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Title: Oil and fish conflict: Implications for ocean management

Miscellaneous ·
OSTI ID:5659712

Ocean management seeks to increase net benefits from overall resource allocations for the various marine uses through fostering policy integration on the ocean dimension. This concept has been challenged for cutting off links of these uses along their respective functional or sectoral lines. While the sectoral approach still dominates the marine management, the degree of the need for policy integration on the ocean dimension, its scope and form, becomes a fundamental marine policy issue. The present dissertation explores this issue though assessing the level of the conflict between marine fisheries and offshore oil development and its implication for ocean management within the United States. The conflicts assessed are related to offshore installations, debris, collision and geophysical survey, as well as operational discharges, oil spills, and onshore impacts. Criteria for the assessment include probability and intensity of biogeochemical interactions, the associated socioeconomic impacts, the related concerns, and the tractability of the consequences. Some interconnections of the existing management systems which have important bearings on the resolution of the conflict are characterized and evaluated as to their adequacies. In the United States, oil and fish conflict largely concerns the impacts of Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) activities on the coastal fisheries. The study found that the conflict is either regionally significant or locally serious; and that costs of the conflict, including the costs of conflict resolution efforts themselves have not been fully incorporated in the existing decision-making premises in managing the uses concerned. These conclusions do not support the overhauling of the existing management systems on the federal level, but demonstrate a need for establishing an interdisciplinary and intersectoral mechanism to monitor the level of multiple use consequences, and a need for further marine policy integration on the regional basis.

Research Organization:
Delaware Univ., Newark, DE (United States)
OSTI ID:
5659712
Resource Relation:
Other Information: Thesis (Ph.D.)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English