[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 121 (Wednesday, July 18, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5052-S5057]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am grateful today to be joined by 
Senator King, from the great State of Maine, to speak about the 
troubling changes that we are seeing in the oceans and how climate 
change is reshaping our States' fisheries.
  The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 
recognizes that ``climate change imperils the structure and function of 
already stressed coastal aquatic ecosystems.'' For the record, Maine 
and Rhode Island are indeed aquatic.
  The oceans have absorbed approximately 30 percent of the excess 
carbon dioxide that we have pumped into the atmosphere since the 
Industrial Revolution began. That is changing the ocean's chemistry. 
The oceans have also absorbed roughly 90 percent of the excess heat 
trapped in the atmosphere by those greenhouse gases. As a result of 
that excess carbon dioxide and that excess heat, our oceans are 
warming, and they are rising. They are losing oxygen, and they are 
growing more acidic. This puts marine life, coastal communities, and 
the global ocean economy all in jeopardy.
  Commercial fishing is an important economy in the United States, and 
both Maine and Rhode Island celebrate our longstanding fishing 
traditions. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, over 
9.6 billion pounds of wild seafood, valued at $5.3 billion, was 
commercially landed in the United States in 2016.
  Across New England, American lobster was our most valuable fishery. 
We had lobstermen bringing around $663 million--two-thirds of $1 
billion--worth of lobster to shore. Sadly, Rhode Island's lobster 
fishery is badly knocked down by warming ocean waters. NOAA notes: 
``The lobster industry in New York and southern New England has nearly 
collapsed.'' Maine dominated the catch, bringing in nearly 85 percent 
of the lobster landed in the region.
  According to NOAA, from ``1994 to 2014, Maine's landings surged 219 
percent to more than 124 million pounds.'' The lobster population is 
shifting north, away from Rhode Island, New York, and Connecticut, as 
waters warm, leaving Rhode Island and other southern New England 
lobster traps empty. But Mainers are taking notice, too, as warming 
waters are driving lobster even farther north along their rocky coast. 
A recent study of 700 North American marine species predicted that 
lobster populations could move 200 miles northward by the end of the 
century as waters continue to warm. Senator King can report what 200 
miles does to the coast of Maine.

  Lobster is not the only fishery feeling the heat in New England. A 
2017 study of global warming found that the greater Northeast region is 
anticipated to warm faster than other regions of the world. According 
to the ``Climate Science Special Report,'' a Federal report that will 
form the scientific basis of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, 
``the Northeast has warmed faster than 99% of the global ocean since 
2004.'' We have a global ocean hotspot off our coast. The Northeast is 
also expected to see higher than global average sea level rise, putting 
our ports, fishing docks, and coastal infrastructure all at risk.
  Fishermen have noticed. They are keenly aware of the myriad ways 
climate change is altering the waters that generations of their 
families have fished, and they see the difference. Fishermen in Rhode 
Island have told me: ``Sheldon, things are getting weird out there.''
  ``Sheldon, it's not my grandfather's ocean.''
  They share anecdotes of catching increasing numbers of tropical fish 
early in the summer season and seeing fish

[[Page S5053]]

that rarely frequented Rhode Island waters until recent years. As new 
fish move in and traditional fish move out, fishermen are left with 
more questions than answers.
  In Southern New England, black sea bass has become the poster fish 
for shifting stocks. As we can see in this graphic, the 1970s had a hub 
of black sea bass here, with this as the center and then a slight reach 
upward but basically off the mid-Atlantic coast. This is 2014. The 
center of activity has moved up closer to Rhode Island. We are right 
here. Of course, black sea bass populations in our region have 
increased concomitantly.
  This commercially valuable fish, the black sea bass, can help Rhode 
Island fishermen replace traditional species that are growing more 
scarce, like winter flounder--the fish my wife studied for her graduate 
work--which has crashed as winters warm.
  The current fisheries' management structure, however, forces Rhode 
Island fishermen to toss the increasingly abundant and valuable black 
sea bass overboard. NOAA scientists saw this northward transit of the 
sea bass coming years ago, but regulatory catch limits did not keep up. 
They are generally based on historical catches. And States are hesitant 
to give up quota even after the fish have moved northward and left 
their shores, so State-specific quotas badly lag the changing 
distribution of the fish.
  A former Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council scientist 
acknowledged that fish like summer flounder are moving north and told 
NPR that ``some of the Southern states are having trouble catching 
their quota, and states to the north have more availability of fish.''
  Dave Monti is a friend who is a charter boat captain out of Wickford 
Harbor in North Kingstown, RI. Dave said:

       There's no doubt the waters have warmed and black sea bass 
     have moved in. The quotas haven't done a good enough job at 
     figuring in climate change yet.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
an article from the Providence Journal describing the changes that 
Captain Monti sees and our local efforts to deal with these changes.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     [From the Providence Journal]

      Front Line of Climate Change: Black Sea Bass Surge Off R.I.

