NY Times: Federal Oceans Commission Finds Decline Along Coasts

[Quetzal]

Federal Oceans Commission Finds Decline Along Coasts

WASHINGTON, April 20 — The first major federal assessment of the oceans in a generation endorsed on Tuesday the gloomy scientific view of the nation's deteriorating coastal waters and offered a mosaic of 250 recommendations to reverse the decline, including a call for local and international action to curb the overfishing that has depleted fish stocks worldwide.

The report, by a commission whose 16 members were appointed by President Bush, also suggested increasingly stringent curbs on nutrient-rich runoff pollution that threatens to strangle the ecosystems of the Chesapeake Bay and creates a huge seasonal "dead zone" where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

"Our oceans and coasts are in serious trouble," the commission's chairman, Adm. James D. Watkins, a former chief of naval operations, said at a news conference here on Tuesday.

Admiral Watkins described the existing management system as "a byzantine patchwork" of federal and state agencies and local fishing councils that "is simply not up to the task" of reversing degradation.

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Federal Oceans Commission Finds Decline Along Coasts

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