As We See It: Protect our ocean
Santa Cruz Sentinel
10/11/2009
California took a leading role in ocean protection 10 years ago.
Saturday, in these pages, former Assemblymen Kevin Shelley and Fred Keeley, author and co-author respectively of the Marine Life Protection Act, wrote about the Oct. 10, 1999, legislation's genesis and how the law was recently recognized by the Obama administration as a model for dealing with threats from the impacts of overfishing, climate change and habitat destruction.
The law created a network of marine protected areas up and down California's 1,100-mile coastline. And although the law was not popular among some sport and commercial fishermen, the plan received the unanimous approval of the state Fish and Game Commission and today is supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Supporters agree that something had to be done to restore a healthy fishery along our coast. Treating the ocean as an environment -- Keeley has called it an "entire eco system" -- was the way to do this, which has meant making some areas off limits to fishing or to taking certain fish.
Already 29 underwater refuges have been created along the Central Coast -- including Año Nuevo, Greyhound Rock, Soquel Canyon, Elkhorn Slough, Piedras Blancas, waters off the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel Bay and Point Lobos. In the next step, a state panel last year recommended protections for waters in the coastal region from Half Moon Bay to Mendocino. Other coastal areas also will be included, with the goal of a completed network by 2011. A series of areas in the northern Channel Islands near Santa Barbara were established as marine protected areas in 2003.
About 90 percent of the overall coastal ocean area still allows fishing. Bringing back the fisheries will, eventually, be a benefit to both commercial fishers and sport anglers.
The anniversary also is a good time to recall that the battle is not over. Earlier this decade, the Pew Oceans Commission, chaired by current CIA chief and former area congressman Leon Panetta, issued a report calling for immediate steps to reverse the decline in America's oceans.
That report remains relevant six years later. Large fish are gone in many areas; major salmon fisheries have been closed in California waters because of losses; wetlands and beaches have been affected; and climate change poses new threats and hazards.
