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Title:
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Stop the corporate takeover of the Gulf of Mexico
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START DATE:
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12/11/2007
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START TIME:
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6:00 PM
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Duration:
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3 Hours
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Location:
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Airport
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Location Details:
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Hilton New Orleans Airport
(Across the street from Armstrong Airport)
901 Airline Drive
New Orleans, LA 70062
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Event Topic:
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Privatization
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Event Type:
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Meeting
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Contact Name:
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Jean Lafitte
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Contact Email:
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Contact Phone:
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DESCRIPTION:
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On Tuesday, December 11th from 6pm to 9pm at the Hilton New Orleans Airport, 901 Airline Drive near Armstrong Int'l Airport in New Orleans, the Gulf Council Fishery Management Council, one of eight regional fishery councils governing the oceans of the United States, will hold a public meeting on Open Ocean Aquaculture, or OOA. This meeting and others like it in the Gulf of Mexico region are being held in response to petitions for more public input in the controversial proposed regulations allowing corporations to grow fish on an industrial scale in U.S. waters. The Gulf of Mexico is where the Bush Administration is testing its strategy for privatization of federal waters through aquaculture development, believing that opposition will be least in the Deep South.
Open Ocean Aquaculture entails the building of large cages or net-pens in the federal waters (more than 3-9 miles offshore) for the raising of various kinds of sea creatures. Environmentalists, commercial and recreational fishermen, and citizens oppose OOA because it is an unproven technology, poses unknown risks to the ocean environment and marine biodiversity, it relies on heavy public subsidies to develop the industry, which will be owned and operated for private profit, even while wild-caught fishermen in the Gulf face major economic and environmental crises for which they receive little or no public assistance, and because Open Ocean Aquaculture is so capital-intensive that it will be operated by large corporations only, unlike the current seafood industry in the Gulf of Mexico, which is generally operated by small capitalist enterprises or by household producers (family fishermen). The promoters of the plan on the Gulf Council, who claim to represent the public trust as Council members, are seafood wholesalers and aquaculturalists, people who will directly profit from OOA in their private businesses. These interests, the interests of the Bush administration to subsidize corporate profits, and the interests of the oil industry to save money by converting old oil platforms into fish farming hubs (instead of the expensive option of dismantling them) all converge in OOA.
The OOA development strategy is intended to address the U.S. trade deficit by domestically producing seafood that the U.S. now imports. The U.S. government tried through a similar subsidy scheme in the late 1970's to industrialize the wild-caught fisheries of the nation to compete with imported seafood, leading to the economic marginalization of small fishermen in many fisheries and ecological collapse of many fisheries due to overfishing. OOA uses different technology for the same political-economic strategy, to industrialize seafood production and privatize public resources for the benefit of big businesses and to prop up the U.S. trade balance while maintaining the U.S.' exploitative "free trade" policy with Latin America and East Asia, the sources of most of the imported seafood eaten by Americans.
Residents of the Gulf Coast are encouraged to attend this meeting in New Orleans and others like it in the Gulf region to voice your opinion about OOA and its environmental and socio-economic consequences for working people in this region.
You can read the Gulf Council's plan here:
http://www.gulfcouncil.org/Beta/GMFMCWeb/Aquaculture/Aquaculture%20Amendment%20PHDraft%201107.pdf
Their public meetings here:
http://www.gulfcouncil.org/Beta/GMFMCWeb/prrel/pr%202007-33.pdf
and a report on OOA in the Gulf of Mexico from one of the opposition groups to OOA, Food and Water Watch, here:
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/fish/pubs/reports/offshore-aquaculture-bad-news-for-the-gulf/
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