New North Coast marine protected areas could cost commercial fishermen $278,000 in future years, a new economic analysis presented to the California Fish & Game Commission shows.
At the April 11 Eureka meeting the state agency, the analysis will be reviewed; it will be the last meeting on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR).
At a meeting in Fort Bragg last week, the DEIR process was praised by some participants and criticized by others who felt public input was inadequate. One concern brought up several times was why the process targets fishing or extractive uses alone and doesn”t outlaw or regulate other uses of the ocean, such as aquaculture, wave energy or even oil drilling.
Richard Charter, who has battled oil drilling for more than two decades, supports the MLPAI process and said the new ocean parks will help block oil activities even without specific prohibitive language.
But many continued to ask why there couldn”t be language making it clear that the new marine protected areas guard the ocean from more than just fishing, especially in an environmental document. Fifth District Supervisor Dan Hamburg, one of the speakers at the Fort Bragg meeting, thinks such a prohibition should be included.
The 45-day public comment period on the DEIR ends April 16.
Steve Wertz, DFG Senior Environmental Scientist prepared an economic and fiscal impact statement, a separate document from the massive DEIR, which said the total loss of income to the fishing industry in future years could be $278,000. All of that would be borne by small business, the estimate states.
The Marine Life Protection Act of 1999 authorized the creation of new offshore protected areas, which are called reserves, conservation areas and parks in the official terminology.
Starting in 2007, the private Marine Life Protection Act Initiative gathered public input on what areas of the California coast could close to fishing, or restrict fishing uses in five regions. The process for the fifth and final region, the San Francisco Bay, is just getting under way.
The North Coast Region was fourth in line in 2010-11, with proposed new fishing and seaweed gathering restrictions now on the table and the process is winding down. Three dozen regional stakeholders created a proposed map that creates new MPAs where fishing uses or closes to fishing uses about 13 percent of the offshore areas of Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties. Most of the new marine protected areas are clustered around Cape Mendocino, the wildest and least accessible area of the region. This is a smaller percentage than in other areas of California and the first and only time a regional stakeholders group was able to agree on a single proposal to recommend. With a few revisions, that proposal was approved by other MLPAI organizations and reviewed by the California Fish & Game Commission, which then ordered the current EIR. The Fish & Game Commission is currently considering the economic and fiscal impact statement, the draft EIR and the new regulations. The Commission plans to formally act on June 6.
