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MLPA: More Likely to Promote Aquaculture - Kelp as Feedstock for Abalone
North Coast Protest in Eureka and Take A Stand Concert in Albion, Unites Coastal Community Voices Of Outrage. It's the false premise of The California Coast: Makeover Licensing and Privatization Act (MLPA-I) which is really no different in it's approach to integrated - Marine Spatial Planning than FERC, or MMS, and it's why we are doing Ecosystem Based Management and NOT i-msp. The Initiative's runaway corporate business pace is not unlike those hostile takeovers that occurred here on the north coast 2 decades ago. In the beginning, the MLPA-I includes 2 noteworthy cultural despots behind the scenes: Barry Munitz and Dr John Seidl (both) of MAXXAM and ENRON (Seidl). After MAXXAM, Seidl went to the Nature Conservancy, then the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (originators of the "Initiative").
MLPA: More Likely to Promote Aquaculture - Kelp as Feedstock for Abalone
Mariculture, or marine aquaculture, is a 28 billion dollar global industry. The US share of that marketplace is one billion dollars. NOAA’s relatively new Office of Aquaculture put out a recent report from entitled “Why the U.S. Should Embrace Aquaculture” and calls for regulations that “encourage … investment in aquaculture.”)
Offshore aquaculture will almost certainly continue to grow in response to demand.
The Ocean Stewards Institute was created as a trade group for growers, suppliers, equipment manufacturers, and others who want to promote a robust, sustainable, offshore aquaculture industry. One of their goals is to create widely accepted MSC-style certification standards for farmed fish.
MLPA, BRTF, SAT discussions include the Mariculture Subject: Major comments on the revised draft master plan framework, responses and outstanding issues:
Date: April 10, 2005
Mariculture is generally a non-extractive use and should be allowed in MPAs as long as it is compatible with the MPA's goals and objectives. The Master Plan Framework does not directly address aquaculture. Like other activities, mariculture will be evaluated for consistency with the MLPA and the goals and objectives of an MPA.
The MLPA Master Plan Science Advisory Team January 23, 2008 Meeting Summary (revised March 31, 2008)
The Science Advisory Team (SAT) reviewed existing levels of protection for salmon trolling (changed to “high” in water deeper than 50m and “high/moderate-high” in water shallower than 50m), crab fishing, striped bass fishing, shorefishing, and halibut hook and line fishing (all remained at their previous level of protection). Members also established new levels of protection for mariculture activities (“low”), which had not been previously reviewed.
Mariculture
SAT co-chair Mark Carr presented information about the potential and actual impacts of mariculture activities in the North Central Coast Study Region (NCCSR). After discussion among SAT members and after hearing public comment, the SAT unanimously voted to assign a “low” level of protection to areas allowing mariculture activities.
Salmon Trolling
During the January 8, 2008 SAT meeting, members agreed to postpone a vote on the level of protection assigned to areas permitting salmon trolling until the January 23, 2008 meeting. A four-part vote was established to afford this complex issue the attention it deserved. First, SAT members voted unanimously to reject the division of salmon trolling into areas deeper than 50 meters and shallower than 50 meters for the purposes of assigning levels of protection.
They next voted on 3 alternatives and chose:
#3 Designate areas with salmon trolling as “high” level of protection deeper than 50 meters and “high/moderate-high” level of protection in areas shallower than 50 meters.
Regulations do not change requirements for or restrictions on the abalone aquaculture industry. Changes to kelp harvest restrictions could potentially be considered as having an indirect impact on abalone aquaculture. The proposed regulations, however, do not alter existing kelp harvest to an extent that would change the price of kelp required to feed aquaculture raised abalone. Caps on harvest in Monterey area MPAs are proposed at levels of maximum harvest and existing leases were allowed to continue. Therefore, no economic impact to the abalone aquaculture industry is expected. In addition, long-term ecological benefits of the proposed regulations should provide for a more consistent kelp resource that may provide food sources for the abalone aquaculture industry.
Seafood Summit 2010: Challenging Assumptions in a Changing World
Paris, France 31 January - 2 February 2010
Seafood Summit, Seafood Choices:
http://www.seafoodchoices.org/seafoodsummit.php
Confirmed Speakers & Biographies
http://www.seafoodchoices.org/seafoodsummit/speakers.php
Susan Ashcraft - Senior Marine Biologist and Supervisor of Marine Protected Areas, California Department of Fish and Game
Panel: Marine Protected Areas and California’s Marine Life Protection Act: Exploring the Linkages Between Place-Based, Ecosystem Management and Sustainable Fisheries.
Susan Ashcraft is a Senior Marine Biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) and has been Supervisor of the CDFG Marine Protected Areas (MPA) Planning Project since 2006. In that capacity, Ms. Ashcraft and her staff support implementation of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) initiative, ....