                           (By Alex Kuffner)

       Providence, RI.--Scientists tell us that some fish will be 
     winners and others losers as oceans warm.
       In Rhode Island, count lobster, silver hake and winter 
     flounder among the losers, their numbers plummeting as 
     climate change drives water temperatures higher. On the list 
     of winners so far are squid, summer flounder, butterfish.
       And black sea bass. The population of the dusky-colored 
     fish with striking blue accents has historically been 
     strongest off the mid-Atlantic Coast, but over the past 
     decade or so its numbers have spiked off New England and it 
     is becoming a more important catch for the region's 
     fishermen.
       In a telling sign of black sea bass's surge in Rhode 
     Island, the state Department of Environmental Management last 
     month loosened regulations governing the recreational fishery 
     for the species, extending the season by 31 days and 
     increasing the fall possession limit to seven fish per person 
     per day, from five.
       It may appear to be a small development, but the rules 
     change resulted from a heated debate among state and federal 
     regulators about how best to manage a species whose 
     distribution and abundance has gone through a striking shift 
     that few would have imagined a generation ago.
       The back-and-forth over the fish also signals more 
     difficulties to come as regulators struggle to respond to the 
     impacts of climate change on the marine environment. Similar 
     issues are already playing out with summer flounder, another 
     warm-water fish that is becoming more common off the north 
     Atlantic coast.
       How they are managed will have important implications not 
     only for those fish but for lobsters and other key species in 
     the ocean ecosystem.
       ``We're in an adaptive mode right now,'' said Bob Ballou, 
     assistant to the director of the Rhode Island Department of 
     Environmental Management and chairman of the Atlantic States 
     Marine Fisheries Commission's black sea bass and summer 
     flounder boards. ``It's occupying all our time to think 
     through all the approaches to better manage these 
     resources.''
       One of the key assumptions that the nation's fishery 
     management system is built upon is that species don't move 
     between general geographic regions.
       That traditional regulatory framework held up for a long 
     time, but rising water temperatures and the resulting shifts 
     in species distribution and abundance are forcing the 
     beginnings of change.
       In the case of black sea bass, it's not that the population 
     of the fish is simply relocating north. Numbers are still 
     decent in the southern portion of the fish's range, but they 
     are much stronger now off the coasts of New York, 
     Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts--places where the 
     waters used to be too cold to support large populations.
       In Rhode Island, water temperatures in Narragansett Bay 
     have risen about 3\1/2\-degrees Fahrenheit since 1959, 
     according to weekly monitoring done by the Graduate School of 
     Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. Warmer 
     winters, in particular, have allowed black sea bass to thrive 
     this far north.
       In the 1980s and 1990s, a fish trawl survey conducted by 
     the DEM rarely caught a single black sea bass in Rhode Island 
     waters, but incidence of the species has risen steadily, 
     especially over the past decade, and now each trawl nets 
     about two black sea bass on average.
       Because black sea bass move between federal and state 
     waters, the fish is managed jointly by the federal 
     government, through the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management 
     Council, and states, including Rhode Island, through the 
     Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.
       Although scientists have long known that concentrations of 
     the fish have been shifting north toward the Gulf of Maine, 
     it wasn't until 2016 that regulators started to factor in the 
     change.
       That year, a new stock assessment for black sea bass 
     formally recognized for the first time two distinct 
     populations of the fish, a northern group around New England 
     and a southern group from New Jersey to the Carolinas.
       The growth in the northern group more than made up for the 
     southern group's mediocre numbers, and the assessment 
     determined the total population of the fish to be nearly two 
     and a half times higher than the minimum stock threshold set 
     by regulators
       ``That was a really big step forward,'' said Jason McNamee, 
     chief of marine resource management for the DEM. ``The 
     science is now catching up to what's going on with the 
     environment.''
       But despite the robust overall picture for the fish, the 
     ASFMC's proposed quotas for this year called for a 12-percent 
     reduction in the northern region's catch to allow the 
     southern region, the historic center of the black sea bass 
     fishery, to increase its share.
       Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut filed 
     an appeal, and on May 3, the fisheries commission relented, 
     allowing what amounts to a four-percent increase for the 
     northern region.
       The stakes are high for Rhode Island, which is experiencing 
     deep changes to the composition of its marine species because 
     of its location, at the junction of what ocean scientists 
     call the Boreal Province--cold waters that include the Gulf 
     of Maine to the north--and the Virginian Province--warmer 
     waters of the mid-Atlantic to the south.
       ``We're right at the front lines of these changes,'' 
     McNamee said. ``These mid-Atlantic species are our most 
     important species now.''
       Dave Monti reeled in another black sea bass.
       Like the five others caught in Narragansett Bay on a recent 
     morning, at less than 15 inches long, it was too small to 
     keep. So Monti started working the hook out of its mouth.
       ``You've got to be careful of the dorsal fin,'' he warned. 
     ``It'll stick right into you.''
       As regulators have tightened catch limits for striped bass 
     and other saltwater game fish that were historically abundant 
     in Rhode Island waters, black sea bass has filled the void, 
     said Monti, a charter boat captain who docks his boat in 
     Wickford Harbor.
       ``They've saved my charters over the past couple years when 
     other fish aren't around,'' he said.
       Seas were too rough to visit his favorite place to fish for 
     black sea bass, a patch of waters in the open ocean near 
     Brenton Reef off Newport, so he steered his 44-foot boat the 
     Virginia Joan to a few spots in the Bay between Jamestown and 
     Narragansett.
       Black sea bass is a reef fish that likes rocky bottoms and 
     patrols the waters around jetties and pilings for prey. It's 
     a hermaphrodite--some fish switch sexes as adults. The 
     species can be found off Rhode Island year-round, typically 
     coming inshore to the Bay in the spring to spawn and 
     wintering farther off the coast.
       Just south of the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge, Monti 
     reached for a rod from a holder overhead. He called it his 
     ``sea bass slayer.'' It was fitted with a shiny, red-tinted 
     lure and he baited the hook with a slice of squid and a 
     little fish called a silverside. A few minutes later, the 
     first black sea bass was caught.
       It doesn't take much work to find the fish these days, said 
     Rick Bellavance, president of the Rhode Island Party and 
     Charter Boat Association.
       ``Black sea bass are a charter boat operator's dream,'' he 
     said. ``They're pretty prevalent, they're easy to catch, and 
     they taste great.''
       On a recent charter to Block Island, the six clients on 
     Bellavance's boat caught only two striped bass and one 
     bluefish between them, so he started setting lines for black 
     sea bass. They promptly snagged 20 of the fish that were big 
     enough to take home.

