Panel Says Health of Seas in Peril

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Panel Says Health of Seas in Peril
By JOHN HEILPRIN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP)--Six months before the first man landed on the moon, a presidential commission urged Congress to use more ``fully and wisely'' a different sort of vastness, one teeming with life but just as mysterious and far closer to home--the world's oceans.

More than three decades later, a second presidential commission, led by a retired admiral who headed the Energy Department in the first Bush administration, says the urgency is even greater than when the Eagle landed.

``The oceans are in trouble; the coasts are in trouble; our marine resources are in trouble. These are not challenges we can sweep aside,'' said James Watkins, sounding more like a lifelong environmentalist than a former chief of naval operations and national security expert.

Since the last commission's report in early 1969, pressures have increased on coastal areas that are home to half the nation's population. Ocean resources once thought boundless are now recognized as having limits.

About 40,000 acres of coastal wetlands providing essential spawning, feeding and nursery areas for three-fourths of U.S. commercial fish catches are disappearing each year, says the new U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, now halfway through an 18-month study.

Of the fully assessed U.S. fish stocks, 40 percent are depleted or are being overfished, the commission says in an interim report being released this week. Also, 12 billion tons of ballast water from ships are spreading invasive alien species to new locales around world.

The panel points to a need for consolidating the federal and state governments' myriad and often conflicting policies affecting oceans.

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