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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'><div class="basicAttr GLHWMP-BADE"><span class="basicAttrHeading" style="padding-right: 4px; display: block;"><b class="breakWord">Comment:</b></span> <span class="breakWord" style="display: block;">The expansion of the Cordell Bank and Gulf of the
Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries is important for protection of the
fragile marine life on the California Coast, but I feel it should be extended
past Pt. Arena up to the Oregon border. Congressman Jared Huffman recently wrote
an article addressing Ocean acidification on the North Coast of California,
which is especially dangerous in the areas of natural upwelling of organic
matter toward the surface, where it absorbs CO2 from the air. This absorption of
excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is lowering the Ph level in the Ocean,
and is having a huge impact on the seafood industry in California, which has
been supporting 146,000 jobs and is a $24-billion industry. There are several
marine scientists studying the acidification problem in Bodega Bay and the
Tomales Bay Oyster Co. and the entire fishing industry is now at risk. The
oceans absorb a quarter or more of all the carbon dioxide humankind puts into
the atmosphere, estimated at 22 million tons a day, in addition to the estimated
525 billion tons absorbed over the past two centuries. This is causing oysters
and starfish to die off from acid eating the calcium carbonate in their shells
and membranes. There has been an alarming rise in the number of seals and sea
lion pups that have been stranded and are starving, for unknown reasons. This
year 446 stranded marine mammals had to be rescued and taken to the Marine
Mammal Rescue Centers in Sausalito and San Rafael, and that was as of May.
Congressman Huffman is introducing bills to address these problems, but the
science is in the early stages and we must act fast to protect and study our
Ocean, or there will be huge dead zones where we now have upwellings that
produce huge amounts of food for the planet. Due to the drought in California,
our Salmon fishery is also in danger, and there is only a 11 day window for
fishing for Salmon this year, as the fry had to be trucked from hatcheries and
dropped in the ocean before they were grown to a size which would guarantee many
would survive. The entire fishing industry is at risk, given that the role of
calcium carbonate synthesis in skeletal development. This acidification could
disrupt the entire food web, from the lowest phytoplankton on up to the largest
fish and whales. We do not want to see Oysters or Salmon become extincted! If we
allow the Ocean to die, we are truly doomed! There are many problems caused by
human impacts, such as pollution, areas of low oxygen and rampant overfishing.
This puts the need to protect our North Coast all the way up to Oregon in a high
priority. <br>Please extend the National Marine Sanctuary up to the Oregon
border, so we can scientifically study the solutions to the problems caused by
Ocean industrialization, and stop killing the ocean with pollution, overfishing,
CO2, plastics, agricultural dumping, and all the other causes of the decline in
the health of the ocean. If we lose our ocean we will not survive as a
planet.</span></div>
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