August 22, 1974
Page 29884
PRESERVING THE WORLD'S MARINE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, as a member of the National Ocean Policy Study and an adviser to the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Law of the Sea Conference, I am acutely aware of the need for this country as well as the other nations of the world to take immediate steps to preserve the world's ocean resources. In recent years, contamination and depredation of the sea and its inhabitants have risen to terrifying proportions. The technology that brings closer to hand the economic wealth of the sea also presents the prospect of the same shortsighted pursuit of wealth that has left much of our land scarred, our water poisoned, and our air polluted.
Mr. President, two articles from the Maine Press concerning the preservation of our marine environment were recently brought to my attention and I ask unanimous consent at this time to have these articles printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From the Tuesday Weekly, July 30, 1974]
LOCAL FISHERMEN SPEAK: FISHERMEN NEED FACTS FOR LONG-RANGE
PROGRAMS
(By Ted Welles)
MT. DESERT ISLAND.– "I think the answer to the fisheries problem is the 200 mile limit," says Lester Closson, who is soon to graduate from MDI High School and intends to lobster fish for a living. Already he has worked up from a row boat to a renovated inboard lobster boat, paying for improvements from money made lobstering.
What Lester and a lot of other like-minded fishermen are talking about is their request that the U.S. Government extend its territorial offshore claims 200 miles to prevent the area from being overfished by foreigners. The fishermen from harbor to harbor already have territories charted indicating where one another can fish inside U.S. territorial limits, and it takes a big fisherman to break into a foreign territory.
Lester explains, "I wouldn't fish out of Bass Harbor and go into Swans Island territory as too many of my lobster trap lines would be cut."
Mrs. Ossie Beal adds, "My husband is a big fisherman and has been able to fish out of Beals Island to as far away areas as around Milbridge. " Her husband, until recently, was president of the Maine Lobstermen's Association.
This harbor-to-harbor territorial regulation has been conducted without any official government involvement and it is said that some fishing villages have prevented government officials from attempts to regulate their local fishing policies. The situation seems to be different further offshore. For some time the fishermen have been asking government assistance to help them enforce exclusive fishing territories.
When Closson was asked what U.S. fishermen should do within the 200 mile limit to preserve the fisheries, he, as well as others in the trade, admit they have no special program in mind, except keeping foreign fishing fleets out.
A fisherman who has some ideas and is willing to share them is Richard A. Black, Sr., of Bass Harbor. Ed Blackmore, the new president of the Maine Lobstermen's Association, who fishes out of Stonington, says, "Dick Black is a good and very knowledgeable fisherman.
"The independent spirit of individual fishermen is good," Black remarks, "but you've got to take situations as they are and work from them. Before a law is created the first thing is to decide if it can be enforced. I don't think the 200 mile limit can be enforced and we might best consider other possible solutions.
"I don't think driving foreign fishermen out is the answer, especially as already there are a good number of U.S. fishermen who fish in areas off many coasts other than the USA and many more may need to fish off foreign shores in the future," Black said.
"This suggests that the Oceanus global seas regulation program might offer the best solution for all fishermen, especially as it provides for fishermen on the nearest coast to have a say in local fishing policies irrespective of nationality. Because the Oceanus program provides for enforcement of such locally decided fishing policies equitably on all, regardless of national origin, it seems very reasonable.
"As a fisherman, I'd like to see Oceanus render a great service by making a study of all commercially valuable species and their spawning areas and seasons to protect such," adds Black. "It upsets me to hear of the catching of spawning fish, specialized fishing when valuable fish are thrown overboard dead because on that trip they aren't supposed to take them home, pumping fish for scales to use in paint, taking fish for pet food, and other unnecessary and wasteful practices."
"The local program I'd like most to see effected to protect and preserve the fisheries is a ban on catching spawning species. It should seem obvious that nobody can plant a garden without seed. In other words, if it takes ten bushels to plant a field of potatoes, you can't eat the ten bushels needed for planting and that can, if planted, produce a lot more bushels. Likewise we can't continue catching spawning fish if there is to be enough fish for future needs.
