LAT: Healthcare for the Oceans

[DeepModem Mom]

Healthcare for the Oceans
There's only one way to save the seas -- a scaled up, big-picture effort.
By Larry Crowder, LARRY CROWDER is the director of the Duke University Center for Marine Conservation at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences. He is lead author of a paper published last week in Sc
August 6, 2006

First, we must recognize that most of the oceans' problems are symptoms of an approach to governing the seas that no longer works. Currently, we manage one resource at a time, separately focusing on fishing or offshore oil drilling, without considering the effects of one activity on another. In the United States, 20 federal agencies implement more than 140 federal ocean laws. Managers in one agency often care for their issues and constituents without reference to conflicts with the actions of other agencies. For example, endangered Hawaiian monk seals are vigorously protected on the beach by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has failed to fully protect them in the water.

Managers also may fail because their authority doesn't match the scale of the problem. Pacific leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles are protected in U.S. waters, but they feed in other countries and in international waters where they receive little or no protection. The fertilizer and pesticides used by farmers in Iowa or Illinois end up in the Mississippi River and flow into the Gulf of Mexico, causing a "dead zone" and threatening fisheries in Louisiana. But downriver states have no say in farming practices upstream.

A lack of big-picture management also affects problems such as outbreaks of red tide, which can crop up too fast to allow various managers to respond. And problems also can develop too slowly to notice, such as the decline of large marine fishes by 90% over the last 50 years. Clearly we need to get the managers talking to each other....

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Second, we need to diagnose and treat the whole system, not just its parts. Scientists call this ecosystem-based management. The ocean contains many different systems. It may look uniformly blue from the air, but it has coral reefs, kelp forests, seamounts, currents and fronts. Resources, like fish or oil, aren't uniformly distributed, they are in particular places. Ocean "zoning," which defines what uses and activities are appropriate in specific areas, is already underway in much of Europe and in China. It should be adopted in the U.S. and worldwide to reduce conflicts among human uses of the seas and to protect critical habitats and resources for the long haul.

This will only happen if citizens demand change....

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-crowder6aug06,0,5900975.story?coll=la-opinion-center

[Deja Q]

1. Citizens want only their ipods and reality shows.

Nothing will change, therefore it will be changed for us.