It was a dinner gathering to remember. In a historic Washington, D.C.
building there was 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 U.S. 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
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