文章基本信息

标题：Enforcement Of U.S. Fisheries Laws In The EEZ: An Illustration Of The Value Of The Coast Guard's Deepwater Missions To The Nation And The Need To Provide It With Adequate Deepwater Resources
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作者：Jones, Matthew
期刊名称：Ocean and Coastal Law Journal
印刷版ISSN：1073-8843
出版年度：2008
卷号：13
期号：2
页码：4
出版社：University of Maine School of Law
摘要：The U.S. Coast Guard (Coast Guard) is a “multi-mission” agency that is “widely recognized as being one of Government’s most efficient organizations” and “offers the nation a highly motivated, well-trained, cost-effective Service that has demonstrated flexibility and adaptability to meet changing national priorities.” As such, the Coast Guard has and continues to be tasked with a myriad of responsibilities that can currently be divided into five fundamental roles: maritime safety, maritime security, maritime mobility, protection of natural resources, and national defense. These roles require the Coast Guard to conduct activities such as searchand- rescue, drug and migrant interdiction, military operations, marine environmental protection, icebreaking, and port and waterways security throughout an area over one and a half times the size of the lower forty-eight states. Despite the Coast Guard’s considerable value to the United States in conducting these activities, however, it has been and continues to be plagued by a lack of personnel and budgetary resources. For example, in 2006 the Coast Guard had only 39,000 active-duty members to cover over 3.4 million square miles, while the New York City Police Department had a force of similar size to cover only 322 square miles. In addition, the Coast Guard’s total budget of $8.7 billion in 2007 was over $1 billion less than the Marine Corps’ personnel budget alone. Budget shortfalls have had a particularly detrimental effect over the years by preventing the Coast Guard from upgrading its major capital assets, especially its deepwater assets—those capable of operating in “deepwater,” that is, out to and on the high seas. Consequently, the Coast Guard’s ability to conduct effective deepwater missions has been compromised because many of its current deepwater assets are “aging and increasingly obsolete.” Coast Guard enforcement of U.S. fisheries laws illustrates how the state of its deepwater assets can and does prevent it from providing the effective mission performance the nation requires. Specifically, the Coast Guard is charged with at-sea enforcement of fisheries laws throughout the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ)—the area of ocean extending from three to 200 nautical miles offshore—in order to protect the nation’s extremely valuable fishery resources. Although the Coast Guard’s fisheries enforcement program is “well managed overall,” it has not been able to provide the level of activity necessary to ensure proper enforcement of fisheries laws in the EEZ, primarily because the Coast Guard’s current deepwater fleet cannot effectively patrol an area of that size