as mercury and dioxins; urban runoff laden with oil, trash and human waste; farm runoff that causes blooms of algae that suffocate all life and create oceanic “dead zones”; and rising sea temperatures that are killing coral reefs and spreading water-borne viruses.

The report lays blame on a variety of human activities. It singles out commercial fishermen who deplete fish stocks and discard up to a quarter of their catch.

It also faults poorly planned coastal development that degrades estuaries and wetlands and puts people in the path of violent storms.

The report will please and provoke many of the groups that share an interest in the oceans, from conservationists and fishermen to the oil industry and the military.

It calls for weakening the authority of regional fishery management councils controlled by the fishing industry.

It also encourages new techniques of sea-floor mining and calls for relaxing restrictions on the use of industrial sonar, which can disturb whales and dolphins.

“Everyone agrees the oceans are in trouble,” said commission Chairman James D. Watkins, a retired Navy admiral, referring to the 16 panel members, who included oil and shipping executives as well as scientists and government officials. “We know if we don’t get moving now, in 10 years we may not be able to recover.”

Watkins said the overwhelming evidence collected at public hearings and site visits made it easy for the commissioners to reach consensus on the urgency of their mission.

The report, the first comprehensive analysis of the oceans in 35 years, emphasizes their role in providing food and jobs, as well as their intangible benefits.

“We also love the oceans for their beauty and majesty and for their intrinsic power to relax, rejuvenate and inspire,” the report says. “Unfortunately, we are starting to love our oceans to death.” The report recommends that Bush set up a National Ocean Council, appoint a White House assistant to lead it, and bring order to the chaos of 20 federal agencies that implement 140 federal laws related to America’s oceans.

In all, the commission came up with about 200 recommendations, with an estimated price tag of $3 billion, including a proposal to make sense of what Watkins calls “a byzantine patchwork of laws and regulations that don’t really work.”

James T. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said he agreed with the “general diagnosis” and the need for action.

But he said the administration would hold off on its response until the report -- technically a draft -- was completed in the next few months.

California officials praised the report. “Protecting our ocean and coastal resources is a top priority” for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his administration, California Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman and Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Terry Tamminen said in a statement.

State officials plan to gather experts early next month for a meeting to consider how the report’s recommendations should affect state policy.

Members of Congress, who have awaited the report since they ordered it in 2000, are already preparing legislation.

This week, the Senate Commerce and Appropriations committees will begin a series of hearings on the commission’s findings.

In the House, the bipartisan Oceans Caucus plans to stitch the newly released recommendations into legislation it has been drafting since June, when the Pew Oceans Commission, a private panel funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, issued similar findings.

“We are putting together the BOB -- the Big Oceans Bill,” said Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel), an Ocean Caucus co-chairman. “It will put together the recommendations of the Pew Commission with those from this commission.”

Ocean advocates in Congress believe they will need Bush’s backing. Some environmentalists worry the president will act on the least consequential recommendations of the report.

“My fear is that he would do the old lipstick-on-the-pig routine,” said Roger T. Rufe Jr., president of the Ocean Conservancy. “Pick a few minor things in the report, call it his clean-oceans initiative and make it look like he’s done something significant.”

Commissioners noted that this was the first presidential panel to examine America’s oceans since the Stratton Commission in 1969 made recommendations to Congress that led to the creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Stratton Commission focused on foreign fishing fleets plundering the seas off U.S. shores, and set up ways for the U.S. fleet to expand and push the foreigners out. The system set up eight regional fishery management councils, which worked too well, the new commission said. The problem now is too many U.S. fishermen chasing too few fish.

The commission recommends reforming these regional councils, which are run by fishing industry representatives. The councils determine how many fish can be caught every year and decide which groups of fishermen are allowed to catch them.

The commission recommends stripping the councils of the power to decide how many fish can be caught and placing it in the hands of scientists appointed by federal regulators, who would presumably be insulated from industry pressure.

Under the commission’s proposal, if a council failed to reduce the total catch by postponing action or rejecting scientific advice -- a pattern blamed for the collapse of the cod fishery off New England and rockfish off California -- the fishery would be shut down.

“Now the default for inaction is everything stays the same and fishermen keep on overfishing,” said Commissioner Andrew A. Rosenberg, a former deputy director of the National Marine Fisheries Service. “The new default would be: No fishing.”

The commission also recommends placing transponders on commercial vessels and using satellites as an enforcement tool to make sure boats are not fishing in closed areas.

William T. Hogarth, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, said he supported expanding the use of satellites, which are used to track scallop fishermen that dredge the ocean bottom off New England.

But Hogarth isn’t sure the administration will support stripping fishery management councils of their power to set catch limits. “I think the managers need some discretion,” he said.

Many recommendations are similar to those issued by the Pew Oceans Commission, even though many of the Pew commissioners were drawn from conservation organizations whereas many of the U.S. commissioners worked in the oil, shipping and banking industries.

Leon E. Panetta, White House chief of staff under President Clinton who chaired the Pew commission, said policymakers in Washington should take note of the like-minded message. “We now have two commissions identifying the same problems in the ocean that need to be fixed,” he said.

The presidential commission, however, didn’t go as far as some members had hoped. It did not call for additional areas to be protected from fishing and mining. However, it suggested that such reserves would be useful in managing marine ecosystems, as opposed to the current policy of managing a species at time.

Nor did it address global overfishing, even though the United States imports about 80% of its seafood.

Commissioner William D. Ruckelshaus, who was the first chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the panel wanted to limit its recommendations to realistic, easily achievable results.

“We ought to get our own house in order before we start lecturing everybody else,” Ruckelshaus said. “Once we do that, we will have a lot more influence internationally than we do now.”

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Blueprint for a blue ocean

The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy offered nearly 200 recommendations to President Bush, Congress and various federal agencies. Some highlights:

Better government

Establish a National Ocean Council, chaired by an assistant to the president, to oversee ocean policies and coordinate 20 federal agencies.

Sustainable fisheries

Reform the management of domestic fisheries by requiring regional fishery management councils to rely on scientists to determine how many fish can be caught without further depleting stocks.

Law of the Sea

Congress should ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, so the U.S. can fully participate in international discussions on topics ranging from fishing and mining to free navigation in international waters.

Aquaculture

Make the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration the lead agency in overseeing the development of fish farms in offshore waters, and carefully regulate the farms to avoid problems that have beset foreign farms -- such as the spread of pollution, disease and escaped fish.

Dolphins and whales

Relax the federal law that restricts industrial activities -- such as mapping the sea floor using sonar -- that have a potential for harming marine mammals. Instead, restrict only those activities that “meaningfully disrupt behaviors that are significant to the survival and reproduction of marine mammals.”

Coastal development

Give coastal commissions and other government entities more authority to plan for growth and steer development away from sensitive areas such as wetlands and stretches of shoreline prone to hazards.

Education

Improve policymakers’ understanding of the oceans, cultivate a broad public sense of stewardship of this public resource and prepare a new generation of leaders through educational programs.

Research

Double the budget for ocean research, which has fallen to about half what it was during the Cold War.

Finances

Use royalties from oil and gas drilling and other industrial uses of the sea to create an Ocean Policy Trust Fund to implement the recommendations.

Source: U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy