Nov. 11, 2009 | Molly Peterson | KPCC
A state panel has recommended a network of havens for marine life in California waters. Marine protected areas from San Diego up to Santa Barbara will join a statewide network, the largest of its kind in the country. The compromise plan doesn’t feel like a success to everyone yet.
California passed a law 10 years ago now to protect not just one fish or species, but entire areas of coastal waters. Nothing about enacting that cutting edge plan has been easy.
By Mike Lee
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 2:41 p.m.
SAN DIEGO — A meeting that’s key to forming the size and location of areas off-limits to fishing has been tense Tuesday, capped off by brief shouting and shoving as anglers, environmentalists, marine scientists and others vie to make their case.
By day’s end, a statewide Blue Ribbon Task Force is expected to choose from among four plans for revamping marine protected areas, where fishing and other seafood harvesting are banned or restricted. Its proposal will be finalized by the state Fish and Game Commission, likely by late next year.
WASHINGTON — Off the coast of Washington state, mysterious algae mixed with sea foam have killed more than 8,000 seabirds, puzzling scientists. A thousand miles off California, researchers have discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling vortex roughly twice the size of Texas filled with tiny bits of plastic and other debris.
Every summer a dead zone of oxygen-depleted water the size of Massachusetts forms in the Gulf of Mexico; others have been found off Oregon and in the Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie, and the Baltic and Black seas. Some studies indicate that North Pole seawater could turn caustic in 10 years, and that the Southern Ocean already may be saturated with carbon dioxide.
Posted by Will Ramos on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Filed under: Action, Headline, News & Resources, Policy
President Obama charged the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force with recommending a framework for effective coastal and marine spatial planning by December 2009.
Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is a future-oriented, adaptive, science-based tool that requires fundamental understanding of physical, biogeochemical and ecological patterns and processes and human interactions in the ocean; the ability to observe and measure these characteristics; and finally the capability to forecast these conditions. Successful management of the marine environment needs to be based on the best available science and will require continual information gathering to establish baselines, monitor ecosystems, and evaluate the efficacy of marine spatial plans. These tasks are essential to wisely plan for sustainable resource use into the future.
The Congress Blog
By Ocean Conservancy Executive Vice President Dennis Kelso
Today Congress takes up a critical issue for our health and the health of our economy—how to manage our use of the ocean wisely. The ocean may seem like an endless space that can absorb whatever we put in it, and offer infinite supply of whatever we want from it, but as science has proven time and again, this simply is not true. Now, momentum is building for a national plan to manage our ocean—the Obama Administration’s Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force is set to provide recommendations next month, and Congress should support this critical effort, because the ocean affects all of us each day.