It was a dinner
gathering to remember. In a historic Washington, DC building
there was an assembly with such variety of talents dedicated to
saving our awfully overburdened oceans that Blue Frontier
director David Helvarg remarked "there's rarely been so
much marine talent gathered in one place, since Jacques
Cousteau dined alone."
The dinner was
the official launching of our Blue Frontier campaign to connect
and help organize over 2000 coastal and maritime communities
and civic associations into a powerful force to rollback the
devastations that spell misuse and overuse of oceans, beaches,
estuaries and bays.
Assembled were
ocean-savers such as John Passacantando of Greenpeace, Andy
Sharpless of Oceana, Roger Berkowitz, the farseeing owner of
the Legal Seafood restaurants, and Representatives George
Miller, Steve Farr and Wayne Gilchrist who are genuinely
committed to effective legislation.
The oceanic
crises were obvious. The decline in ocean fisheries has driven
some species close to extinction. Giant trawlers scrape the
bottom of the seas over a region equal to the size of the
United States, wreaking eco havoc. Fish-catching giant nets and
their accompanying technology shrink the giant oceans and their
underwater denizens. Environmentalist Barry Commoner's
insightful phrase --- "the technosphere against the
ecosphere" comes to mind.
There is more.
Nutrient runoff from factory farms and urban storm drains
create massive algal blooms, dead zones (as in the Gulf of
Mexico) and spread disease. Floods of chemicals are pouring
into the seas, and the growing economies of China and India are
seriously affecting their coastlines. India for years has been
dumping radioactive waste into its seas in containers that do
not last for more than a few decades.
David Helvarg,
author of the brilliantly engrossing Blue Frontier: Saving
America's Living Seas, told the dinner guests that "The
chance to protect and restore our waters and wildlife are
undermined by coastal sprawl impacting the nurseries and
cleansers of our seas --- our watersheds, estuaries,
saltmarshes, sea-grass meadows, barrier islands and coral
reefs... all these cascading disasters are being enhanced by
fossil fuel driven climate change that's resulting in beach
erosion, sea level rise, intensified storms and coral bleaching
from warming oceans."
Two major
reports this year --- one coming out this month from a
Presidential commission and the other published in June by the
Pew Oceans commission --- contain many sensible recommendations
for action. We may be the last generation (the next 40 years)
to save our oceans from an irreversible decline in performing
their critical functions for the planet, animal life and
humans.
There are, to
be sure many vested interests, from the US Navy to fishery
companies to recreational users and beach property owners. But
there are also many practical solutions as described on the
Blue Frontier website www.bluefront.org if the "growing
constituency of watermen and women who have solutions can build
a seaweed rebellion of citizen activists," in Helvarg's
words. Indeed such citizen rebellions have saved the
Californian coasts from more oil drilling and have established
marine sanctuaries which are equivalent to wilderness areas for
preservation of species.
As if to
punctuate the urgency, dinner participants passed around a
description of a notorious rider stealthily attached by Senator
Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) in the final days of this Congressional
session, without any public hearings, to the appropriations
bill for the Department of Commerce. This rider, if not stopped
by a counter move led by Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and
Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), would allow the destruction of
thousands of square miles of deep sea coral habitat and open
stellar sea lion refuges to exploitation by a small cartel of
industrial fishing companies.
Interested
citizens can contact "Sink the Stevens Rider" at www.oceana.org For more
information go to the website www.bluefront.org.
Also in this
section:
Leis, Decentralization and
citizen participation
Gore, Freedom and
security
Powell, Ralph Bunche's
legacy and US foreign policy
Nader, Heightened awareness
of the marine environment
Girvan, Caribbean ties to
Central America's Atlantic side
Jackson, Systemic meltdown?