[[Page S5054]]

       Although he applauded the new regulations, he said the 
     changes have been slow to come and haven't gone far enough. 
     He'd like to have the current six-month season extended year-
     round and the per-person daily limit raised to 10 fish.
       ``We need to recognize that the stock has shifted to the 
     north and to the east,'' he said. ``Rhode Island is closer to 
     that epicenter than it used to be.''
       Monti, who is vice president of the Rhode Island Marine 
     Fisheries Council, which advises the DEM on state fishing 
     policy, agreed.
       ``There's no doubt the waters have warmed and black sea 
     bass have moved in,'' he said. ``The quotas haven't done a 
     good enough job at figuring in climate change yet.''
       About half the morning's catch on Monti's boat were black 
     sea bass. Among the rest were other warm-water fish that are 
     becoming more common in Rhode Island: scup and summer 
     flounder.
       After Monti freed the little black sea bass from the hook, 
     he held it in his hand. As the fish age, their scales become 
     more blue. This one had yet to develop the bright coloring, 
     but it was still striking.
       ``Pretty, isn't it?'' Monti said as he dropped it back into 
     the Bay.
       Not everyone loves the fish.
       Black sea bass have voracious appetites, hunting on the 
     ocean bottom for crabs, clams and shrimp. The fish don't have 
     teeth but will swallow crustaceans whole.
       Lobstermen complain of pulling up their traps and finding 
     black sea bass inside that have gobbled up their lobsters.
       ``I see it everyday,'' said Lanny Dellinger, a Newport 
     lobsterman and board member of the Rhode Island Lobstermen's 
     Association. ``Everyday, every trawl. It doesn't matter if 
     it's mud bottom, hard bottom, deep water, shallow water. 
     There are so many black sea bass, it's unbelievable.''
       The rise of black sea bass is coming at the same time that 
     the lobster catch is on a steep decline in Rhode Island, 
     falling from 8.2 million pounds in 1998 to 2.3 million pounds 
     in 2016, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.
       Lobster is a cold-water species that is moving north as 
     Rhode Island's waters warm. The higher water temperatures 
     have made the lobsters that remain more susceptible to shell 
     disease. Dellinger and others believe that predation by black 
     sea bass is also pushing down the lobster numbers.
       Black sea bass could be contributing to the decline, but 
     the fish is probably not the primary cause, said Jon Hare, 
     science and research director at the National Oceanic and 
     Atmospheric Administration's Northeast Fisheries Science 
     Center in Woods Hole. Crabs and other crustaceans that the 
     fish eat aren't feeling similar impacts, he said.
       McNamee agreed, saying that the fish generally prey on 
     smaller juvenile lobsters, leaving the bigger ones alone.
       As part of a larger study of black sea bass, the Rhode 
     Island-based Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation is 
     analyzing the gut contents of fish caught by nine 
     participating commercial and recreational boats.
       ``We know that black sea bass do eat lobster, but we just 
     don't know if the rate of consumption is having an impact on 
     the size of the lobster population,'' said Anna Malek Mercer, 
     executive director of the foundation.
       One lobsterman sent her photos of a 2\1/2\-inch long 
     lobster found inside a black sea bass in a trap.
       ``When they end up in lobster traps, there usually aren't 
     any lobsters inside,'' she said.
       Dellinger wants loosened regulations on both the 
     recreational and commercial sides to allow fishermen to catch 
     more black sea bass. He likened the fish to coyotes that need 
     to be culled or to rodents afflicting farmers.
       ``It's like owning a corn bin full of rats and nobody's 
     allowed to get rid of them,'' he said.
       Despite the recent changes, scientists and fishermen in 
     Rhode Island say that the management system for black sea 
     bass is still outdated.
       Tellingly, none of the New England states has a seat on the 
     Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council--one of the two key 
     decision-making bodies for the species--even though much of 
     the fish's population is located off the region's coast.
       That has meant that allocations remain high for fishing 
     boats in states like Virginia and North Carolina that must 
     sometimes travel half a day north to find the fish, while 
     Rhode Island boats are forced to discard their catch because, 
     local fishermen say, their quotas aren't high enough.
       The southern states don't want to give up their share 
     because black sea bass fetches a good price--more than $3 a 
     pound on average--and the commercial fishery is growing in 
     value--tripling since 2009 to more than $12 million.
       The black sea bass study being done by the CFRF is using 
     different gear types--from gill nets to trawls to lobster 
     traps--to gather more data on the species and strengthen 
     stock assessments that may be missing some fish.
        Malek Mercer said that scientists are getting a better 
     understanding of the fish's changing population, but managing 
     the species is the problem.
       ``For better or worse, science is not going to fix that,'' 
     she said. ``But if we get our management there, I do think we 
     can have a really strong black sea bass fishery here.''
       McNamee described the management system as ``deliberative 
     and slow by design.'' He acknowledged the frustration felt by 
     Rhode Island fishermen who have seen the state's traditional 
     groundfish stocks drop off while black sea bass proliferate.
       ``There's still way more fish to catch than fishermen can 
     get access to,'' he said.

