[Coral-List] The Diving Industry and Ocean Conservation

[Melbourne Briscoe]

Here are two things I've heard expressed, often forcefully!

** The NOP is a creation of the Obama administration, and has no apparent
Congressional support, there may even be some enmity there.  As such, it
will likely go away when the Obama administration goes away, as did the Bush
Ocean Action Plan before it.  Even the Obama administration has not been
particularly supportive of the NOP, at least not with money. NOAA is the
plan's biggest advocate, but now NOAA has a new administrator....so who
knows?

**  DEMA is probably correct in not getting behind the NOP. Why waste the
effort and any silver bullets they may have? Relationships between NOAA and
the dive industry have not been especially cordial, so the level of trust
toward NOP/NOAA is low.

In my view,
The folks on this list are quite supportive of the NOP because they take it
at face value and there are parts of it they like a lot.
DEMA is not supportive of the NOP, because they distrust the players and
motives, and there are some parts of the NOP they don't like at all.

I think one can get more legacy from discussions with Congress in the many
coastal states, than by lining up behind sweeping administration policies
that probably doomed.