Maggie's Farm

First some definitions. There exists a concept called the Exclusive Economic Zone or EEZ which extends out to 200 miles from the mainland. The EEZ is further divided into Inland (bays, estuaries, rivers) that abut the EEZ, Terrritorial waters (to 12 miles), Contigous Zone (an additional 12 miles) and the rest to 200 is EEZ. By practice, states have control over Inland and out to 3 miles of the Territorial waters of the EEZ. The Feds control the rest.
In theory.

The concept by which fishing is controlled is called an MPA or Marine Protected Area(s). Basically, the MPA prevents any activity including fishing, in the designated area that is deemed harmful to the creatures that live there. For example, the entire Santa Barbara Channel is off limits to everything except boat passage and during whale migration, even that is limited. I'm not familiar with the entirety of the California MPAs, but they are massive and have recently been expanded.

There are several major environmental organizations that are involved in the effort to close off most of the inshore fishing, commercial and recreational the biggest of which is WWF along with Sea Grant, Sierra Club and several other environmental activist groups. During the Bush administration, an initial map of MPAs for the Atlantic region was produced, but it quietly died when it became clear that the intent of the groups pushing was to expand the areas to include areas where potential oil exploration existed.

Now what's happened is that an activist EPA along with some sympathetic beauracrats in the NFS and NOAA are pushing the original MPAs that the Bush administration proposed only they are meeting resistance in Congress. Hence, the Executive Order which our President does not seem reluctant to use to further the cause.

That's the baseline story - it's a little more complicated than that for various reasons, but that pretty much the jist of the issue. The President will probably use the Executive Order to produce limited MPAs, but as we've seen in CA, the limitations seems to expand over time.

Case in point. The SW Ledge off Block Island is currently off limits to striper fishing beyond the Inshore line at 3 miles - there is just a little swath off Block Island Light that is usuable. Some of the most productive fishing areas on the East Coast is essentially off limits to all related fising activity.

The problem is that this MPA approach is only a bandaid. We have a totally screwed up quota system commercially and we're allowing too many commercial operations to fish. Additionally, we're mismanaging the resources we have by taking the "traditional" approach (meaning the use of politics) rather than science to setting quotas.

I could go on and on, but I'll stop here before my blood pressure rises much more. :>)

I gotta wonder about some of these things. I've had a diesel tractor run away from me (thermal detonation) and that was with a manual transmission - I didn't have a problem disconnecting the clutch and disengaging the tranny. It's even easier on an automatic because there aren't any lockouts - just pop it into neutral.

I also have to wonder about the braking systems. Most of these cars are fairly light w/o a lot of horsepower to speak of - more low end torgue than high end. How hard can it be to stop these things? I don't get it.

Heh - "driver panic" - please. Although I suppose that could be a problem - for a maroon.