Coastal mayors join to oppose Obama administration’s ‘marine monuments’ plan
By Steve Urbon
The Obama administration is running afoul of transparency and openness as it prepares to create offshore marine monuments off California and New England, two mayors including Jon Mitchell are telling the administration.
Mitchell was joined by Monterey, California Mayor Clyde Roberson in sending the Obama White House letters expressing “serious concerns” about the potential economic harm to their ports from the use of executive action by the administration to create new federal marine monuments off the coasts.
A chorus of opposition has been rising from fishermen and fishing communities across the country opposing the creation of marine monuments outside of the existing ocean management processes.
New Bedford is the highest-grossing fishing port in the nation; Monterey is one of the most valuable fishing ports in California.
Writing to Council on Environmental Quality Acting Director Christy Goldfuss, Mitchell praised the successes of the current fishing management process, overseen by NOAA, a process that includes the voices of all ocean stakeholders in its deliberations, according to a release from the The National Coalition for Fishing Communities. “The process is far from perfect, but it affords ample opportunity for stakeholders and the public alike to review and comment on policy decisions and for the peer reviewing of the scientific bases of those decisions,” Mitchell wrote.
By contrast, “The use of a parallel process, however well meaning, which has none of the checks and balances employed in the NOAA process, could leave ocean management decisions vulnerable to political considerations in the long run,” said Mitchell.
Roberson’s letter to President Obama was similarly critical of efforts to declare new monuments by executive fiat. Mayor Roberson emphasized the value of the California seamounts to commercial fishermen and the need to strike a balance between environmental protections and fishing concerns. Reaching this balance requires basing decisions on science rather than politics, he wrote.
“Monterey supports publicly transparent, science-based processes in making ocean management decisions such as the mandate embodied in the federal Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Act,” Roberson wrote. “This proposal was developed without public knowledge or participation, much less scientific or economic review and analysis. Certainly there was no transparency. “
Both mayors also expressed serious reservations about the potential impact monument declarations would have on their regions’ commercial fishing industries. “In New England, a monument declaration would devastate the red crab, swordfish, and tuna fisheries, as well as the processors and shore side businesses that depend on them. In California, the albacore tuna fishery would be deeply impacted, as would that of the rockfish, spiny lobster, sea urchins, and white sea bass,” said the release.
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