Ocean Zoning in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary: Part I

Nearly three years ago, in the attachment hereto, the Alliance of Communities for Sustainable Fisheries warned NOAA of actions the agency was taking which would lead to ineffective and overly costly regulations:

“The Alliance believes it would be duplicative of the programs being administered by the Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA-Fisheries to provide broad regulatory authority over fisheries to a Sanctuary manager, either directly or indirectly.”

The concerns of the Alliance could not be more apparent than the collision course launched by NOAA with respect to the OCS leasing program administered by MMS—a topic of a subsequent posting on this website.

The NOAA Marine Sanctuaries Program is long on networking expertise—short on transparency More specifically, the Alliance concluded:

“The NOAA Marine Sanctuaries Program lacks the breadth of scientific experience and knowledge possessed by the Council and NOAA-Fisheries on fisheries questions. And the Magnuson-Stevens Act is implemented in a much more open and transparent fashion than the Sanctuaries Program. Congress’ recent reaffirmation of the Council process, after reviewing suggested changes in that process during reauthorization, confirmed national policy on the question of primary of national fishery management under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

CRE has first hand experience on the lack of transparency in the NOAA sanctuaries and marine protected area programs in the biased manner the aforementioned personnel handled a recent advisory committee meeting documented in a subsequent article on this website.