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we have to fix this. To use the black 
sea bass example, the species is comanaged by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery 
Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. 
Rhode Island only has a seat on the Atlantic States Commission; it does 
not have a vote on the Mid-Atlantic Council. That means that my State 
is not fully represented in the decision-making process, and perfectly 
good black sea bass keeps being thrown into the sea by fishermen who 
ought to be able to bring that catch home.
  In 2016, NOAA scientists assessed the vulnerability to the effects of 
climate change of over 80 commercially valuable species in the 
Northeast. So this is not just a story about black sea bass or about 
lobsters; this Northeast climate vulnerability assessment ranked 
species based on climate risk and sensitivities to changing ocean 
conditions.
  Here is the climate risk factor graph. As we see, all 80 species 
scored in the high or very high risk of climate exposure categories. 
All 80 commercially valuable species they studied faced high or very 
high risk. This is a red flag for our fisheries.
  Maine is the place for lobster. In Rhode Island, squid is king. In 
2016, 56 percent of the longfin squid caught on the east coast was 
landed in Rhode Island. According to NOAA, this catch was valued at 
over $28 million, accounting for nearly 30 percent of our landings 
value in 2016. But climate change is putting our calamari at risk. Warm 
waters may actually open more habitat for the species, but its carbon 
cousin, ocean acidification, is the hazard. Like its shellfish 
brethren, squid require calcium carbonate--for squid, it is to grow the 
hard beaks they use to feed. Acidic waters decrease the availability of 
this necessary compound in the seawater and can even dissolve calcium 
carbonate organisms' shells under extremely acidic conditions.
  On the west coast, shellfish farmers have been dealing with ocean 
acidification since the mid-2000s. Dr. Richard Feely is the researcher 
who first identified ocean acidification as the cause for oyster spat 
failures in the Northwest back in 2005. He noted in a recent NPR 
article that the acidification problem is only going to get worse. 
``The acidification water welling up from the ocean floor now contains 
carbon dioxide gas emitted 50 years ago.'' Carbon emissions are worse 
since then. Some hatcheries in the Northwest are already moving 
operations to less acidic waters off Hawaii, and others are looking to 
buffer the water with seagrasses to absorb carbon and lower acidity. 
Shellfish farmers in Rhode Island are facing the challenge of 
acidifying waters as well.
  At the same time, marine species are also facing deoxygenation, 
increased harmful algae, and other consequences of a warming and 
acidifying ocean. The symptoms of climate change in the ocean are 
everywhere.
  A recent study in Global Change Biology warned that reduced oxygen 
availability could limit the growth of fish and other species. 
Fishermen can't make a living off sick and tiny fish.
  California's lucrative Dungeness and rock crab season was cut short 
in 2015 to 2016 due to a harmful algae bloom.
  Our Great Lakes have been hit too. I went out on Lake Erie after the 
horrible algae event there, and the fishermen who took me out sounded 
like Rhode Islanders. One of them said: ``Everything I've learned from 
fishing a lifetime on this lake is worth nothing now, because it's all 
changing so fast.''
  If we have an opportunity to have an open, bipartisan debate on a 
strong Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization, I urge my colleagues not 
to overlook the toll climate change is taking on our fishing industry. 
The changes that are happening in our oceans do not care whether you 
believe they exist. The physics, chemistry, and biology driving these 
changes will happen anyway, and our fishermen are depending on us to 
give the scientists and the managers the tools and resources they need 
to meet the challenges climate change is bringing to our shores.
  I now yield to my friend from Maine to give the perspective from his 
rocky shores.

