The Miami Herald >When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hosts its upcoming Washington summit May 7-9 on the future of U.S. fisheries, it will mark the first step in the effort to again reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Act. This meeting of stakeholders at Managing Our Nation’s Fisheries III continued
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
“Enormous trawlers can drag equipment across the ocean floor, scraping it almost bare and destroying places where marine organisms live.” What a Crock! Fishermen have been dragging the same narrow strips of bottom the coordinates of which have been passed down for generations with more and more fish production all the time. Now that wouldn’t be the case if the bottom was destroyed of places “where marine organisms live” would it?
And now a question for Lee Crockett and for all the “Ocean Experts” at Pew: What are you doing about the “habitat damaging practices” of the proposed (200) 659 ft. tall wind turbines proposed for the Essential Fish Habitat spawning areas in the waters off Mass. and RI, the Oil and Gas rigs 15 miles off of Virginia’s Chesapeake Squid grounds or the UK’s decades of extensive North Sea gravel mining operations and the Deep Sea Vent Minerals Mining projects getting underway off of the U.S. Pacific coast? Are you directing some of Pew’s $5+ billions to prevent these “habitat damaging practices” or is it just about preventing fishing—for your “investors” with plans for the industrial energy production on the Outer Continental Shelf? (See the “5 year plan for the OCS on the API website or for the mining atrocity see link below).
http://www.mining.com/britain-plunges-into-deep-sea-mining-with-american-company-17294/
And “Indiscriminate fishing practices continue to damage irreplaceable marine habitat, kill too many species incidental to the targeted catch, and remove too many of the small forage fish that provide food for many of the larger inhabitants of the ocean” WHAT? Indiscriminate fishing practices in the U.S. the most stringently regulated fishery in the world?
Pew’s investments in the major oil and minerals mining companies and pushing the catch share commodification and financialization of our fisheries that has devastated small boat fishing communities and invited back in the “foreign fishing trawlers” such as the China Fishery Group, these are the “new threats to our oceans” NOT the handful of coastal small boat fishing operations that are still hanging on. Get a job will you Lee?
I found this interesting this morning. Very insightful on multi levels.
Wrong side of history
I have now dropped two memberships of the four environmental organizations voicing support for industrial wind towers on Bowers Mountain. Rather than expressing a commitment to Maine’s “brand” of clean, scenic tourist attractions, they are endorsing industrialization of nine lakes designated as “scenic resources of state or national significance.”
Environment Maine, Natural Resources Council of Maine, Maine Audubon and Sierra Club Maine are actively working to support First Wind’s permit to construct 16 towers. These groups appeared to me to be early supporters of industrial wind before all the facts of the detrimental effects on scenery and wildlife and the financial viability of wind were known.
Now, I believe the well-intentioned environmental groups are on the wrong side of history. The most important issue now is they are compounding a poor decision to support industrial wind, by testifying on April 30 before the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, in support of the Bowers permit.
Unfortunately for all of us, the courage needed to publicly recognize their error may be insurmountable. History is full of examples of good intentions gone awry.
Donald Moore
Orono