Ailing oceans need help, panel says

By Lauren Markoe
Knight Ridder News Service

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

"Our oceans and our coasts are in trouble, and we as a nation have a historic opportunity to make a positive and lasting change in the way we manage them before it's too late," said retired Adm. James D. Watkins, the commission's chairman. Congress created the panel in 2000 to focus attention on ocean issues and management.

The study, 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:

• Doubling federal investment in oceans research, which now stands at $650 million annually.
• Creating measurable water pollution reduction goals, particularly for pollution that doesn't come from a concentrated source such as a sewage pipe or factory smokestack. The most troublesome source is storm water run-off that picks up fertilizers, lawn chemicals and other contaminants as it flows toward the ocean.
• Improving oceans education for elementary, secondary, college and graduate students.
• Establishing a National Ocean Council in the Executive Office of the President.

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 be fed 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.

Members of Congress already are preparing legislation related to the report.

This week, the Senate Commerce and Appropriations committees will begin a series of hearings on the commission's findings. In the House, the bipartisan Oceans Caucus plans to stitch the newly released recommendations into legislation it has been drafting since June, when the Pew Oceans Commission, a private panel financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts, issued similar findings.

"We are putting together the BOB — the Big Oceans Bill," said Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., an Ocean Caucus co-chairman. "It will put together the recommendations of the Pew Commission with those from this commission."

Environmental groups seized on the report as an opportunity to promote ocean awareness. The American Zoo and Aquarium Association, for example, said it would launch an education campaign June 8 in member institutions nationwide.

Commissioners noted that this was the first presidential panel to examine America's oceans since the Stratton Commission in 1969 made recommendations to Congress that led to creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post contributed to this report.