White Sands and Shiny Sea Belie Gulf of Mexico’s Troubled Waters : Environment: Pollution, abuse and overuse are choking off a host of resources.

Dewey Destin makes his living from the Gulf of Mexico, but he’s worried about its future--and his.

This onetime fishing village in the Florida Panhandle, named for one of his ancestors, still has a thriving recreational charter fleet. But Destin is its last commercial fishing boat owner.

Pollution, abuse and overuse of “America’s Sea” have reduced the population of many species, including red snapper, king mackerel and redfish, to the point where regulatory agencies have limited or prohibited catches.

Destin has fished for just about everything at one time or another. Now, he specializes in bait fish, one of the few unrestricted catches.

“When you stop to think that we’ve only really been majorly polluting the gulf for, what, 40 years, it’s really scary that 40 years from now we may have choked it completely to death,” Destin said.

The shiny blue-green seas and sparkling sugar-white beaches that make this part of the gulf a tourist attraction belie troubled waters.

The gulf receives waste water from toilets flushed in cities as far away as Chicago and industrial discharges and fertilizers washed off farms and lawns across the eastern two-thirds of the United States.

Scientists say nutrients flowing down the Mississippi River have created a lifeless, oxygen-depleted “dead zone” covering about 3,000 square miles on the gulf bottom off the Louisiana and Texas coasts.

Pollution was blamed for the explosive growth of smelly seaweed that covered miles of Florida beaches, hip-deep in some places, last summer. It clogged power plant cooling systems, forcing them to shut down.

California last year ordered restaurants and stores to post signs warning that Gulf Coast oysters may be contaminated. Instead, most businesses just stopped selling them.

Destin’s fears have been recognized, although some say belatedly, at the federal level. Congress has passed and President Bush has signed a resolution declaring 1992 as the “Year of the Gulf of Mexico.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is boosting the budget of its Gulf of Mexico Program, created three years ago at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss., from $1.4 million to about $6 million. The new dollars will be used to complete a series of studies and begin taking steps to clean up and protect the gulf.

Legislation has been introduced in Congress to write the gulf program into federal law and increase its budget to as much as $30 million a year.

“The gulf is 415 times larger . . . yet the EPA was spending multimillions of dollars more on Chesapeake Bay,” said Rep. Greg Laughlin (D-Tex.), co-chairman of the House Sun Belt Caucus’ Gulf of Mexico Task Force.

A public relations campaign with the slogan “America’s Sea--Keep It Shining” is planned through the year to seek public and political support for gulf programs and the additional money it will take to make them succeed.

It will trumpet the gulf’s magnitude:

* It covers nearly 700,000 square miles. That’s about seven times larger than the Great Lakes. It is bordered by Mexico, Cuba and five U.S. states--Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas--containing a sixth of the nation’s population.

* More fish, shrimp and shellfish are caught annually in the gulf than off the entire U.S. Atlantic Coast.

* About 75% of waterfowl that traverse the United States passes through the gulf region.

* About 90% of all U.S. offshore oil and gas comes from the gulf. Leases on those sites are the federal government’s second-largest source of revenue next to the income tax, generating nearly $90 billion over the last four decades.

* Gulf ports handle about 45% of all U.S. imports and exports.

* Tourism in the five gulf states is a $20-billion annual business.

The gulf’s problems, however, are as vast as its resources.

Four gulf states--Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas--are among the top five in releasing toxic chemicals into surface waters. Of the nation’s 10 worst oil spills, four have been in the gulf or connected waters.

Pollution has permanently or conditionally closed nearly 60%--3.4 million acres--of Gulf Coast shellfish waters.

About half the nation’s wetlands, so critical as fish and wildlife habitat, are on the Gulf Coast, but they are rapidly disappearing due to development, pollution and other factors, EPA scientists say. Louisiana, for instance, is losing 60 square miles of coastal wetlands every year.

Visions of oil spills and other pollution from offshore drilling washing up on Florida’s beaches have unified the state like no other issue, said Ann Whitfield, executive director of the Florida Public Interest Research Group.

From Gov. Lawton Chiles on down, Florida politicians are battling efforts by the federal government and the petroleum industry to open the eastern gulf to oil and gas exploration that Floridians see as a threat to their environment, lifestyle and tourist industry.

Elsewhere on the Gulf Coast, however, there has been little or no opposition to drilling, and it is welcomed in many places as an economic mainstay. And other states point to other pollution.

To Larry Davis, dock master at the Orange Beach, Ala., Marina, the biggest problem affecting his corner of the gulf is the Champion International paper mill in the neighboring Florida Panhandle. He and many other Alabamians blame the mill for polluting Perdido Bay, which separates the two states.

Even fresh water can be a problem. Florida, Alabama and Georgia have been negotiating the diversion of water from the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system for use in Atlanta and other thirsty urban areas. Diverting too much fresh water, however, could ruin the oystering industry in the Florida Panhandle by upsetting Apalachicola Bay’s salinity balance.

While the gulf’s problems may seem daunting, Destin thinks the EPA is on the right track with its public relations effort, which is scheduled to begin this summer.

“I think a lot of the problem could be solved with a simple change in attitude by the people who live on the gulf,” Destin said. “Have respect. Don’t throw the trash overboard. Don’t throw the stuff off the oil rig.”