Seafood Summit brings together global representatives from the seafood industry and conservation community for in-depth discussions, presentations and networking with the goal of making the seafood marketplace environmentally, socially and economically sustainable.
(from last year)
"Interesting discussions explored the sustainability of open ocean aquaculture, fisheries management, international trade and catch shares."
- WiLDCOAST representative
Semantic Antics:
Prior to joining SeaWeb, Vikki Spruill (now with the Ocean Conservancy) was in the business of promoting food products to shoppers, restaurants, and grocery chains. Spruill was considered a PR expert, but had absolutely zero qualifications to work in marine biology or oceanography, the two principal fields in which SeaWeb claims expertise.
SeaWeb was formed in early 1996 as a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Rather than operating the project in-house, Pew awarded a start-up grant to the “Ocean Awareness Campaign” at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). SeaWeb was spun off as a separate entity, and Vikki Spruill took over the helm from NRDC program officer Lisa Speer. COMPASS is funded by the Packard Foundation and SeaWeb is a COMPASS "partner."
10 years later, The Ocean Conservancy announced Vikki Spruill as President and CEO. Spruill, Founder and President of SeaWeb, assumed the post as of December 2006.
In her July 17, 2009 How to Save an Increasingly Crowded Ocean Vikki Spruill: The Clock's Ticking but the Solution is to Give Equal Footing to Ocean Conservation As Well As Industrial Uses, Vicki states;
"Marine Spatial Planning can bring order to the ocean and provide a framework for balancing ocean conservation and competing interests. Marine Spatial Planning is being used effectively by other countries - and by states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island - to do just that. It puts a process in place to manage the ecosystem as a whole and to evaluate cumulative impacts of the many uses of the ocean. It will help us to be better coordinated in the ways that we use our ocean."
"Today, many separate decisions, plans and regulations govern ocean industries-in fact more than 20 federal agencies oversee various aspects of the ocean. Marine Spatial Planning allows us to maximize the economic and social benefits provided by the ocean, while protecting our most fragile marine ecosystems. Just as on land, the ocean is also a diverse ecosystem."
But in Morgan Gopnick's 2008 report for the Moore Foundation on Integrated Marine Spatial Planning in US Waters: "The Path Forward" by Morgan Gopnik for the Marine Conservation Initiative of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation October 2008, he states that in a series of interviews conducted by the Marine Conservation Biology Institute (MCBI) in 2006, federal agency staff reported significant conflicts between ocean users and foresaw more conflicts arising due to continued migration toward the coasts and new technologies. "In interviews, spatial conflicts were perceived as being particularly keen among ocean energy, aquaculture, and fishing, and between all of these and the designation of marine protected areas (MPAs). More subtly, marine scientists are beginning to realize that uncontrolled ocean uses also conflict with the ocean’s ability to supply certain irreplaceable “ecosystem services” such as storm protection, freshwater regulation, waste processing, flood control, nutrient cycling, erosion control, climate regulation, and disease control."
(Integrated) Marine Spatial Planning or i-MSP
"Creative state and local efforts that involve elements of spatial planning but fall short of true i-MSP such as the MLPA process in California, fish and wildlife plans for marine areas in Florida, essential fish habitat planning processes under the MSA, or the eco-regional assessments and planning being spearheaded by The Nature Conservancy provide a wealth of experience on which we can build."
"Ideally i-MSP should be accompanied by a thorough analysis of the relevant ocean region, including studies of its physical, chemical, and biological characteristics, an inventory of all the uses projected to take place in that region, an examination of how all the uses and ecosystems interact with each other, and an iterative process of testing out the results of different spatial allocations. Very little of that information is readily available...."
i-MSP or Ecosystem Based Management
"Many advocates for i-MSP have come to it as an extension of their interest in marine conservation and specifically EBM (e.g., Sivas and Caldwell, 2008). In some cases, i-MSP has been explicitly equated with the movement to control fishing and site more MPAs (Norse, 2005; Agardy, 2007). But the value of i-MSP is that it moves beyond a traditional “us vs. them” approach. It embodies the premise that marine protection is one “use” of ocean space, albeit a fundamental and extremely important one, but that economic development is also legitimate and valuable. If it’s wrong for fisheries, renewable energy, LNG terminals and other specific users to make end runs around a broader, integrated planning process, then it’s also problematic to advocate the creation of MPAs without placing them within a long-term vision that considers all users."
Oil Drilling Platforms and Marine Aquaculture
Minerals Management Service (MMS 7.1.2) Declares Alternate Use of Oil and Gas Platforms for Aquaculture and for other alternate uses. Structure removal and installation impacts could be avoided if a platform is converted to use as an aquaculture facility. Aquaculture is a growing source of food for the nation as commercial fish harvests are limited by dwindling fish populations in the oceans.
