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U.S. presidential panel favors extending ocean science to inland issues 28 May 2003 By John Heilprin,
Associated Press WASHINGTON — Aiming at reduce pollution threatening ocean ecosystems, a U.S. presidential commission favors injecting ocean science into decision-making on traditionally inland issues such as agriculture runoff from farms, the panel's chairman said Tuesday. Ocean pollution often begins hundreds of miles (kilometers) inland, requiring a broader, ecosystem-based approach to controlling it, said James Watkins, head of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. Such an approach would involve weighing impacts on all species and habitats within a marine ecosystem rather than making decisions fish by fish, as if each species were independent. The new efforts could be organized geographically along the lines of eight existing regional fishery councils in the United States whose primary task now is setting limits on fish catches, he said. Communities and states would work with outside experts to determine how to reduce ocean-harming practices, such as preventing farm manures and fertilizers from running into waterways. Animal manure typically contains nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which, in heavy doses, can clog waterways with too much enrichment, cause fish kills, and contribute, for example, to the expansion of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. The dead zone, where too little oxygen supports ocean life, fans out for thousands of miles (kilometers) from the Mississippi River Delta. "You can't do ecosystem-based management unless everybody talks to each other," said Watkins, a retired admiral who has been chief of naval operations, energy secretary, and AIDS commission chairman. Watkins said it is impossible to manage oceans by dealing with fisheries and pollution separately. "You can't separate physics from chemistry, from biology, from geology. When you try to do that, you end up in the management mess we find today," he said. "One of the major findings is going to be that the oceans don't start at the coastline; there are 41 states and two Canadian provinces that cause the dead zone in the Gulf. So everyone's in the ocean business." Watkins and scientists on each of the commissions cited the importance of a new study this month showing industrial fishing fleets have removed as much as 90 percent of the giant tuna, swordfish, marlin, and other big fish from the world's oceans. The study by two scientists in Canada suggest stocks of the biggest fish in the ocean could falter as fishing fleets vie for the last 10 percent. The area of ocean waters controlled by the United States is almost one-quarter larger than the nation's land mass, owing to the exclusive economic zone that stretches out about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the continent and Pacific and Atlantic islands. In 1969, the first federal oceans commission — concerned about foreign
fishing fleets operating just off U.S. coasts — gave Congress advice
that led to creating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
and coastal zone and fishery management laws. |