The effect of marine reserves and wave energy on the South Coast’s seafood fisheries has been the focus for members of the Oregon Commodity Commission, said Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission Executive Director Nick Furman.

Furman was the guest speaker at a Bay Area Chamber of Commerce Independent Business Operators luncheon Wednesday.

“The crab fishery needs flat sandy bottom — that happens to be where they want to place marine reserves and wave energy,” Furman told the crowd in the Salmon Room at The Mill Casino-Hotel.

Furman said the four state commissions — Dungeness crab, salmon, albacore and trawl — over the last few months have been formulating a plan to use funds normally used for marketing and promotion to educate the public on what 200 wave energy buoys, proposed by Oregon Power Technologies, under the name of Oregon Wave Energy Partners, two miles off the North Spit could do to the fishing industry.

“Nobody else is going to do this for us,” Furman said. “We’re going to have to take this to the I-5 corridor and get people as concerned as we are.”

Furman said the Southern Oregon Ocean Resource Coalition’s goal is to get the proposal back to the original plan for implementation of 10 buoys in Reedsport in 2009, and 20 test buoys at the North Spit in 2010.

The buoys, according to a document submitted by Oregon Wave Energy to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, will be approximately 60 feet wide and 158 feet tall, with 30 feet showing above the water, with 280 garage-sized concrete block anchors that weigh 165 tons each, he said. SOORC is recommending biological impacts be checked, prior to extending the project, adding that this project is “first generation,” and may be obsolete five or 10 years down the road.

“If it doesn’t get done right, we’ll be feeling the impacts for decades to come,” he said.

Furman said members of SOORC want to make sure their motives are not misunderstood.

“The fishing industry is not against alternative energy,” Furman said. “They are just concerned with where it goes.”

The crab fishery has proven its economic viability in the community, he said, adding that in 2006 it brought in 51 percent of the total revenue paid to fishermen for all seafood landed on the Oregon Coast.

“There’s real pressure in the governor’s office to get wave energy here,” Furman said. “We don’t want to rain on their parade — we just don’t want them to rain on ours.”