"Spawn is the seed from old fish for new and larger numbers of fish," Black explains. "I've seen boats pull up nets when there was so much spawn that I couldn't identify the fish. We should let fish spawn first and then catch them making sure to not damage the spawn.
"Already, lobsters and alewives are protected somewhat during spawning. I think there are more alewives and lobsters as a result, even if it doesn't seem so because there are so many more fishermen today. This is why we must now figure effort against catch and these should be balanced. As uncontrollable conditions arise more, we should give more effort to aquaculture.
"I believe, in a sense, Maine is in many ways already practicing a partial aquaculture with its lobster seeding program," Black says, "and possibly lobstermen in an area can establish a co-op and share the profits from lobster harvests in bays in which they operate aquaculture, in proportion to the time, money, and work they put into the operation."
Black, who has been fishing for over thirty years, has seen "an unbelievable change in the number of fish species. I can't believe the depletion of the fisheries in the last thirty years. If we went back to the number of boats and equipment we had thirty years ago, I don't think a boat would survive economically. It was in the late 50's and early 60's I began to see that the fisheries weren't endless, especially when some of the fish factories went out of business."
In his thirty years of fishing, Black has observed that nature has cycles men don't understand and if these are over-exploited, portions of the seas' food chain must undergo appropriate adjustments, like reducing the number of shags, seals, dog fish, etc. According to Black, "If we want nature to take care of these, nature will most likely do it in a horrible way such as starvation of seals and other species dependent on the species people are demanding for their dining dishes.
"To best begin a proper program," Black feels, "we must study what the fisheries were, what the current state of the fisheries is, and what it might be in the future. From these bearings, laws to preserve and maintain an appropriate fisheries balance of effort and catch can be decided and effected by fishermen with the assistance of appropriate governments, irrespective of nationality."
[From the Bangor Daily News, Aug. 6, 1974]
ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS GIVEN IN SLIDE SHOW
NORTHEAST HARBOR.– Threats to Maine's environment were presented Saturday through an evening of slides, film and discussion during the Maine Theatre Arts Festival at Neighborhood House here.
Arthur E. Palmer, a lawyer and resident of Pretty Marsh, Bar Harbor and Philadelphia, Pa., after seeing the presentation, said. "The information presented should be shared with as many people as possible."
Miss LaRue Spiker, Southwest Harbor, a writer and photographer, conducted the slide presentation produced by the Maine League of Women Voters. It suggested solutions to the question of electric power generation in Maine and some of Maine's economic problems.
The movie "Clean Oil Tankers" showed how routine tanker cleaning procedures harm sea life.
This movie was produced by Adm. E. R. Welles III, elected chief executive of "Oceanus." Manset, an organization that claims to be the developing world seas government "Oceanus" claims to supersede the UN-sponsored "flaw of the seas conference", now at Caracas, Venezuela.
After the movie was shown Welles read parts of a six page letter he recently received from Jacques Cousteau of sea-life movie fame. The letter explained that the seas may soon receive their "mortal wound" from the poisonous wastes now allowed to be dumped in the seas by all governments except "Oceanus", he stated. Should the seas be mortally wounded, Welles and Cousteau agree, the stench of dead sea species will force mankind to leave all coastal regions.
The polluted dead seas would allow the polar ice caps to melt, flooding all but very high dry land. The pollution scum on the seas would prevent evaporation, rain would be rare, and global drought would be created.
Welles read what Cousteau wrote: "The wretched remnant of the human race would now be packed check by jowl on the remaining highlands, bewildered, starving, struggling to survive from hour to hour. Then would be visited upon them the final plague, anoxia (lack of oxygen).
This would be caused by the extinction of plankton algae and the reduction of land vegetation, the two sources that supply the oxygen you are now breathing."
Welles concluded his presentation by explaining that he soon hoped to find one or more imaginative business leaders of firms using the seas for profit that would begin paying Oceanus taxes amounting to $100,000 annually. This, he explained, would "prime the pump" so Oceanus could get other firms recognized land-nations around the globe to participate in Oceanus helping via its system to preserve life in the seas with appropriate profit to benefit all.