[[Page S5055]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Mr. KING. Mr. President, I first want to thank Professor--I mean 
Senator Whitehouse for the information he shared. It was compelling, 
important, and very worthy of our deep consideration.
  To talk about renewing the Magnuson-Stevens Act without talking about 
the effects of climate change and the effects on the water itself would 
be an enormous missed opportunity.
  First, I commend Senator Whitehouse, the Senator from Rhode Island, 
for his longstanding commitment to the issue of climate change, the 
well-worn ``Time to Wake Up'' poster, and the work he has done over the 
years to force us to pay attention to this issue.
  I am, as he indicated, going to talk about what is going on in the 
Gulf of Maine, but I want to broaden the discussion just for a few 
moments to talk about the issue of climate change as a broader question 
before us.
  This isn't some environmental dream. It is not something that was 
invented by someone. It was discovered by scientists, and it is dollars 
and cents. It is the most practical problem that we have to deal with.
  I am on the Armed Services Committee. We are talking about military 
bases all over the world--some as close as right down in this region 
and then down toward Norfolk, VA--that are under a severe threat from 
rising sea levels and that are going to cost us billions, if not 
trillions, of dollars to upgrade and maintain because of rising sea 
levels. This isn't something abstract. This is something that is 
happening today, and it is something that we are going to have to deal 
with that is going to have an enormous cost. The longer we put off 
preventing and dealing with this issue, the higher that cost is going 
to be.
  There is a second reason this is a national security issue, and that 
is the aggravation of conflict and the initiation of migration. The 
number of refugees from Syria--which has disrupted the politics of 
Europe and disrupted many of the European countries and, indeed, has 
had a reflection here in this country--is roughly 3 to 4 million 
people. The estimate for refugees from climate change--from extreme 
temperature, from drought, from famine--is in the hundreds of millions 
as opposed to 3 to 4 million from Syria. Imagine the disruption to all 
of the countries of the world that are destinations for these refugees 
who are fleeing places that have become uninhabitable.
  This is a question we are going to have to address, and, as our 
military characterizes it, it is a threat multiplier because when you 
have people moving from one region to another, you have conflict. From 
time immemorial, conflict has largely been based on things like access 
to water and access to arable land, and we are talking about an 
enormous accelerator of that across the world.
  Now let me talk about the effects in my home State. First the good 
news. Lobster landings in Maine are up. We have ridden a lobster boom 
over the past 30 years. Since the 1980s, the poundage of lobsters 
harvested in Maine has grown 500 percent. When I was Governor, a good 
harvest of lobsters was 50 to 60 million pounds; 2 years ago, it was 
127 million pounds--more than double. That is the good news.
  The bad news is that it is starting to change, and we may have seen 
the turning point in this boom. We don't know that, but the last 2 
years have been down substantially from the peak in 2016. We will see 
what happens this year. Hopefully, it is a blip and not a trend.
  By the way, one of the reasons the lobster industry has survived and 
flourished in Maine is not only the favorable impact of gradual 
increases in temperature but because of the conservation ethic of the 
lobstermen themselves, who voluntarily throw back egg-bearing females. 
They cut a V-notch in their tails so they won't be caught again. If 
they are too small or too large, they throw them back. An amazing ethic 
of conservation has been imbued in the culture of lobstering and also 
in our laws for many years. So the fact that we still have a lobster 
fishery and that it is as vigorous and as productive as it is, is due 
in large measure to the creativity and conservation ethic of our 
lobstermen.
  Here is the bad news. The bad news is, when water temperature gets to 
