Articles by Andrew Sharpless

A legacy-making move for the outgoing prez

President George W. Bush deserves praise from ocean lovers for his creation of three new marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean. This action protects some of the few remaining pristine coral reefs in the world by prohibiting all forms of commercial fishing and severely restricting recreational fishing.

These are among the last places on the planet where you can still see sharks and other top predators in something like a healthy state. President Bush -- and the Pew Environment Group, Marine Conservation Biology Institute and Environmental Defense Fund, who worked so hard for these monuments -- can be justifiably proud of the results.

It's easy to point out that the protected areas around the 10 islands could have been 16-times larger if Bush had included the full 200-mile exclusive economic zone in the monuments. As National Geographic scientist Enric Sala points out, there's no magic scientific line at 50 miles. It looks more like a political line to me.

New NOAA head will have plenty of work to do

President-elect Barack Obama’s appointment of Jane Lubchenco, an Oregon State University marine biologist, to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could be a major positive step for protecting America’s fisheries. In recent years, NOAA has ignored scientists’ advice when it comes to setting quotas for some of our most vulnerable fish species, favoring commercial […]

We should be wary of jumping on the ‘individual fishing quota’ bandwagon

I’m not sure what the marine equivalent of a bandwagon is (a love boat?), but there’s one headed our way. I’m talking about the movement called “individual fishing quotas,” as described in a recent Los Angeles Times article. The original theory is straight out of the free market school of economics: Give people the ownership […]

One more environmental Cabinet position that counts particularly for oceans

In its feature “Stocking the Cabinet,” Grist speculated on Barack Obama’s potential nominees for the “top environmental jobs” in his administration. For the oceans, however, the most pertinent post isn’t the head of the EPA, or the secretary of agriculture, energy, or interior, all of which were included in Grist’s guessing game. Guess what is? […]