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Note: This article is based on the testimony presented by Pietro Parravano to the Interagency National Ocean Task Force meeting that was held on September 17th , 2009 in San Francisco. Parravano was the one commercial fishing representative to participate the panel at that hearing.
As the fishing community looks ahead into the 21st century, it is apparent to me that the three big issues of this time will be water, food, and energy, overlaid by climate change. These issues -- often interrelated -- will be the root of most future global conflict. Control of these resources will determine the powerful from the powerless, the enriched from the impoverished. Peace, prosperity and the future of the planet will depend on our ability to equitably share and sustainably produce water, food and energy. Each of these affects our fisheries and most certainly all will impact our oceans and how we use them. My comments, thus, are made in light of these issues and how we seek to address them.
The first point I want to make is that in planning a policy for the protection and uses of our seas, we must remember that oceans do not exist in isolation from the land or what takes place there. Trying to compartmentalize policy and planning by solely looking at ocean waters is a mistake we've seen too often in fisheries, where management focuses solely on fishing, even where there is clear evidence of factors onshore or outside of the act of catching fish that impair our ability to conserve and manage fish stocks. The Task Force must not make that mistake.
We meet here today at the shore of the largest and most important estuary on the West Coast of North and South America. The San Francisco Bay-Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta estuary joins the streams of the Sierra to the waters of the Gulf of the Farallones, extending seaward from the Golden Gate north and south and west to the rocky islands offshore for which those waters are named. It is also one ecosystem. A dam upstream on one of the tributary rivers to this estuary will affect salmon abundance offshore California and even Oregon and Washington. Freshwater inflow from the rivers through the Delta to the Bay will affect the timing of herring spawning. Sediments from upstream or dredging in the Bay will affect nursery habitat for juvenile Dungeness crab that will be harvested in the Pacific when they are adults. Pollution from agriculture, municipal treatment plants, industry, and other runoff affects whether shellfish such as oysters will be edible.
The Bay-Delta estuary is where the West Coast's modern fishery began, with salmon and the early canneries at Collinsville near Sacramento in the early 1850's. It was a system teeming with salmon, shrimp, sturgeon, oysters and crab. But because of what we did on land, with dams and fill, diversions and discharges, the Bay-Delta estuary's shrimp and oysters were largely gone by World War II. By the mid-1950's much of the nursery grounds in the Bay for Dungeness crab had been filled or destroyed by dredge spoils -- the local Dungeness population remained depressed for nearly a half-century. Spring-run chinook salmon, once the largest run in the Central Valley river system -- that supported a century-old salmon net fishery -- were nearly gone by 1957, the direct result of dam operations that had begun a decade earlier with the federal Friant unit upstream on the San Joaquin.
For the past two years salmon fishing off California and most of Oregon's coast has been closed as a direct result of excessive freshwater diversions from the Delta and its watershed that sent the young salmon south to their death, not west to the ocean, and robbed the estuary of the fresh water that is its life blood. Even a total closure of the fishery will not save these king salmon, who spend their adult life at sea, until baby salmon can safely travel from their natal streams west through the Delta and build strength in its rich, brackish waters for their transition to salt water and their journey into the Pacific.
Last month, the nation's last urban commercial fishery -- for herring here on San Francisco Bay -- was closed; the first such total closure in its history. It was not because of fishing, where the quotas have been the most conservative for any fishery, but because of what has happened to the estuary where these fish arrive from the ocean for their annual spawn during the winter months, coupled with a relatively minor bunker oil spill that turned into a major catastrophe due to inept containment and clean-up operations.
A decade ago the Institute for Fisheries Resources, along with PCFFA and other fishing groups, commissioned a study on the affects of coastal and estuarine wetlands on living marine resources. That report found that over 85 percent of our nation's economically valuable fish and shellfish resources depend on wetland habitats during some phase of their lives. That report is available at: www.pcffa.org/wetlands.pdf.
On the Pew Commission, where I served, we examined the effects of land uses on our oceans. We even visited farmers in Iowa looking at nutrient loads in the Mississippi and their subsequent effect downstream: creating a massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Everywhere we went we found evidence of human actions onshore affecting the health and productivity of living resources offshore. From Narragansett Bay, Long Island Sound, the Chesapeake, Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, Santa Monica Bay, the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary, along the Columbia and its estuary, and Puget Sound comes ample evidence that protecting our oceans' living resources will require addressing actions taking place on land. We called it the land-sea interface.
