The Rant
“The problem is, who are the fishermen left going to be? Who are going to be the lucky ones who will own the ocean?”
Beth Daily, staff reporter, Boston Globe
Unless we all pay attention and stand up for our rights, NOAA and NMFS are going to slowly close down more and more fisheries and put more and more commercial fishermen in food bank lines or on the bottom of the ocean.
Fishermen all around the U.S. are fighting, and all too often losing, the same fight for survival against government agencies and interference that is not always based on the best available figures nor is it always well grounded in supportable science and theory.
"We need to have sustainable fisheries. We need to have laws and regulations. The way they are setting them up is destroying commercial fishing. They're regulating it to a point where you cannot make a living at it," said Frank Blum of the South Carolina Seafood Alliance
The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC): Jan.31, 2007
“Is this just a fisherman’s wife point of view or am I missing something? I am typically a quiet woman and usually let the cards fall where they may, however, not only are the new NMFS regulations hurting us financially, they are costing lives at a rapid pace. Just in the past few weeks, six lives and three boats were lost at sea. With the regulations constantly changing, it makes it very difficult to fish safely to support a family.”
Kelly Roth, owner of the F/V Kelly Sea
Letter to National Fishermen, also previously used on Fishermen's Voice website. Reprinted in its entirety here by permission of author.
These fishermen in New England are also fighting for their survival. The documentary film "A Fish Story" chronicles the story of two women who lead their communities in the battle for control of the oceans.
Meanwhile...
The fishery management councils hold meetings, deliberate the issues, and the best they can come up with is to ask the manufacturers of the V.M.S. units to "send a letter" to their clients to tell them how to use a Panic Button.
Err, I think you just mash the button.
In a related deliberation, the council also voted to send another letter asking the NMFS to hurry up and finish the web site for the program that they already require fishermen to adhere to. How long will they continue to put the cart in front of the horse and then criticize the cart driver?
The wishes of a few greedy or misguided persons are taking precedence over an entire industry's health and welfare.
Once their foot was in the door, with the first attempts to regulate the industry starting with closing off fishing grounds, imposing size limits and then quotas, the N.M.F.S. has been rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell and every year brings new and more ridiculous levels of government control, inept management, and downright wrongful closures and restrictions on the fishery...
“Trawlergate.” How exact is the science and how accurate are the figures that fishery management is based upon? Not very.
“The cable was one of the pair that secure the Albatross's fish net, yet the workers weren't checking to be sure the length of the cables matched up. Stommel immediately understood the risk: The Albatross could be dragging its net through the water lopsided, catching fewer fish and leading scientists to conclude that the fish need fiercer protection -- even though Stommel, like other fisherman, believes they are all rebounding.”
What do the terms that NMFS makes so many decisions based upon actually mean?
Well, the truth seems to be, "your guess is as good as mine." As far as I can tell, the definition of "undergoing overfishing" and "overfished" aren't based on any concrete evidence, don't require any strict adherence to any particular standards and are actually a bit cyclical. A fish stock is undergoing overfishing if it is overfished and it is overfished if it has undergone overfishing.
Get it? No? Me neither.
OK, well how about the NMFS' own actual definitions? . . .
Looking for tools to make your work offshore easier? So are we, but this ain't it.
Read an email we sent to the people responsible for P-Sea Software's horrible "WindPlot" navigation plotting program. With programs like this being foisted off on fishermen at ridiculously high prices, it is no wonder so many fishermen think computers are expensive and hard to use. We'd be very interested to hear about anyone else's experience with this program, good or bad.