Fish conservation

Walter & Group....

[GH]     Talk about lighting a fuse !

Since introducing the topic of Atlantic salmon farming, I have been deluged with phone calls, postal letters and email messages from concerned fishers ... both sport  fishers including our fly fishers and (surprisingly) commercial fishermen.  

I can't possibly send you all this material, however, I think we in this Group have gotten an important message.

When sport fishing interests are pitted against politics and commercial profit structures, it would seem that there would be next to no chance of ultimate success on behalf of the former.

Yet there have been some interim successes, one of which is the ban on commercial gill netting of fish in Florida waters.  This took years of work to yield a Florida State Constitutional amendment the principle thrust behind which was an awareness of the monetary worth of tourism and the sport fishing industry in this area compared with that of the commercial gill net fishery.

We have witnessed catastrophic waste as we see some of the things which go on as some commercial fisheries function including long line ocean fisheries where a substantial percentage of the hooked fish are either eaten by sharks or returned dead to the sea because of laws which prevent the take of certain species, devastating amounts of "by-catch", etc.

I have been on board a commercial mackerel vessel off Ecuador in the Pacific when a school of fish was purse seined.  As the net was drawn, the electronics indicated only about 40 tons of catch.  The captain told us that this small yield made it cost inefficient to continue to pull the net .  He ordered it opened up saying that it wasn't worth pulling it in with less than 100 tons of yield.  Upon opening up that net, the entire tonnage of killed fish were released after which the ship went on search for a larger school.  They did this day after day.

I'd like to call attention to another fishery which may, in the long run, be much more important to watch with concern.  That of the forage fish industry, centering on menhaden.

For those interested (I think that should include all of us) I'd like to introduce you to a well written work on this subject.*

Gordy

* THE MOST IMPORTANT FISH IN THE SEA, MENHADEN AND AMERICA by H. Bruce Franklin,  Island Press, ISBN  9781597265072

Click here to visit mostimportantfish.org for exclusive content on this book

In this brilliant portrait of the oceans' unlikely hero, H. Bruce Franklin shows how menhaden have shaped America's national-and natural-history, and why reckless overfishing now threatens their place in both. 

Since Native Americans began using menhaden as fertilizer, this amazing fish has greased the wheels of U.S. agriculture and industry. By the mid-1870s, menhaden had replaced whales as a principal source of industrial lubricant, with hundreds of ships and dozens of factories along the eastern seaboard working feverishly to produce fish oil. 

Since the Civil War, menhaden have provided the largest catch of any American fishery.

Today, one company-Omega Protein-has a monopoly on the menhaden "reduction industry." Every year it sweeps billions of fish from the sea, grinds them up, and turns them into animal feed, fertilizer, and oil used in everything from linoleum to health-food supplements.

The massive harvest wouldn't be such a problem if menhaden were only good for making lipstick and soap. But they are crucial to the diet of bigger fish and they filter the waters of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, playing an essential dual role in marine ecology perhaps unmatched anywhere on the planet. As their numbers have plummeted, fish and birds dependent on them have been decimated and toxic algae have begun to choke our bays and seas.

In Franklin's vibrant prose, the decline of a once ubiquitous fish becomes an adventure story, an exploration of the U.S. political economy, a groundbreaking history of America's emerging ecological consciousness, and an inspiring vision of a growing alliance between environmentalists and recreational anglers.

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[GH]  It would be foolish to remind blind to the fact that eventually our ever growing World population will need to be fed.  It's fact.

All the more reason to have mankind focus on SUSTAINABLE fisheries, renewable resources and the development of technology which reduces or eliminates the problems encountered as a result of various forms of fish farming rather than eliminating the concept of fish farming itself.

I think this may only be doable if the commercial fisheries and the fish farming industry is sufficiently threatened by effective legislation.  Unfortunately that costs the energies of a united front which is well financed.