President Bush, Secretary of State Rice, and several cabinet level officials have visited Alabama's Gulf Coast in recent days to tour the devastation and to offer their continuing support and prayers for everyone affected by the storm.
I was a mixture of a country boy and a town boy, really. Chichester is a town on the coast of England, and I grew up all along that strip of coast that Chichester branches out into. Sometimes I was living in a house in the country, and sometimes I was living in a town.
I sympathize with the victims of Hurricane Sandy and believe that those who purchased flood insurance should have their claims paid.
I go down to Newport and Huntington a lot. It's more crowded than where I grew up on Phillip Island, but I think it's helped me adjust to life in America - getting into the water as much as I can.
The dolphin fishing that takes place in Taiji town is an ancient fishing practice deeply rooted in their culture and their practices and supports their livelihoods.
There is a lot of lip service paid in this Congress and downtown at the White House about family values and small business. Who better represents family values and small business than the fishermen and women on the Oregon and California coast.
The oceans are a way of life. We fish; we sail; we have a robust marine economy.
You get people who are on benefits who prefer to be on benefits by the seaside.
Plastic waste is now found in the most remote areas of the planet. It kills marine life and is doing major harm to communities that depend on fishing and tourism.
As horrific as this impact has been on my constituents, it is only a small part of the overwhelming destruction covering 90,000 square miles of the Gulf Coast.
The main reserve of the Haisla Nation hugs the northwest coast of British Columbia, about 500 miles north of Vancouver. The government docks sprawl on the south end of the reserve, nestled in a bay. As children, we swam at the docks and ran to the nearby point to pick blueberries and huckleberries when we were hungry so we wouldn't have to go home.
Moreover, it thus follows that not a great deal of time was needed for the large animals of the three major parts of the world to become known to the people who spent time on the coasts of those regions.
The common fisheries policy essentially gave other European Union nations unfettered access to our fish stocks and - I would hope - that if we leave the European Union, we can once more see the ports of Peterborough and Fraserhead and Grimsby flourishing, because we will take back control of our territorial waters.
I grew up in the Bay Area until 1976, then I pretty much went all the way through primary and high school on Bainbridge, though like anybody who grows up on an island, I ran the first chance I got.
I remember dawn coming up over the Strait of Malacca; ragamuffin kids on the dock in Sumatra laughing as they pelted us with bananas; collecting dead flying fish off the deck and bringing them to our sweet, fat, toothless Danish cook to fry up for breakfast.
Our Great Lakes, harbors, ports, and rivers provide not only vital resources for us to live, but an entire maritime way of life for so many people. The least we can do is protect it, and the way of life it provides for so many.
For the last 50 years, the federal government has taken out of the Gulf Coast $165 billion in taxes that came from oil and gas off of our coast that went to the federal Treasury, to rebuild all places in America except the place that it came from.
I grew up in Far Rockaway and then Long Island.
When BP was not moving fast enough on claims, we told BP to set aside $20 billion in a fund - managed by an independent third party - to help all those whose lives have been turned upside down by the spill.
I am so proud to be partnering with Waterkeepers, who are the voice for the Gulf Coast's waters.
The shell fishing industry represents a major part of Louisiana's economy.
The seas are the heart's blood of the earth.
Environmentalists aren't nearly sensitive enough to the fact that they are messing around with struggling people and their livelihoods. They forget that the fishermen are the people with the most immediate vested interest in having a healthy sea.
Anybody who spends time off of Louisiana's shores can recognize that these oysters are not endangered. To classify them as such risks great harm to not only fishermen who make their living collecting oysters in the Gulf, but also to Louisiana's economy in total.
In the Java Sea in Indonesia, I have seen fishers going out in the morning, six of them going out and coming back with five pounds of fish. That is the end point, a pound of fish per person per day to sell for rice. That's where fisheries go if you let it happen. That's where it stabilizes. These people cannot feed their families.
