John Griffith on Marine Reserves

People who enjoy and care about Cape Arago defeated a strong attack by radical environmentalists last month who wanted to ruin the successful resource management we’ve had out there for decades. Fishermen and other ocean users faced off against Washington DC-based Pew Environment Group’s-financed Portland wing that arrogantly calls itself Our Ocean. The city councils of North Bend and Coos Bay, the Coos County Board of Commissioners, and chambers of commerce joined recreationalists and commercial fishermen to hold against Pew’ anti-fishing racket when the final showdown came at the Port of Coos Bay’s Cape Arago community group meeting March 16.

When votes were tallied, responsible ocean users sent the message that our community does not want more reserves in our ocean. There’s already four unused research reserves at Cape Arago. Critical thinkers carried the day by deciding that maybe we don’t need to close off more fishing ground if self-serving researchers aren’t using the places we’ve already given them. Perhaps researchers and environmentalists who always shriek for more ground have something else in mind than doing actual, useful research. Environmentalists don’t believe we need to do any research regarding marine reserves. In their testimony, they reveal that the case is settled: Closing down fishing results in a better world, regardless of where the closing is done, what the circumstances were before the closing was done, or the fact that in some cases banning fishing resulted in no changes to the environment but harmed the local economy. They simply ignore conflicting science, pretending it doesn’t exist.

The local process follows the Oregon Ocean Policy Advisory Council designation of five new no-fishing marine reserves in Oregon’s 3 mile-wide territorial sea. Unlike Port Orford and Depoe Bay, who gave up without a fight and sacrificed excellent fishing ground out of fear that they’d get clobbered worse if they didn’t, people in the area from Reedsport to Bandon focused on facts and did not play into the protection racket being run by Pew. So now, reserves designated since 2008 will be at Redfish Rocks (Port Orford) and Otter Rock (Depoe Bay), plus three new ones coming this legislative session on the north coast. The Legislature and Department of Fish and Wildlife still have designs on forcing reserves on our part of the coast.

Pew Environment Group has an annual operating budget of $70 million to bankrupt small businesses and run people like us out of our favorite activities. The facts are that since the no-fishing marine reserves process began in Oregon in 1988, no problem has been found for marine reserves to fix; state government has budgeted no general fund money to run a reserves program; no rational purpose or objective has been found for closing Oregon fishing spots via marine reserves; at this time last year ODFW increased the daily rockfish bag limit by one/day; the only fish in Oregon’s territorial sea that was alleged to be in danger of over-fishing rebuilt in only a fraction of the time fisheries managers expected. Despite the facts, environmentalists and researchers say we need to close more area anyway, just because. They point out over-fishing in other countries and hemispheres, fishery stock collapses without any relevance whatsoever to Oregon’s territorial sea, and finally that we should sacrifice our fishing because all the closed areas we have now might not be enough. They’ve not studied effects of those vast closures (Rockfish Conservation Areas or 20- and 40-fathom restrictions) or even asked state and federal budgeters to appropriate money to study them. They just want us to feel fearful and guilty because those closures, in their fact-free opinion, aren’t enough.

Good work Coos County fishermen and business owners. You won this round. Next one is at the Legislature. Be sure not to let state lawmakers roll you, and be especially wary of a couple of the local ones.

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