Powerful interests may clash in push to heal the oceans

A presidential panel next month will urge Congress and the White House to make the science that determines how much fish can be taken from the seas more independent from the fishing interests that now help set and allocate fishing harvests.

How the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy proposes to make that change is likely to ignite fierce political battles between powerful seafood interests — including a largely Puget Sound-based Alaskan fishing fleet — and a growing armada of ocean-related environmental groups that are throwing millions of dollars into campaigns to reform oversight of the nation's commercial-fishing industry.

Next month, a 16-member panel appointed by President Bush is expected to release the first government report in 35 years on the state of the oceans.

While details of that report remain under wraps, members of that panel, appearing in Seattle over the weekend for a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, painted a troubling portrait of our seas, citing serious problems with agricultural and chemical runoff, overfishing, coastal development and habitat destruction.

In a series of scientific panels and a town-hall-style meeting this weekend to improve communication between scientists, policymakers and the public, this much became clear: The transition from an exhaustive accounting of what's wrong with oceans to concrete steps to reverse those trends will be a monumental — and potentially messy — task.

For example, the commission plans to recommend that a pilot project of "regional ecosystem councils" oversee and coordinate activities — from coastal and inland development along river systems that feed seas, to the introduction of invasive species — so each marine region is managed as one biological system.

But it remains unclear how those groups would interact with the nine regional fishing councils — dominated by fishing interests, academics and government officials — that now help decide how much, where and who gets to fish.

"It's not an effort to supplant the fisheries councils," said Seattle resident William Ruckelshaus, former administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency and a member of the president's ocean commission. "We're very explicit about that."

But he and fellow commission member Andrew Rosenberg, dean of life sciences and agriculture at the University of New Hampshire, said the track record of fishing councils varies dramatically across the country.

New England's cod fishery has collapsed, as has fishing for several species of rockfish along the Pacific coast, and government scientists now consider a third of all commercial fish species that they have assessed "overfished."

While scientists advising the councils in several cases through the years raised questions about stocks being depleted, those fishing councils continued, in some cases, to allow more fishing instead of having to allocate smaller amounts of the catch.

"Sometimes, the easiest thing for them to do has been to make the pie bigger," Rosenberg said.

In response, both commission members said they want to separate the science that leads to a "total allowable catch" from decisions about who gets what amount of that catch. But neither would specify precisely how to make that change.

"It's really unclear what they intend," said Dave Fluharty, a University of Washington professor and longtime member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which oversees fishing in Alaska. "It's almost an East Coast vs. West Coast thing. In Alaska, we've always followed the scientific advice in terms of setting quotas. In New England, where Andy (Rosenberg) worked, the scientists consistently got rolled."

Alaska's seafood industry, which takes in 40 percent of all fish harvested in the U.S., has been consistently reminding commission members that every one of the groundfish stocks there is listed by the government as "sustainably managed."

Meanwhile, environmental groups, such as Oceana, also have been lobbying Congress in preparation for the report's release next month to governors, and ultimately, the president.

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com