Zoning Comes to the Ocean

Tom Banse
05/07/2009

Up next: spilling of secrets, range war, guinea pigs and stacked pennies. Who knew zoning could be so interesting? You've heard of land use planning to shape growth on land. Now it seems the great, wide ocean isn't big enough for all the different interests that want a piece of it. The surge of wave power projects may be the final straw to bring zoning to the high seas. Correspondent Tom Banse reports from Charleston, on the south Oregon coast.

TRANSCRIPT

One at a time, fishermen step into the back room of the Basin Cafe to spill their secrets to strangers.

Bonkoski: "We'd like you to show us the areas most important to you."

A detailed marine chart covers half of the corner table. A fisherman takes the hot seat and proceeds to give away his hot spots. He's J.D. Evanow, a commercial salmon and tuna boat owner with 32 seasons on the water.

Evanow: This is a really good spot for big hogs, 30 pounders. That's a really good spot. A lot of the Newport fleet fishes this spot.

Two surveyors from the Portland non–profit Ecotrust take careful notes. They're on contract to gather data for the state and a local fishermen's association. Evanow places pennies on the map to rank the best fishing grounds. In earlier times, he says you'd get this intelligence over his dead body.

Evanow: "When there was huge fleet here, the competition was fierce. Nobody would tell you anything, you know. But that has kind of gone away now. The fleet is a lot smaller and the guys are having to work together to make this whole thing work."

The fishermen from Coos Bay, Bandon, and Reedsport are talkin' to prevent key fishing grounds from being swallowed up by arrays of wave energy buoys. If not that, then to defend against new marine sanctuaries. Or maybe, offshore wind farms. Or perhaps, ocean fish farms or oil drilling. You get the idea. Incompatible uses of the ocean are piling up.

In Newport, Oregon, Onno Husing directs an association of local governments on the coast. He helped find the money to survey the fishermen.

Husing: "On some levels, it's really simple. We want to find out where the key fishing grounds are, where the key ecological features are, and then offer up the other areas that are less significant to the wave energy companies, and ultimately the wind energy companies, and invite them to go there rather than in an area that is bound to create a lot of conflict."

Husing says these southern Oregon fishermen are the guinea pigs in an ocean mapping and planning exercise that he'd like to see expand to the whole West Coast. Columbia Energy Partners of Vancouver, Washington is one of the companies interested in generating wave power along the coast. Vice president Jon Norling says it would be helpful to know where he's welcome and where he's not.

Norling:" It helps us guide our development activities and say, 'Where should we be vis–a–vis these other activities going on?'"

It's a small leap from comprehensive planning to zoning. That's a scary word to fishermen, in particular. It implies the fencing off of the prairie; the farmers replacing the cowboys. Onno Husing says the analogy extends to preventing range war on the high seas.

Husing: "We're really witnessing and being part of the closing of the Old West, that idea of just the open range. Fisheries was probably one of those last frontiers, but you know, that range – or that open environment where anyone could go anywhere and do anything that they pleased – that has already been eroded now for quite a few years with all the fisheries management and everything."

In fact, by one count, there are at least twenty different agencies that regulate activities and industries on the ocean. That begs the question, if you want to bring zoning to the ocean to defuse conflict, who would do it? Jane Lubchenco is interested. She's the new head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and happens to be from Oregon. Members of Congress from Washington, Oregon, and California are working various angles to get money for integrated ocean mapping and planning. States would likely get a share, so they can act knowledgably about what's happening off their shores. I'm Tom Banse in Charleston, Oregon.

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