Your humble moderator here:
My heart-felt congratulations to all the participants in this thread for keeping the discussion on topic, civil, and out of the usual flame-fest, ad hominen attacks so typical of other online discussions on this sensitive topic.
Also, for your patience with the numerous crashes of the system this week.
Reel-Time has been silent when it comes to editorializing on the topic of the fisheries. Neither Thorne nor I have used this site as a soap-box for our political views. I am glad that it's being used as a forum for discussion.
I only wish the state hearings were as civil. Two years ago I attended a striper regulation hearing at Mass Maritime and reported on the event here and elsewhere on the internet. The nastiness of the debate, the undercurrent of threats, the personal attac
ks, and totally uncivil tone made me swear never to attend another. Whit Griswold from the CCA, Chip Gouger from the Fly Shop, and many other conservation minded anglers were shouted down by gangs of commercial and charter fishermen. "Yuppies!" "Fly Fishi
ng Fags!"
To hell it with I said. This from a person who covered the Massachusetts state house for three years as a political reporter and has seen some genuinely nasty debates.
I am struck by a number of things when I think about the politics of fish.
One, it is definitely politics. Politics disguised as science, which is the most voodoo science I have ever seen. Year-of-Young indexes, mortality, by-catch ... each side can take the numbers and twist them as they see fit. From the Long Island haul seine
rs with Billy Joel on their side, to hog farmers dumping pig crap and kicking off pfisteria outbreaks, to catch-and-release mortality figures ...
Who really knows?
I've got no big problem with people keeping fish for the table. I've got no problem with charter captains making their sports feel good about spending $350 by taking home a couple fish. I've got no problem with a commercial fisherman selling 20 fish taken
by rod and reel (although I think aquaculture should kill the economics of that fishery real quick). I don't like fly fishermen with an attitude that any one with a spinning reel or a wire-line jig is a neanderthal.
I just want there to be enough bass so I don't as sad about them in five years as I am today about Atlantic Salmon. No, I won't eat swordfish anymore. I won't eat shark.
To sum up my ramblings, I grew up in a town on the Cape that used to have a harbor filled with scallops. Then the eel-grass died and the scallops went away. Then the developers moved in and built a ton of houses on the shore, and the fecal coliform counts
went through the roof, and now the clamming areas are closed most of the time. I see toilet paper floating in the anchorage. I see wealthy beachfront owners fighting to get 150 foot piers built so they don't have to row to their yachts, piers that take a
way public water ... Golf courses suck dry the herring runs to keep the fairways green and return a ton or two of fertilizer that causes algae blooms that completely cover the bays ....
Listen up, the problem for the future isn't a degree of inches, slot limits, licenses, or other regulatory fine points. It's about the fact that stripers are an inshore species that depends on the health of the estuaries, the tide marshes, and the rivers
to feed and spawn. So next time you see a guy on the beach with a dog taking a dump, say something to him. Next time you hear that a pier is being proposed for a beach you used to wade, go to the hearing and beef about it. Meanwhile the people who care th
e most about the fish, the people who fish for them, are fighting it out with statistics while Rome burns.
DCC