June 3, 2013 — South Carolina is one of 15 states that have failed to protect the near-shore ocean because they haven’t established marine protected areas that don’t allow fishing.
That’s the conclusion of a recent report by the Marine Conservation Institute. There’s just one little problem with it: sand.
The three-mile state jurisdiction off South Carolina is a largely flat, sandy bottom where fish don’t congregate.
“We don’t have the same type of coral reef, kelp forest or even rocky bottom habitats that are found in near shore areas in other places such as Hawaii, Florida or California. The (organisms) that occupy our waters tend to come and go seasonally,” said Mel Bell, S.C. Department of Natural Resources fisheries office director. “What limited hard bottom areas we might have can come and go as well as sands move around. There’s really nothing to make into a Marine Protected Area.”
Institute scientists defended the report, saying that even sand habitats are important to maintaining biodiversity, or a healthy variety of animals and plants.
“All habitats can improve when we don’t kill things … ideally we should be protecting representative ecosystems of every kind: sandy, rocky, muddy and across all depths,” said Lance Morgan, institute president.
No-take or no-fishing protected areas are a more cost-effective strategy than species by species management, the report said. The report compared MPAs to seed banks on land.
Bell said the report makes “a misleading assumption about the proper use of and benefits from MPAs, as well as a mischaracterization of the significant efforts most coastal states, including South Carolina, have taken over the years to implement effective stewardship of our natural marine resources.”
Read the full story at the Charleston Post and Courier