For Sale: Futures (ours)
Large Corporate size quota shares of fish stocks, aquaculture and Marine Biotech Protected Areas. I'm talking a complete port folly oh, (that's) portfolio of maxxam sized ecosystem based management of assets.
But resources without access are not assets.
Tomas DiFiore
Commercial Seaweed Harvester on the Mendocino Coast
Mariculture, or marine aquaculture, is a 28 billion dollar global industry. The US share of that marketplace is one billion dollars. NOAA’s relatively new Office of Aquaculture put out a recent report from entitled “Why the U.S. Should Embrace Aquaculture” and calls for regulations that “encourage … investment in aquaculture.”)
Offshore aquaculture will almost certainly continue to grow in response to demand.
The Ocean Stewards Institute was created as a trade group for growers, suppliers, equipment manufacturers, and others who want to promote a robust, sustainable, offshore aquaculture industry. One of their goals is to create widely accepted MSC-style certification standards for farmed fish.
MLPA, BRTF, SAT discussions include the Mariculture Subject: Major comments on the revised draft master plan framework, responses and outstanding issues:
Date: April 10, 2005
Mariculture is generally a non-extractive use and should be allowed in MPAs as long as it is compatible with the MPA's goals and objectives. The Master Plan Framework does not directly address aquaculture. Like other activities, mariculture will be evaluated for consistency with the MLPA and the goals and objectives of an MPA.
The MLPA Master Plan Science Advisory Team January 23, 2008 Meeting Summary (revised March 31, 2008)
The Science Advisory Team (SAT) reviewed existing levels of protection for salmon trolling (changed to “high” in water deeper than 50m and “high/moderate-high” in water shallower than 50m), crab fishing, striped bass fishing, shorefishing, and halibut hook and line fishing (all remained at their previous level of protection). Members also established new levels of protection for mariculture activities (“low”), which had not been previously reviewed.
Mariculture
SAT co-chair Mark Carr presented information about the potential and actual impacts of mariculture activities in the North Central Coast Study Region (NCCSR). After discussion among SAT members and after hearing public comment, the SAT unanimously voted to assign a “low” level of protection to areas allowing mariculture activities.
Salmon Trolling
During the January 8, 2008 SAT meeting, members agreed to postpone a vote on the level of protection assigned to areas permitting salmon trolling until the January 23, 2008 meeting. A four-part vote was established to afford this complex issue the attention it deserved. First, SAT members voted unanimously to reject the division of salmon trolling into areas deeper than 50 meters and shallower than 50 meters for the purposes of assigning levels of protection.
They next voted on 3 alternatives and chose:
#3 Designate areas with salmon trolling as “high” level of protection deeper than 50 meters and “high/moderate-high” level of protection in areas shallower than 50 meters.
Regulations do not change requirements for or restrictions on the abalone aquaculture industry. Changes to kelp harvest restrictions could potentially be considered as having an indirect impact on abalone aquaculture. The proposed regulations, however, do not alter existing kelp harvest to an extent that would change the price of kelp required to feed aquaculture raised abalone. Caps on harvest in Monterey area MPAs are proposed at levels of maximum harvest and existing leases were allowed to continue. Therefore, no economic impact to the abalone aquaculture industry is expected. In addition, long-term ecological benefits of the proposed regulations should provide for a more consistent kelp resource that may provide food sources for the abalone aquaculture industry.
Seafood Summit 2010: Challenging Assumptions in a Changing World
Paris, France 31 January - 2 February 2010
Seafood Summit, Seafood Choices:
http://www.seafoodchoices.org/seafoodsummit.php
Confirmed Speakers & Biographies
http://www.seafoodchoices.org/seafoodsummit/speakers.php
Susan Ashcraft - Senior Marine Biologist and Supervisor of Marine Protected Areas, California Department of Fish and Game
Panel: Marine Protected Areas and California’s Marine Life Protection Act: Exploring the Linkages Between Place-Based, Ecosystem Management and Sustainable Fisheries.
Susan Ashcraft is a Senior Marine Biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) and has been Supervisor of the CDFG Marine Protected Areas (MPA) Planning Project since 2006. In that capacity, Ms. Ashcraft and her staff support implementation of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) initiative, ....
Seafood Summit brings together global representatives from the seafood industry and conservation community for in-depth discussions, presentations and networking with the goal of making the seafood marketplace environmentally, socially and economically sustainable.
(from last year)
"Interesting discussions explored the sustainability of open ocean aquaculture, fisheries management, international trade and catch shares."
