Fish fight

As official matron of Green Days, the responsibility of assuaging concerned readers occasionally falls upon your Ruthness. Not that there’s a problem with that. One of the main points of this newspaper is to promote dialogue. So, when an aggrieved representative of several prominent environmental organizations complained that none of said organizations had been quoted in our story on the recently passed Marine Life Protection Act (“Sea change” by Dan Bacher, SN&R Green Days, August 13), Auntie swiftly sprang into action. Here’s what the Ocean Conservancy said: “Ocean Conservancy applauds today’s decision to adopt a new science-based network of marine protected areas (MPAs) along California’s North Central coast. The decision by the California Fish and Game Commission is the culmination of more than two years of public meetings and an inclusive design process by a diverse group of appointed coastal stakeholders.”

Said offended West Coast public-relations man also noted that the National Park Service had been left out of the mix, but try as she could, Auntie could not find her way out of the woods that is the NPS Web site. She imagines the service said something along the same lines as the Ocean Conservancy. Which wouldn’t be too surprising, since the story quoted representatives from the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Fish and Game Commission saying precisely the same thing.

Trouble is, some stakeholders disagree that everybody has been included in the MLPA process, including sports and commercial fishermen as well as indigenous Californians. These groups represent people who depend on the ocean for a living, yet their voices are scantly heard in the backrooms, where the decisions are really made, or the mainstream media. Passage of the MLPA will almost certainly result in lost jobs and scuttled vessels for these groups. These alternative views need to be voiced, which is exactly what the story did. After all, that’s one of the main reasons SN&R is called an alternative newsweekly.