COOS BAY - “This community, like other coastal communities, is at a crossroads,” Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association Executive Director Onno Husing said Tuesday.

Husing's talk before the Rotary Club of Coos Bay-North Bend centered around the growing issues of marine reserves, wave energy and the Ocean Policy Advisory Council's role in working on those matters.

Both topics are intertwined to the extent they would close access to parts of the ocean for commercial and recreational fishermen.

But, Husing said, so far there is no statewide plan for working on them at the same time and both issues have ruffled the feathers of the commercial fishing industry.

It wasn't but a decade ago that federal laws changed how commercial fishermen could do business, giving more weight to the conservation of natural resources than it had before. That change resulted in drastic changes to the West Coast groundfish fleet.

Tighter restrictions.

Fewer vessels.

Huge closed areas that stretch from Canada to Mexico.

“It was painful,” Husing said of the process put some fishermen out of business entirely.

And now the state is proposing to take more fishing areas away.

“They don't have a lot more to give,” Husing said.

This time around, the restrictions would affect more fishermen that fish within 3 miles of shore, in Oregon's territorial sea. For the most part, trawlers would be less affected than crabbers and salmon trollers.

The Dungeness crabbing industry has been on the front lines when it comes to dealing with wave energy companies that want to put energy-generating buoys on sandy ocean bottom in the same depth at which fishermen put their pots. South Coast crabbers have had several meetings with Ocean Power Technologies, a company working on a wave energy park off of Reedsport. Newport fishermen have met with Finavera Renewables, a company hoping to establish a park near Newport and another one near Bandon.

But in Washington, the confrontation isn't nearly as cordial.

Finavera has been working to put in buoys in Makah Bay, on the northern Washington coast.

“Finavera must not be allowed to move forward without specified compensatory mitigation for the loss of fishing grounds, damages to marine ecosystems, especially loss of Dungeness crab and crab fishing grounds,” the Columbia River Crab Fisherman's Association wrote in a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in June. “It is not the initial pilot project that will have such a large impact on the other participants in the ocean; it is the cumulative effect that additional larger intrusions will have. It is not just the wave energy exclusionary zones; it is the wave energy parks, open ocean aquaculture, crabber towlane agreements, tribal SMAs, fiber optic cables, LNG exclusionary zones, ocean dredge disposal sites, and more to come that will have the greater cumulative economic impacts that will destroy our national fishing heritage.”

Here in Coos Bay, nobody from the wave energy companies was present at the Rotary meeting Tuesday.

Husing noted that emotions are strong on all sides. The governor's office has made it clear it wants marine reserves and wave energy. Fishermen don't want to give up more fishing grounds. Wave energy companies want to put buoys in the water and generate electricity. Marine reserves and wave energy, right now, is a political football, he said.

“But it's so important not to allow emotion and politics to interfere (in the process),” Husing said.

One example of how politics are intruding on the marine reserves process is the governor's plan for open nominations of marine reserves - a plan also discussed at the OPAC meeting in Tillamook.

The governor's plan calls for anyone to be able to nominate ocean sites for marine reserves this fall.

Husing paused, then noted that people from Bend, Burns, the Pearl District in Portland, for example, could propose sites for closure.

He paused again.

“Isn't that special?” Husing said.

Fellow OPAC member and recreational fisherman Jim Pex agreed.

“I see it more as a way for national environmental groups to say what happens to our ocean,” Pex said.

OPAC still would be involved in reviewing the nominations, but ultimately, several state agencies and the governor would have final approval.

Nonetheless, Husing is an optimist and plans to continue to find ways for several groups to share the ocean.

“I think we can get there,” he said.

Currently, the OCZMA is working on producing a movie that touts the benefits of Oregon's oceans. Everything's not doom and gloom, he said.

“We've got a great story to tell,” Husing said.