about 68 degrees, it is like turning a switch. It stresses the lobster 
population to the point where they can't survive. The good news is, it 
gets warmer, and they multiply. The bad news is, once it reaches a 
certain critical point, the species could collapse. Indeed, that is 
what has happened, as the Senator from Rhode Island has indicated, to 
the once-plentiful lobster population of New York, Massachusetts, and 
Rhode Island.
  The problem is, over recent years--and I have talked to a lobsterman 
friend today, just this afternoon--the center of gravity of lobstering 
along the Maine coast is steadily moving north and east. He told me it 
has moved about 50 miles in the last 10 years.
  The other problem that is occurring is that the lobsters are going 
further offshore to seek cooler water, which means the lobstermen have 
to go further. They have to have bigger boats. They have to make more 
of an investment in order to make a living.
  Right now, we are in good shape, but the trend is not good. We are 
seeing other changes that have magnified both the boom, and what we are 
worried about is the bust. We have seen changes decline in some fish 
species like the cod that fed on baby lobsters. Now, as Senator 
Whitehouse mentioned, we are seeing a growth of a fish that was never 
seen in Maine in the recent past, the black sea bass.
  My friend tells me, today they are catching triggerfish in the Gulf 
of Maine, which is a North Carolina species. They have even caught 
seahorses in lobster traps. This is a dramatic change as the waters 
warm.
  As I mentioned, if they get close to the 68-degree level, the lobster 
population is in trouble. It is not only lobsters. By the way, 
lobstering is a serious business in Maine--half a billion dollars just 
in land value, a billion and a half dollars in the overall economic 
impact of this species to our State.
  By the way, before I leave the question of lobsters, I have to 
acknowledge the comments made by the Senator from Pennsylvania earlier 
when he was talking about the economy, and he flashed a warning light 
at the end of his remarks about trade and tariffs. We are already 
seeing the negative impact of what I consider ill-considered tariffs on 
China. The first place they retaliated was against lobsters. Twenty 
percent of the entire lobster catch in Maine is sold and exported to 
China. It is our fastest growing market. If the Chinese tariffs they 
have already announced are imposed and fully implemented, it could cut 
that to zero.
  Canada doesn't have those tariffs. Canada is not engaging in a trade 
war with China. Canada and other countries are moving into the vacuum 
we have created. The idea that we can impose tariffs on other countries 
without any ill effects here just isn't true.
  Right now, it looks like the lobster industry, soybeans in the 
Midwest, maple syrup in Vermont, other agricultural products across the 
country are going to be collateral damage in an incipient trade war 
that I don't understand where it is going.
  I would like to know what the strategy is. What is the end game? 
Where does this go? So far, I haven't seen any indication of that. What 
I have seen an indication of is severely dangerous impacts on our 
economy industry.
  Another part of our ocean ecosystem is clams. There is a massive 
decrease in harvest because of two reasons: One, acidification. As the 
Senator from Rhode Island indicated, 30 percent of all the carbon 
dioxide that has been emitted during the Industrial Revolution has 
ended up in acidification in the ocean and, two, nonnative green crabs, 
which are exploding because they like the warmer water. They have been 
around for 100 years, but that population is growing enormously. They 
are just devastating the clams. Green crabs can consume 40 half-inch 
clams a day. Those crabs have decimated blue mussels and scallops along 
the shore. They are going for clams, and we are concerned that maybe 
lobsters could be next.
  Warming water and shifting predators are not the only challenges we 
face: more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, absorbed into the ocean, 
and one-quarter of what is emitted goes into the ocean. The ocean then 
becomes more acidic. Any kind of shelled

