Something for everyone / Task force offers good compromise on marine life protection
San Diego Union-Tribune
11/15/2009
A newspaper business trope holds that if a reporter’s story has irritated, or at least not fully satisfied, partisans on both sides of an issue, then he or she has probably done a good job of getting things just about right.
While perhaps a tad simplistic, there is truth in such analysis.
And, it seems to us, such a formula holds in the case of a state panel’s recommendations last week to roughly double the size of marine sanctuaries off the coast of Southern California, while leaving still-vast areas open for anglers,
The recommendations made unanimously by the five-member Marine Life Protection Act Blue Ribbon Task Force came after a year of discussions with dozens of groups with myriad and often competing interests in California’s coastal waters. But the fundamental issue came down to disagreements between environmentalists who argued, as one Union-Tribune contributor put it, that we face “aquapolypse now,” or an irreversible decline in fish stocks due to overfishing, and those affiliated with the commercial and recreational fishing industries who argued that those concerns were overstated and that economic calamity will ensue in many coastal communities if strict regulations are adopted.
The panel’s recommendations, issued at the conclusion of a contentious meeting in Long Beach, were not fully embraced by either group.
“It hurts us really bad. It’s just unfathomable that they could just blatantly disregard the socioeconomics of some of these areas,” Wendy Tochihara, a representative of a fishing line company, told U-T reporter Mike Lee.
Kate Hanley, of San Diego Coastkeeper, told Lee: “I’m glad the task force recognized the economic and environmental value of protecting iconic places, but we would have liked to see more protections for south La Jolla’s kelp forest.”
The recommendations affect the area from Point Conception in Santa Barbara County to the Mexican border. They call for expanding some existing sanctuaries as well as creating new areas where fishing is off limits, including off Imperial Beach, south La Jolla, Encinitas and other local locations.
