By Andrew Christie, Chapter Director
A debate ends when the issues being disputed are settled. One argument or theory prevails and the other is discarded because it can’t withstand scrutiny or otherwise hold up in the face of facts and evidence.
That's why the debate over national marine sanctuary status for the Central Coast ended on January 6 at a public meeting in Morro Bay. To see how that happened, watch the video of the "NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries Information Session.”
Yes, the Sierra Club is on record as a major booster of the proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary. Yes, everyone favors their own side of an argument. And no, we don’t imagine the folks who have lost the debate will actually stop trying to argue their case. But watch that video.
Staff from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s west coast national marine sanctuaries came to the Veterans Memorial Building in Morro Bay at the invitation of the city council. The invitation was made after the September 22 council meeting on the proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, when sanctuary opponents failed to persuade the council to renew the City’s reflexive opposition to marine sanctuaries, a hallmark of their recent predecessors. At the beginning of the September 22 meeting, Morro Bay Harbor Master Eric Endersby hopefully told the council “There’s a lot of science on both sides of this issue.” As the attendees at the January 6 meeting found out, he was half right: There’s a lot of science, but it’s on one side of this issue.
The council asked NOAA to come present the facts, and the panelists did so for nearly 200 attendees in a standing-room-only crowd that braved the brunt of El Nino to make it to the evening meeting. The subject specialists told attendees about NOAA’s award-winning national marine sanctuary volunteer programs and community partnerships; education and outreach opportunities for schools; historical maritime resources; collaborations in support of harbors and fishing; the science of ecosystem-based adaptive management; the significant economic benefits realized by sanctuary-adjacent communities; and the balance struck between multiple uses of sanctuary waters and the protection of resources and habitat from oil and gas development, ship strikes on whales and acoustic testing.
Panelists used real numbers to dispel the primary myth peddled by sanctuary opponents that national marine sanctuaries are somehow detrimental to fishing or have caused economic harm to the fishing industry. Catch statistics show 1.6 billion pounds of fish, worth $515 million, have been caught in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and landed at adjacent ports since the sanctuary was designated in 1992. (Panelists had to repeat the words “we are not fisheries managers” and “we don’t regulate fishing” about half a dozen times.)
It was just one in a formidable array of facts on offer, including the fact that most actions undertaken by all marine sanctuaries are non-regulatory. The regulatory portion of a sanctuary’s designation document occupies "about a page and a half,” while non-regulatory programs to enhance and protect the marine environment run to hundreds of pages. But paranoid dreams die hard. A small contingent of sanctuary foes, following the strategy that works for them in local government meetings and letters to the editor, trooped up to the microphone and found themselves in the least hospitable environment: hurling their charges at a panel of experts who know what they’re talking about. The inevitable outcome is on Youtube.
Here's a taste of what you'll see:
- One opponent attempted to conjure the specter of a federal agency with the temerity to actually enforce sanctuary regulations, which would mean an army of jack-booted thugs descending upon us should we get a national marine sanctuary on the Central Coast. (Nope: Turns out there are a dozen uniformed officers for the entire federal sanctuary program, which otherwise relies on state fish and game wardens and the U.S. Coast Guard.)
- Another opponent railed at the panelists for establishing the network of Marine Protected Areas and Marine Reserves that restrict or prohibit fishing within their borders, allegedly betraying fishermen after “we worked with you.” (Nope: that was the California Fish and Game Commission, implementing the state Marine Life Protection Act.)
- Another opponent told the panelists how much he hated the regulations imposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is not the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
- Another opponent told sanctuary staff to get off this marine sanctuary kick and do something about the threat of geo-engineering – aka chemtrails, beloved of conspiracy theorists everywhere.
Prior to the meeting, the right-wing lobby group COLAB had exhorted its members to attend, painting a fact-free portrait of national marine sanctuaries as subscribing to the philosophy that “nature should be left alone” and “the industries that provide food, fiber, minerals and energy supplies” should be shut down. Marine sanctuaries, COLAB assured its membership, are “in control of all of the private land that abuts the sanctuary,” and once “demanded a halt to the runoff from a farm 100 miles inland.”
All false. COLAB's big kahunas came to that meeting in Morro Bay on that dark and stormy night, where they witnessed the collapse of their fearful fairy-tale castle under the weight of reality.
Debate over.
Anyone in the reality-based community who hasn’t already signed the petition urging NOAA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality to protect California’s central coast and commence the designation process for the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary may do so here.