REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK / ENVIRONMENT : Bush to Spend Earth Day Getting Hooked on Reefs

Here, where the wily bonefish abounds in the flats of the Florida Bay, is what President Bush plans to do on Earth Day:

At the unusual hour of 7:05 a.m., he intends to award a “Point of Light,” the presidential commendation he has created to recognize voluntarism, to an organization that is working to protect the fragile coral reefs of the Florida Keys. By about 8 a.m., or so, he plans to go fishing.

That’s not to say that the man who campaigned for the White House on the pledge to become “the environmental President” is ignoring the nationwide celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of Earth Day.

He is just doing it in his own fashion--a little bit of this, a little bit of that--rather than landing with both feet in the midst of a big bash.

Throughout his visit to Florida, Bush has skittered into and out of environmental topics--creating the aura of environmental action without appearing to be consumed by it.

On Friday, he announced that sites on the coasts of Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts and Florida had been added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Estuary Program, established to protect environmentally sensitive wetlands.

Today, he plans to announce greater protection of the heavily trafficked Florida sea lanes, where Blackbeard and other pirate cohorts once swooped down on Europe-bound sea travelers. In the 1990s, it is the life at the sea bottom there--the only living coral reefs in the continental United States--that need the protection.

Nowhere on the Bush agenda was there any reference to one of the most sensitive environmental decisions on his plate: whether to ban for the foreseeable future oil drilling and exploration off the coast of Florida near the Everglades, although he has suggested he might accept such a ban.

In February, 1989, he suspended preparations for leasing segments of the Outer Continental Shelf near the Everglades and along two-thirds of the California coastline, a decision that has brought into sharp focus the clash between environmental, economic and energy concerns.

The bitter debate over the leases has led to frequent postponements of the decision--one that White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater routinely says requires more research, and one that is certain to anger somebody.

While the President’s four-day trip has had three purposes--a meeting Thursday with French President Francois Mitterrand in Key Largo; political appearances in Birmingham, Ala., and Orlando, Fla., on Friday, and fishing, fishing and more fishing on Saturday and today--environmental messages were salted into Bush’s public events throughout the weekend.

As a cap on the trip, Bush, whose frequent-phoning habits have made the telephone the very symbol of chief executiveship, will once again reach out and touch someone. He is planning to call, of all places, Mt. Everest (an international team has timed its climb to coincide with Earth Day) and the Columbia River Gorge (to speak to an Earth Day rally there).

Even the setting for a news conference with Mitterrand sent signals of appreciation for remarkable outdoor beauty. The French and American presidents, their backs to the whitecaps of Card Sound, faced reporters on a finely manicured lawn edged by mangroves. A flapping circle of orange, green and white parachute cloth was tied to palm trees, providing shade from the late-afternoon sun.

Bush’s recreational activities fit certain patterns. He is a 65-year-old jogger--turning in respectable 10- to 11-minute miles--and he is fascinated with fast boats.

In Kennebunkport, Me., site of his vacation home, and here in Florida, it seems a day would not be complete without both.

So on Friday, before setting out from the Keys on a 15-hour day of travel, Bush jogged for a half-hour just after sunup, showered, changed into a blue rain suit and climbed aboard a speed boat with his host, Carl Lindner and Lindner’s son, Keith.

The elder Lindner, a Cincinnati businessman whose enterprises include importing bananas, runs a yellow speedboat on the waters off the Ocean Reef Club. He calls the boat Chiquita.

As for the presidential fishing expedition, Bush had no chance to break his unwanted Kennebunkport record. It was there last summer that he spent day after day, more than two weeks in all, before finally landing a bluefish.

That drought became a subject of extreme sensitivity--a topic as welcome in presidential conversation as broccoli is on the presidential plate.

At sundown, word from the shallow waters of Florida Bay was that Bush came up almost empty-handed. Although he caught several snappers that he threw back, the bonefish remained as elusive as the bluefish further north.