Panel urges new safeguards for oceans

A trust fund would use billions in oil and gas revenue to help nurse the ailing waters back to health.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy released a massive and dismal report Tuesday detailing the degradation of the world's oceans, saying they're polluted, overfished and inattentively managed. The draft report offered more than 200 recommendations for improvement.

"Our oceans and coasts are in serious trouble," the commission's chairman, Adm. James Watkins, a former chief of naval operations, said at a news conference. The commission's 16 members were appointed by President Bush in July 2001.

The 450-page report, the most comprehensive ocean survey in 35 years, notes that more than 37-million people and 19-million homes have been added to U.S. coastlines since the late 1960s. More than 40,000 acres of U.S. coastal wetlands a year are lost to development, according to the report, and more than half of the world's coral reefs may be gone in the next three decades.

Among their major recommendations, the commissioners call for:

Local and international action to curb the overfishing that has depleted fish stocks worldwide.

Increasingly stringent curbs on nutrient-rich runoff pollution that threatens to strangle the ecosystems of the Chesapeake Bay and creates a huge seasonal "dead zone" where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

Doubling federal investment in oceans research, which now stands at $650-million annually.

Improving oceans education for elementary, secondary, college and graduate students.

Establishing a National Ocean Council.

To pay for ocean protection and enhancement, the panel proposes creating an Ocean Policy Trust Fund modeled after the Highway Trust Fund for transportation projects. It would draw up to $4-billion a year from royalties and other fees paid to the U.S. Treasury for offshore oil and gas drilling and "new uses of offshore waters." Fish-farming and deep-sea mining, both unpopular with environmentalists, are among the possibilities.

"Will it be tough to sell? You better believe it. But we're going to go for it," said Watkins. "Everybody wants to go after those revenues. Well, we do too. And we hope we can win it."

Most of the recommendations called for actions that would need approval by Congress or the president, including seeking to end the country's 22-year-old refusal to officially join the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, an international compact governing use of the oceans.

To elevate the issue of ocean management and streamline interagency coordination, the commission urged Congress to create the National Ocean Council, which would be composed of Cabinet secretaries heading the relevant executive-branch agencies.

The preliminary report urged new restraints on fisheries management councils, a system of regional bodies that govern how much catch fishing boats are allowed to land. It called on the councils to rely on their Scientific and Statistical Committees for guidance in setting policy and would bar anyone from serving on those committees who is involved in catching or processing fish. It said the councils should "determine allowable biological catch based on the best scientific information available to them" and seek input from "the general public" as well as commercial and recreational fishermen.

The oceans commission, a largely Republican group of scientists, businessmen and government officials, stopped short of endorsing some stringent controls suggested in a private study sponsored by the Pew Commission last year. That report recommended: putting controls on bottom fishing; zoning sections of the ocean for limited uses; and creating a web of "marine protected areas," like the 14-year-old Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, with protections similar to those enjoyed by terrestrial parks and wilderness areas.

While most environmental groups hailed the report for its comprehensiveness and practicality, several said that the commission could have been tougher.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group voiced concern over the commissioners' "omissions."

"They have chosen to ignore such key issues as the bipartisan congressional offshore oil and gas leasing moratorium that currently protects most of our fragile coastal waters," said Buffy Baumann, the group's oceans advocate. "The commission's glaring lack of support for the maintenance of this moratorium is alarming."

John Adams, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a major environmental group, said that he welcomed the report and would not dwell on any differences he had with specific recommendations.

"The overall message," he said, "is that there's a crisis out there and it's a very important crisis because we're losing a food supply and a huge economic base for this country and unless we get to it quickly this will start to disappear very quickly."

The commissioners are asking the nation's governors - and the public - to comment on the study by May 21. They plan to release their final report at the end of the year.

- Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers, New York Times and Washington Post was used in this report.

By almost any yardstick, U.S. coastal waters and the creatures that live there face serious challenges:

U.S. coastal areas account for less than 10 percent of the nation's land area, but are home to half the population. More than 40 percent of new commercial and residential development is along coasts.

Between 20,000 and 40,000 acres of coastal wetlands disappear every year in the United States. Louisiana has lost half a million acres of wetlands since the 1950s.

The number of oxygen-starved "dead zones" - areas of ocean where pollution is so high life cannot be supported - has doubled in the past 15 years.

The Gulf of Mexico suffers a dead zone of as much as 8,500 square miles as the result of pollution from the Mississippi River.

Twenty-one of the 30 states with ocean or Great Lakes beaches failed to meet a congressional deadline this month for adopting federal health standards to protect swimmers from contamination.

A recent California study found the more time surfers spend in the water, the greater their chances of getting sick, an indication coastal waters are teeming with germs and bacteria from urban runoff.

A single cruise ship can dump up to 30,000 gallons of sewage a day and 255,000 gallons of "gray water" from laundries, showers, sinks and dishwashers.

Pollution is causing new diseases in marine mammals. Thousands of seals have died of canine distemper associated with dogs. California sea otters are dying from an organism found in cat feces.

The U.S. government lists 81 domestic fish stocks as exploited, about a third of the stocks on which the government has population data. About 25 percent of world fish stocks are overexploited.

U.S. commercial fishermen landed 9.4-billion pounds of fish in 2002. About two-thirds of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported.

Studies show fishermen discard about 25 percent of what they catch worldwide. Recreational fishermen on U.S. coasts caught 421-million fish in 2002. Americans spend $8.4-billion a year on saltwater sport fishing.

Foreign species arriving in ballast water from cargo ships are wreaking havoc on local ecosystems. Ninety-five percent of U.S. international trade is shipped on the ocean.

Coastal tourism in the United States has grown to more than 180-million visitors annually and accounts for 85 percent of tourism-related revenues.

To read the report and submit suggestions, go to www.ocean commission.gov/

Sources: U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy; Pew Oceans Commission; American Journal of Public Health; Oceana; United Nations; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; World Wildlife Fund; Nature.

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