[[Page S5056]]

animals--lobsters, clams, oysters--expend evermore energy maintaining 
the pH balance in their bodies, and that means they can't grow and 
reproduce. The world's oceans have become 30 percent more acidic since 
the Industrial Revolution.
  Oysters have become a great new product for Maine. We are growing 
them in oyster farms along the Damariscotta River and other places. You 
can go to fancy restaurants and see Damariscotta oysters. They are 
wonderful.
  My friend Bill Mook, who is one of the pioneers of the oyster 
industry in Maine, has had to move the incubation of his oysters out of 
the ocean, out of the natural river, onshore, and into tanks so he can 
buffer the water to minimize the acidification and then put them back 
in the water to grow out. That is a pure result of climate change and 
acidification of the ocean.
  Freshwater runoff is another issue that increases the acidification. 
We have had an enormous increase in the amount of freshwater rainfall 
in this country, and in Maine that has increased the acidification in 
the oceans. What do we do? The first thing we do is admit there is a 
problem. You can't solve a problem if you act like there is nothing 
wrong. The first thing we have to do is admit there is a problem. I 
think more and more people are coming to that conclusion.
  When this administration was nominating people, the refrain I heard 
in all of the hearings was climate is changing, man has an impact on 
it, but we don't know how much.
  That is progress. At least it is an admission that something is 
happening. What do we do? We admit there is a problem. I think we are 
close to reaching that point.
  The second thing we have to do is more research. We have to continue 
to fund the science to do the research to understand what is happening, 
to understand what we can do to mitigate these risks. Research and 
scientific data is crucial. For some of our great agencies that have 
the people who have been researching this for years, to be suppressing 
the research or not supporting it or burying it is not a service to our 
country. Research is crucial. We need the facts. We need the data. We 
need mitigation strategies. We also need to pay attention to the 
underlying cause of climate change, which is a combustion of fossil 
fuels and the enormous amount of carbon dioxide that is being added to 
the atmosphere.