The California Coastkeepers Alliance's Linda Sheehan, in her presentation on water quality to the National Ocean Task Force, makes clear that in matters such as pollution we cannot ignore impacts from the land.
The land-sea interface includes not simply the impacts of land activities on our oceans, but encompasses beneficial activities from shore -- the ports, the ocean support activities and access. The Task Force cannot ignore our port infrastructures, our working waterfronts, our coastal communities in its policy development and planning. California, for example, through its Coastal Act, has protected coastal dependent uses, such as fishing, from encroachment by non-coastal dependent development. The Task Force needs to look at measures to protect land-side access to the oceans as well as preventing land based uses from harming ocean water.
My first request then of the Task Force is that you view your mission broadly to consider actions on land affecting our fish and oceans. If we expect to pass on the oceans' bounty to future generations and assure their access to the oceans, we must be mindful of the land-sea interface. The focus of this national Task Force is on our oceans, but we expect the Task Force to have vision, too -- not confusing focus with myopia.
The second point I want to make is that our oceans are a source of valuable protein. Wild fish, shellfish, and, increasingly, seaweeds, are a huge source of protein and sustenance for many coastal and island nations. Here in the U.S. we have begun to recognize the value of fish and other seafood as part of a healthy diet.
It must be remembered that NOAA -- which we expect will take the lead in the effort to protect our oceans and plan their uses -- is not just a science agency. NOAA is a food agency, too. Within it is the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, whose predecessor dates back to the time of President Grant and the U.S. Commission of Fish & Fisheries.
As vast as the ocean is, there are limits on how much it can produce. The U.S. has been a leader, under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, in enacting controls over its fisheries to prevent overfishing, protect sensitive habitats from fishing damage, and minimize the take of undersize or prohibited fish species and other marine life. Protecting against overfishing, habitat damage and bycatch are only part of the solution, however, in assuring the optimum yield of fish and shellfish. Full productivity of our fisheries on a sustainable basis also requires that other activities affecting fish or their habitats be strictly regulated under existing authorities such as the Clean Water Act or under such new statutory measures as may be necessary.
Efforts to prevent overfishing and rebuild depleted fish populations have not been easy and have taken a heavy toll on fishing communities. The job is going to take more hard work, adherence to the best science, and aid to communities. In the face of these hardships, some people offer up glib, simplistic solutions to apply to all fisheries. All I can say is beware. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, like the notion of putting all fisheries under individual quota management -- essentially privatizing public resources -- with the collateral effect of displacing fishermen and fishing communities.
The privatization, consolidation and corporatization of our fisheries, with the subsequent enrichment of a few and impoverishment of many, is no answer. Indeed, it is anathema to conservation and stewardship. And if anyone believes private ownership by itself creates a sense of stewardship, I'd just urge them to drive up the California coast a couple hundred miles north of San Francisco and look at the remains of Pacific Lumber Company and the trashed salmon watersheds left in its frenzied wake to pay down its debt to Wall Street junk bond dealers.
I'd also be wary of the throwaway line heard too often in academic circles and among some in the NGO community that there are "too many fishermen chasing too few fish." Looking around the docks today, it's difficult to say we have too many fishermen. Indeed, we may now have too few. Taking a page from Michael Pollan's book, where he says America needs more farmers, not fewer, I'd say we need more fishermen -- certainly a new generation of younger men and women. We are capable of supporting more fishing men and women, generating additional employment, through stock rebuilding and complimentary habitat restoration programs, by producing fish of higher value -- meaning we can support more without having to catch more -- and, finally, by engaging fishermen and their vessels in science and education.
Julie Packard has addressed the Ocean Task Force on the need for ocean literacy and education. In that vein I want to stress the need for continuing education programs for fishing men and women to provide the professional training to better equip them for facing the fishing challenges of the 21st century, including their essential role in ocean stewardship. With that we need to train fishermen as teachers to bring to the public their knowledge of our fish and oceans. I would hope that this not be overlooked in ocean policy development and planning.
Finally, it is time to look at food production from the sea and whether it is fulfilling the broadest possible pubic needs. During the last federal Administration we saw an all-out effort by NOAA promoting open ocean aquaculture. While they were giving lip service to a precautionary approach to capture fishing, they were throwing caution to the wind when it came to offshore fish farms -- essentially ocean feed lots. In response to what NOAA was proposing, in California legislation was passed and signed establishing standards for offshore aquaculture. It was designed to stop pollution from ocean fish farms, prevent the spread of disease or parasites to wild populations, prevent the introduction of exotic species and guard against the escape of fish. I am heartened that NOAA is now looking at California's standards as a model for national legislation.
