When the National Aquarium announced on Monday it was seeking the nation’s first Urban National Marine Sanctuary designation for the Baltimore Canyon off the coast of Ocean City, the knee-jerk reaction from the resort’s sportfishing community was fear of gradually losing more and more of the heart of the multi-million fishing industry. The overriding fear, and there is precedent for it, is that once the federal government gets its foot in the door, more and more regulations would be forthcoming and access to the canyon for recreational and commercial fisherman would be gradually chipped away.
However, National Aquarium officials later on Monday attempted to allay those fears. According to spokesperson Corrine Weaver, the National Aquarium is keenly aware of the importance of the recreational and commercial fisheries in the Baltimore Canyon and seeking an Urban National Marine Sanctuary designation would not impact those industries.
More
8 comments:
If you believe anything associated with the Federal Government you are a darn fool.
Exactly!
No Wind Farm. NO Sanctuary. Just another Federal project to cost tax payers.
as an avowed KNEE JERKER, I fear the author believes the gubmit is here to help :(
How far is international waters i think it is 12 miles if so how can they make a sanctuary?
This is a red herring to get wind turbines offshore in OC. The politicians will claim the turbines are better than drilling when both will destroy the fishing industry. See whales & porpoise deaths in Europe and the Eastern hemisphere. OC tourism will drop by 30% too.
They'll find a way.
International waters are 12 miles however national fishing waters extern out to 200 miles and that is done by all nations now.The first country to impose a 200 mile fishing limit I belive was Ecuador and when they first did it I think in the late 60's or early 70's the tuns fishing fleets working out of San Diego California didn't think they could enforce it until the Ecuador navy seized several multi million dollar( in today's dollars probably about 50 to 100 million dollars) fishing vessels and locked up their crews.Thc Tuna canning companys had to pay huge fines to get their crews and boats back.A good example of this here is the Georges Bank off of Massachusetts where our 200 mile limit overlaps with Nova Scotia and a large portion is off limit to American boats and Canadian boats can't fish our waters.An interesting note is that although Flemish Cap(where the perfect storm boat was lost) is 1500 miles from New Bedford Mass it is just outside of Newfoundland's 200 mile limit.It is a long trip but my son went there one time, it took 4 day steaming to get there 1 day to completely load the boat and 4 days back. They got caught in some weather on they way back and he said wouldn't make that trip again which makes me happy. Sorry to ramble on but I worked many years on the ocean and have a lot of fond and sometimes real scarey memories.
Post a Comment