Walter & Group....
Another predator, from Jim Valle:
Gordy and group
Along with the fascinating wolf
video there is another predator …you must see this some fishermen will do
anything!
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1216
Jim
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Jim.... Was that you in the picture ? I hadn't thought you would be that desperate to bag a salmon.
On a serious note, however, no one can deny that by far the most damaging predator is MAN. Commercial fishing efforts as well as logging and pollution if not curtailed or at least controlled to sensible levels may eliminate salmon one day.
Even our Eskimos who are permitted to fish as they please for subsistance .... I once witnessed them pulling a nylon gill net to the bank of the Unalakleet river near Nome, AK. They killed over 60 large King salmon as they dragged it up on the bank, took about 10 fish and left the remailnder of the fish and the net in which the others were entangled to rot in the mud . I asked one of them why they would abandon the net. His reply: The government buys us new nets !
I've been at sea on a commercial vessel off Ecuador owned by a friend. The crew pulled a mammoth purse seine with an estimated 50 tons of borenillia (their name for a fish which resembles a Boston Mackerel). They felt that it wasn't worth boating the catch because there were less than 100 tons estimated in the net, so they opened it and let the dead and dying fish loose in order to go for a larger school !
In that same area off the Punta Santa Helena, the sailfishing and marlin fishing which we enjoyed years ago, was literally distroyed when the Japanese (with permission from the Ecuadorian Government) came in with long lines .... and when that wasn't enough, criss-crossed the Ocean with mile long wide mesh gill nets .... so many we had trouble running the boat without getting entangled. On the horizon as well as nearby, we could see struggling billfish trying to jump and thrash.
Once in Mexico, I saw a huge truck loaded with hundreds of large dead tarpon which I was told would be cut up for fish trap baits.
On another trip there, near Cabo Catoche, I witnessed the local folks wading into the watery mangrove islands and pouring cans of Clorox. That sent the snook and snappers fleeing...... right into the gill net with which they had surrounded the island . The went from one island to another..........
In the Joulter Keys of the Bahamas, I watched in awe as all the men from the village of Lowe Sound at the North end of Andros pulled a seine a half a mile long up on a sand strip. The noise was like thunder as the dying and thrashing bonefish were dragged out of the water. The natives told me they were to be used for fertilizer.
While fishing the Pacific, I've run across thousands of shark carcasses rotting on the surface...... each with the fins removed. These fins command a high price in the Orient as they are used to make a kind of shark fin soup. The stuff really can't be seen as nourishment for impoverished people, because they only use it for the fiber to thicken the broth !
The coral reefs off Palau are being destroyed by fishermen for the Hong Kong fish trade as they dive and release cyanide to stun the fish. That cyanide is far more toxic to the brittle coral polyps !!!!
I was on a trip to Peru about 1970 when the communists took over with a coup. Shortly thereafter they melted down the incredible gold artifacts in the Inca Museum in Lima .... then they used dynamite in the Ocean coves in order to kill and collect the fish. (Priscilla and I left as soon as we could. They made us leave all of our money, jewelery and any item of value before getting on the plane.)
I could go on and on..............................................
So much for World wide conservation.
For MUST reading on this subject, I recommend a book once sent to me by Peter Minnick :
SONG FOR THE BLUE OCEAN by Carl Safina.
Gordy