BajaNomad

More trouble ahead?

baitcast - 3-10-2010 at 09:53 AM

Atlanta – The Obama administration has proposed using United Nations-guided principles to expand a type of zoning to coastal and even some inland waters. That’s raising concerns among fishermen that their favorite fishing holes may soon be off-limits for bait-casting. In the battle of incremental change that epitomizes the American conservation movement, many weekend anglers fear that the Obama administration’s promise to “fundamentally change” water management in the US will erode what they call the public’s “right to fish,” in turn creating economic losses for the $82 billion recreational fishing industry and a further deterioration of the American outdoorsman’s legacy. Proponents say the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force established by President Obama last June will ultimately benefit the fishing public by managing ecosystems in their entirety rather than by individual uses such as fishing, shipping, or oil exploration. “It’s not an environmentalist manifesto,” says Larry Crowder, a marine biologist at Duke University in North Carolina. “It’s multiple-use planning for the environment, and making sure various uses … are sustainable.” (Amateur outdoorsmen have been fighting for their rights for years, as the Monitor reports here.)

New way to manage marine resourcesFaced with the prospect of further industrialization along America's coasts and the Great Lakes (wind turbines and natural-gas exploration, for example), the task force is charged with putting in place a new ecosystem management process called marine spatial planning. Marine spatial planning (MSP), according to the United Nations, is “a public process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic, and social objectives that usually have been specified through a political process." That kind of government-speak scares Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs at the reel-and-rod maker Shimano. Mr. Morlock points to references by the ocean task force to “one global sea” as evidence that what’s really being proposed are broad changes to America's user-funded conservation strategy, potentially affecting even inland waters. “I suggest that the task force recommend our model to the United Nations rather than us adopting the United Nations model,” he says in a phone interview. “The American model is the best in the world, so our question is: Why seek the lowest common denominator?”

Much more on Yahoo.
Rob

[Edited on 3-10-2010 by baitcast]

wessongroup - 3-10-2010 at 01:35 PM

It is a big deal.. “a public process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic, and social objectives that usually have been specified through a political process."

Allocation of spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas?
Achieve ecological, economic and social objectives?
Specified through a political process?

Couple this with the United States Supreme Courts ridiculous ruling on pollution as they didn't think it applied to all water in the Country...

And it's looking pretty ugly for how resources are going to be used by the public in the future, as you point out Rob

Skipjack Joe - 3-10-2010 at 02:42 PM

:fire::fire::fire::fire::fire::fire::fire::fire:

Keep pushing it and you won't get my vote again. Gonna become a DavidK groupie.

Don Alley - 3-10-2010 at 04:03 PM

Really nothing new here; the largest example of spatial planning was the huge closed-to-fishing reserve in the pacific near Midway that GW Bush pushed through.

"Management" through the creation and expansion of reserves that are closed to fishing is a worldwide fad. What's happening in California is a good example, a process driven and dominated by interests who recognize closing as many inshore areas as possible to all fishing as the only management tool. They have opposed all other management tools on all state marine waters in the current allocation process.

The same push for closed fishing areas is underway in the Sea of Cortez. One problem we have as sportfishers is that interests supporting these closures do not differentiate between sport and artisanal commercial fishing, which could leave us squeezed into ever smaller areas with the gillnets and hooka divers.

Offshore fishing (tuna, swordfish, marlin, etc) is not affected by these inshore reserves. So the types of fishing where management has been the least successful has received the least attention from the environmental organizations.

One of the problems sportfishermen face politically is that there are no clear party lines. Both US political parties have a clear track record of supporting efforts to "Save the Oceans" that place the burden on sportfishers and neglect the large offshore fishing corporations.

wessongroup - 3-10-2010 at 04:21 PM

You mean like this?

Surprised?

Bajahowodd - 3-10-2010 at 04:30 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Don Alley
Really nothing new here; the largest example of spatial planning was the huge closed-to-fishing reserve in the pacific near Midway that GW Bush pushed through.

"Management" through the creation and expansion of reserves that are closed to fishing is a worldwide fad. What's happening in California is a good example, a process driven and dominated by interests who recognize closing as many inshore areas as possible to all fishing as the only management tool. They have opposed all other management tools on all state marine waters in the current allocation process.

The same push for closed fishing areas is underway in the Sea of Cortez. One problem we have as sportfishers is that interests supporting these closures do not differentiate between sport and artisanal commercial fishing, which could leave us squeezed into ever smaller areas with the gillnets and hooka divers.

Offshore fishing (tuna, swordfish, marlin, etc) is not affected by these inshore reserves. So the types of fishing where management has been the least successful has received the least attention from the environmental organizations.

One of the problems sportfishermen face politically is that there are no clear party lines. Both US political parties have a clear track record of supporting efforts to "Save the Oceans" that place the burden on sportfishers and neglect the large offshore fishing corporations.



It's all about big business. Money talks. And it has little to do with party affiliation. The little guy just keeps getting squeezed. Just wish I could live long enough to see where this goes. But it will surely be a world I would never recognize.