However, before deciding to proceed with open ocean aquaculture, even with standards modeled after California, it needs to be determined first, whether in fact such operations will result in a net increase in the amount of protein available to humans, or result in a net decrease. Many of the species, particularly fin fish, now being raised in aquaculture operations result in a net loss, mostly taking fish used in the diet of developing world nations, or among the poor and working class in the west, to provide products for the upscale and overfed middle and upper class in the developed world. The first rule here that needs to be established is that there will be no open ocean aquaculture permitted unless it can demonstrate it will result in a net gain in protein available for human consumption.
While recognizing that this is an Ocean Task Force, I recommend that our nation's emphasis on aquaculture focus on onshore, self-contained facilities, aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of production, with products aimed at institutional uses, the poor and working class and the lower middle class who are often priced out of the seafood market. Tilipia, catfish and barramundi are examples of the types of fish that can be raised in onshore facilities. To this end, we urge the Obama Administration to make NOAA the lead agency for aquaculture development -- on-land as well as at-sea.
The third point I wish to make here today covers governance. Without a good system of ocean governance, it will be impossible to protect our living marine resources or the jobs, the food and the economic benefits those resources provide. By governance, I include a system to insure there is coordination and consultation among government agencies whose activities or permitting authority affects ocean resources, along with the spatial planning needed to prevent conflicts among uses.
Reforming ocean and coastal governance was a key recommendation of both the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the Pew Oceans Commission, and it continues to be a top priority for the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative. A national ocean policy has the potential to become one of our nation's seminal environmental laws, of equal importance with the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. From my perspective as a fisherman, I believe it would compliment and strengthen the Magnuson-Stevens Act -- helping empower regional fishery councils with their charge of conserving and managing our nation's fisheries.
Much of the decline in ocean and coastal ecosystem health is due to failures in our governance approaches and structures, including fragmented laws, confusing and overlapping jurisdictions, and lack of a clear national ocean policy. A strong national ocean governance regime should include:
The Task Force and the Administration needs to call on Congress to codify and strengthen NOAA to enhance its mission, improve its structure, and better enable it to carry out new and existing responsibilities. Since its creation by a Nixon reorganization order in 1970, NOAA has sought to advance the understanding, management, and protection of ocean and atmospheric resources. However, the agency suffers from programmatic and functional overlaps, disconnects among current line offices, and changing organizational priorities. NOAA needs Congressional action to establish it as the lead civilian ocean agency and to restructure the agency to enhance its ability to fulfill its core mission to further our understanding of oceans and coasts, apply that knowledge to effectively manage our marine resources, enhance production of food from the sea and coordinate other ocean uses.
NOAA should be codified either pursuant to a stand-alone organic act or as part of a comprehensive ocean policy act. The Joint Initiative, in my testimony in June, has called for a NOAA organic act:
The reorganization should also establish leadership roles and accountability mechanisms for implementation of major elements of the agency's missions.
A whole new set of challenges are rapidly emerging for the coastal ocean of the U.S. because of the development of offshore energy facilities, water desalination plants, and proposals for offshore aquaculture, among others. Notably, many of these new uses require the allocation of dedicated ocean space and conflicts are emerging rapidly. A consistent management structure is urgently needed for these new uses of the ocean that considers ecosystem impacts, interactions with other activities, what activities are appropriate, and appropriate siting for such facilities.
In light of the expanding and proposed uses of our coastal and ocean areas, this approach is urgently needed for managing current and emerging ocean and coastal activities, including traditional uses such as fishing, shipping and recreation, together with a phase-out of oil and gas development as we work to reduce carbon emissions, and plan for new and emerging beneficial ocean uses. The Task Force should specify general levels of acceptable human impacts for particular geographic areas in the ocean and provide greater clarity and predictability to ocean users and reduce conflicts, account for cumulative impacts on ecosystem health, and help achieve specific ecological, economic and societal goals.
Like management of fisheries, ocean policy development and planning must be science-based. That requires research and on-going data collection. My fourth point, then, is asking the Task Force to include a strong science element in developing its policies.
