Both commercial and recreational fishermen believe gray seals are eating enough fish that they may be inhibiting the recovery of cod and other important species. They are capable of stripping gillnets of thousands of pounds of cod or pollock, or taking striped bass right off a surfcaster’s line. It has led some fishermen to suggest it may be time to cull their numbers and/or use methods to drive them away from fishing grounds. continued @ cape cod times
NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?
While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here
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