The inhabitants of the Gulf of Mexico exhibit swam without the normal visitors, the aquarium closed on Mondays. Down the hall at the Imax Theatre, members of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force focused on the nation’s sometimes very sick ocean waters.
“Somebody once said if you looked at this planet from space, you wouldn’t call it ‘earth.’ You would call it ‘ocean,’” said Thad Allen, the U.S. Coast Guard Commandant, and a task force member.
At a public hearing, Allen and his colleagues heard every concern, from oil and gas regulation to protecting the historic value of shipwrecks. However, coastal advocates were hoping to focus their attention on-shore, at Louisiana’s vanishing marsh and cypress swamps.