At the national level, our failure to adequately invest in ocean and coastal science and management has severely limited the capacity of federal agencies to understand our oceans and coasts. In particular, better assessing the role of oceans in climate change continues to be a challenge, constraining our capacity to make informed decisions to address the impacts of such change on our coastal communities, economies, and ecosystems -- impacts that include the effects of ocean acidification on the marine food web and coral reefs, sea level rise and the threats to public and private infrastructure, and the impact of rising ocean temperatures on fisheries and ocean health threats. Increasing our scientific understanding of the links between oceans and climate change and improving our management strategies to mitigate and adapt to the resulting effects require substantial fiscal resources for both federal and state agencies.
There are three types of ocean research and data collection that need supporting. Each has its own place and each will compliment the others.
The first is for an upgrading of our research fleet, including submersibles. The second is for full funding of the remote instrumentation to fulfill many of our data needs those instrument arrays can provide. The third is for an expansion of fishermen-scientist collaborative research programs. This is one of the most cost-effective ways for conducting certain types of research and data collection. It takes advantage of the knowledge of fishermen and their vast at-sea experience, combining it with the formal training of scientists. Moreover, fishing vessels provide a less expensive platform for conducting many types of research, and are more readily available, then a dedicated research vessel. The further advantage, of course, is that these programs help to keep fishermen working during periods of fishing closures or severe restrictions.
The final point I wish to make here is that all the policy and planning, no matter how comprehensive and well-conceived, means little if there are no funds for its implementation. Nor will there be the science and data collection for basing policy and planning on, without funds. I know this is not a sexy issue and most environmental NGOs roll their eyes when the issue is broached -- it's more fun, after all, playing in the policy sandbox, telling others how to conduct their operations. But we need to get serious about funding and, specifically, the development of off-budget trust funds to assure there is a stable and sufficient funding source for carrying this out.
Here in California we have witnessed what happens when we fail to provide the funding for marine protection initiatives. While the State may be the world's eighth largest economy, it is a banana republic when it comes to paying for fisheries and ocean protection, management, research or enforcement. The far-sighted policies adopted by California for its oceans and marine resources are, in reality, little more than feel-good press releases, totally lacking in substance because of the failure of leadership to provide them funding. The State instead goes hat-in-hand for hand-outs to private interests to fund its programs. This is no way to protect public resources.
On the other hand, both ocean Commissions supported a robust and dedicated ocean trust fund generated from and devoted to a broad range of ocean and coastal activities. In many of the reports issued by the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, including Changing Oceans, Changing World: Ocean Priorities for the New Administration and Congress, the case was made that the ocean and coastal economy -- that portion of the economy that relies directly on ocean attributes, as well all economic activity that takes place on or near the coast -- is a major contributor to the U.S. economy, generating half of the nation's Gross Domestic Product. Yet, despite the role oceans and coasts play in supporting our economic well-being, they remain poorly understood and underappreciated.
The Joint Oceans Commission Initiative has called for an "Ocean Investment Fund" that is capitalized by a significant portion of the resource rents generated by private commercial activities occurring in federal waters on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). This fund would be dedicated to providing financial support for national, regional, and coastal state and local programs related to understanding and managing our oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes.
The proceeds for the fund are readily available from existing and projected federally authorized offshore activities. Currently, virtually all federal revenues being generated from activities on the OCS are from oil and gas activities -- averaging some $5-7 billion annually in recent years but bringing in as much as $18 billion in Fiscal Year 2008. Excepting for fisheries, which are already heavily assessed in most areas, a significant portion of all other revenues coming from our oceans, including OCS revenues and even certain types of eco-tourism, should be reinvested in our oceans and their management.
On the fisheries side, six years ago I co-authored with two colleagues an article in Fishermen's News, "Planning and Paying for Future Fisheries Research: Fish Stocks and Fishing Communities Depend on Good Data" (www.pcffa.org/fn-aug03.htm). There we proposed a funding source for raising the finances needed for protecting and rebuilding our fish stocks and assisting our fishing industry. From that article the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA) crafted a draft for legislation, entitled the "Safe, Secure, Sustainable Fish & Seafood Trust Fund." I recommend its review by the Task Force in developing a funding element for your policy development and spatial planning.
I and others in America's oldest industry -- commercial fishing -- look forward to working with Task Force members and staff over the next several months to carry out the President's wishes for our nation to finally recognize the importance of our oceans and their resources, and to take action to protect our oceans and the communities they support.
Pietro Parravano is a commercial fisherman from Half Moon Bay, California. He is President of the Institute for Fisheries Resources (IFR), and a Commercial Fishermen of America (CFA) Board member. He served on the Pew Oceans Commission and is now a member of the Joint Oceans Commission Initiative. He can be reached at fish3ifr@mindspring.com.