Plans that would vastly expand a Gulf of Mexico marine sanctuary off the Texas and Louisiana coasts to protect undersea life face fierce opposition from the commercial fishing and oil and gas industries.
The Houston Chronicle reports representatives from both industries accuse the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of pulling a “bait and switch” after it announced plans five options for expanding the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, which is about 100 miles off the coast of Galveston, Texas.
Industry representatives insist NOAA’s preferred plan is not the one they agreed to in 2007 and affirmed in 2012.
The federal agency has announced five options for expanding the sanctuary range to protect some of the last remaining coral reefs in the world from damage by fishing vessels and oil and gas drilling operators.
The plans range from zero expansion to widening the 56-square-mile sanctuary to 935 square miles, or 17 times its current size. The option preferred by NOAA is in the middle range: expanding the sanctuary to 383 square miles.
Oil and gas and commercial fishing representatives tell the Houston Chronicle they are troubled by that option, insisting both sides agreed to increase the sanctuary to 281 square miles.
“Now everybody is kind of freaking out about this,” says Keith “Buddy” Guindon, one of two commercial fisherman on the Flower Garden Banks 14-member advisory board. “There was no reason to do this kind of a land grab. We really had a well-vetted process about what the future might bring.”
One reason NOAA favors a larger expansion plan than the one adopted by the council is the harm done to the Gulf by the 2010 Deepwater-Horizon oil spill, the largest in U.S. history.
“Deepwater Horizon caused significant injury to deepwater coral,” Schmahl says. “Establishment of a protected area, we think, will help compensate the public for those lost areas.”