  This is a long-term challenge. It is not something we can solve in 
the next 1 or 2 years. Some people ask: Well, it is such a long-term 
challenge, why are we doing it? Because it may not be solved for 50 
years.
  In my office is Edmund Muskie's desk. I sit behind Edmund Muskie's 
desk--one of the greatest Senators of the 20th century and one of the 
greatest citizens Maine has ever produced. Fifty years ago--2 years 
from now, 1970--Edmond Muskie led the passage of the Clean Water Act 
and the Clean Air Act, which are two of the greatest and most important 
pieces of legislation passed in this body in the last 100 years; the 
first real recognition that we had a responsibility to the environment, 
that we had a responsibility to our children and our grandchildren. By 
the way, astoundingly, the Clean Water Act passed the U.S. Senate 
unanimously. Can you imagine? We can't agree on the time of day 
unanimously in this body. In 1970, under Ed Muskie's leadership, the 
Clean Water Act was passed unanimously.
  The point I want to make is, the steps they took almost 50 years ago 
have cleaned up our rivers, have cleaned up our atmosphere, have made 
parts of our country blossom again.
  In Maine, we are working on our rivers. The towns that turned their 
backs on the rivers are now turning back toward the rivers because 
people can fish, swim, and enjoy the rivers. When Ed Muskie started his 
lonely crusade in the late 1960s, the rivers were essentially open 
sewers.
  Fifty years ago, Ed Muskie started that work. We see the benefit of 
it today. We should be doing the same thing. The fact that it may not 
come to fruition for 20, 30, 40, or 50 years is no reason to not start 
now. We have to start. This isn't pie in the sky. This isn't somebody 
trying to impose new regulations. This isn't something that is made up 
by environmentalists or people who just don't want to see any 
development. No. This is lives and livelihood. These are families, 
communities. It is responsible stewardship and just plain common sense.
  There is a lot of science, and there is a lot of complexity to this 
issue. It seems to me we can take inspiration from Ed Muskie, Howard 
Baker, and all those a generation ago who built the edifice upon which 
we have a cleaner, healthier, stronger economy and stronger society.
  I remember those days. The great debate was payrolls versus pickerel. 
You couldn't have payrolls if you preserved the pickerel. It turned out 
to not be true. We have developed the strongest economy in the history 
of the world. Yet we paid attention to the environment. We have paid 
attention to our responsibilities, to our children and our 
grandchildren, and we created the economy at the same time we were able 
to clean up the environment.
  I remember those debates. They were bitter. You can't do it. If you 
do this, you are going to put everything out of business. There will be 
no economy. That was the argument. It hasn't happened.
  Finally, you can talk about the science. You can get caught up in all 
the data. To me, there is a really easy rule that makes this easy to 
understand what our responsibilities are. I call it the ``Maine 
rototiller rule.'' Many people in Maine have gardens, but it is a small 
garden. It is in your backyard, so it doesn't make sense for everybody 
to buy a rototiller--the machine you use once or twice a year to clean 
your garden and till over the ground and begin to plant. We borrow 
them. I used to borrow one from my neighbor Peter Cox. The ``Maine 
rototiller rule'' goes like this. When you borrow your neighbor's 
rototiller, you return it to them in as good a shape as you got it, 
with a full tank of gas.
  That is all you need to know about environmental stewardship. Do you 
know what? We have the planet on loan. We don't own it. We own a little 
piece of land for a generation, but we don't own it. We have it on loan 
from our children and our grandchildren and their children and their 
grandchildren. Therefore, we have a sacred responsibility to turn over 
the planet to them in the same or better shape than we found it. That 
is our responsibility. It is very simple. When you borrow something 
from your neighbor, you return it in as good a shape as you found it. 
That is what we should be doing today.
  We can do this. There will be costs, but the costs of not doing it 
will dwarf the costs we can undertake today to protect the Gulf of 
Maine, the coast of the United States, the fields of Africa, the 
forests of North America, and the land and water and air that our 
children and grandchildren deserve to have passed on to them in better 
shape than we found it.
  We can do this. We can start today. We may not live to see the 
results, but we will know we have done something important, something 
meaningful, something that will make a difference in the lives of 
generations we don't know. They will know what we do or what we don't 
do. I myself choose the side of action--recognizing the problem, 
analyzing it, understanding it, and acting to mitigate the harms that 
otherwise will befall our children.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, Senator King and I yield the floor.
  First, let me thank him for joining us. Second, with Senators present 
here from landlocked States, let me make the requests to both of you 
that, when we come before this body with concerns about what is 
happening to our ocean economies, which I think are shared by every 
coastal Senator who is seeing these changes, that you view our pleas 
with the same courtesy and respect that we show you when wildfires burn 
through Utah and we come to make sure that there is adequate emergency 
response or when Oklahoma faces hurricanes or cyclones and tornadoes 
and the Federal Government and the Senate rally to the response of 
those who are experiencing the pain of that in your States. Our fishing 
communities and our coastal communities have a very different distress, 
but I hope you will see it as an equal distress and pay us the courtesy 
of your due consideration.
  I yield the floor.

[[Page S5057]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The Senator from Oklahoma.