- WiLDCOAST representative
Semantic Antics:
Prior to joining SeaWeb, Vikki Spruill (now with the Ocean Conservancy) was in the business of promoting food products to shoppers, restaurants, and grocery chains. Spruill was considered a PR expert, but had absolutely zero qualifications to work in marine biology or oceanography, the two principal fields in which SeaWeb claims expertise.
SeaWeb was formed in early 1996 as a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Rather than operating the project in-house, Pew awarded a start-up grant to the “Ocean Awareness Campaign” at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). SeaWeb was spun off as a separate entity, and Vikki Spruill took over the helm from NRDC program officer Lisa Speer. COMPASS is funded by the Packard Foundation and SeaWeb is a COMPASS "partner."
10 years later, The Ocean Conservancy announced Vikki Spruill as President and CEO. Spruill, Founder and President of SeaWeb, assumed the post as of December 2006.
In her July 17, 2009 How to Save an Increasingly Crowded Ocean Vikki Spruill: The Clock's Ticking but the Solution is to Give Equal Footing to Ocean Conservation As Well As Industrial Uses, Vicki states;
"Marine Spatial Planning can bring order to the ocean and provide a framework for balancing ocean conservation and competing interests. Marine Spatial Planning is being used effectively by other countries - and by states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island - to do just that. It puts a process in place to manage the ecosystem as a whole and to evaluate cumulative impacts of the many uses of the ocean. It will help us to be better coordinated in the ways that we use our ocean."
"Today, many separate decisions, plans and regulations govern ocean industries-in fact more than 20 federal agencies oversee various aspects of the ocean. Marine Spatial Planning allows us to maximize the economic and social benefits provided by the ocean, while protecting our most fragile marine ecosystems. Just as on land, the ocean is also a diverse ecosystem."
But in Morgan Gopnick's 2008 report for the Moore Foundation on Integrated Marine Spatial Planning in US Waters: "The Path Forward" by Morgan Gopnik for the Marine Conservation Initiative of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation October 2008, he states that in a series of interviews conducted by the Marine Conservation Biology Institute (MCBI) in 2006, federal agency staff reported significant conflicts between ocean users and foresaw more conflicts arising due to continued migration toward the coasts and new technologies. "In interviews, spatial conflicts were perceived as being particularly keen among ocean energy, aquaculture, and fishing, and between all of these and the designation of marine protected areas (MPAs). More subtly, marine scientists are beginning to realize that uncontrolled ocean uses also conflict with the ocean’s ability to supply certain irreplaceable “ecosystem services” such as storm protection, freshwater regulation, waste processing, flood control, nutrient cycling, erosion control, climate regulation, and disease control."
(Integrated) Marine Spatial Planning or i-MSP
"Creative state and local efforts that involve elements of spatial planning but fall short of true i-MSP such as the MLPA process in California, fish and wildlife plans for marine areas in Florida, essential fish habitat planning processes under the MSA, or the eco-regional assessments and planning being spearheaded by The Nature Conservancy provide a wealth of experience on which we can build."
"Ideally i-MSP should be accompanied by a thorough analysis of the relevant ocean region, including studies of its physical, chemical, and biological characteristics, an inventory of all the uses projected to take place in that region, an examination of how all the uses and ecosystems interact with each other, and an iterative process of testing out the results of different spatial allocations. Very little of that information is readily available...."
i-MSP or Ecosystem Based Management
"Many advocates for i-MSP have come to it as an extension of their interest in marine conservation and specifically EBM (e.g., Sivas and Caldwell, 2008). In some cases, i-MSP has been explicitly equated with the movement to control fishing and site more MPAs (Norse, 2005; Agardy, 2007). But the value of i-MSP is that it moves beyond a traditional “us vs. them” approach. It embodies the premise that marine protection is one “use” of ocean space, albeit a fundamental and extremely important one, but that economic development is also legitimate and valuable. If it’s wrong for fisheries, renewable energy, LNG terminals and other specific users to make end runs around a broader, integrated planning process, then it’s also problematic to advocate the creation of MPAs without placing them within a long-term vision that considers all users."
Oil Drilling Platforms and Marine Aquaculture
Minerals Management Service (MMS 7.1.2) Declares Alternate Use of Oil and Gas Platforms for Aquaculture and for other alternate uses. Structure removal and installation impacts could be avoided if a platform is converted to use as an aquaculture facility. Aquaculture is a growing source of food for the nation as commercial fish harvests are limited by dwindling fish populations in the oceans.
For Sale: Futures (ours)
Large Corporate size quota shares of fish stocks, aquaculture and Marine Biotech Protected Areas. I'm talking a complete port folly oh, (that's) portfolio of maxxam sized ecosystem based management of assets.
But resources without access are not assets.
Tomas DiFiore
Commercial Seaweed Harvester on the Mendocino Coast
For more information:
http://www.astral-arts.com
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