http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1107-13.htm
Published on Friday,
November 7, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
The Blue Frontier Campaign to Save Our
Living Seas
by Ralph Nader
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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