Quote:
Originally Posted by MTUpower
I'm sure quite a few are proud of the ship building ability and skills of the area you describe, but the fishing communities have nothing to be proud of. Nearly every species which has commercial value has been fished to it's demise, and that means the area which is was home to is now devoid of the species in numbers which will never bee seen again. The Georges bank and others were some of the richest fishing areas on the planet and now they hold nearly nothing. Why is Cape Cod called that? What happened to the cod inside the cape? As a fishermen/captain/mariner (currently up and down the east coast of the USA) I'm ashamed of the commercial fishing industry of the USA and the world.
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This is kind of going off topic on a peculiar tangent but I'll go with that flow!
We all rue the day when the humble millionaire or billionaire on his multi-million dollar boat with the most expensive tackle money can buy and his crew of coolies won't be able to find any fish for his crew to catch for him and impress his young wife, his concubines and his millionaire/billionaire buddies, the tragedy the horror! Damn average guys and gals wanting to eat marine protein and maybe make a living doing so! If only rich guys with their pet crews and toy boats had been allowed to harvest the sea the world would be a much different place for everyone no doubt, but have faith you're getting there!
You've claimed you are a fisherman but you haven't described what kind of fisherman you are so that people can understand the nature and extent of the fishing you do and the fishing others have done?
You drive a large hydrocarbon based richman's toy for him as you burn many thousands of gallons of hydrocarbon fuels, producing inordinate amounts of hydrocarbon based air and water pollution to catch the boss and his guests or even his charter customers(!) not enough fish to feed a day's worth of one franchise's Filet O Fish Sandwiches. I understand what you do depends on the resources of the sea but so do and did many many thousands of others in the recent past. Why should your interest trump their's? What form of exploitation has your boat owner engaged in to support his lifestyle and your livelihood? Those are rhetorical questions needing no answer, I'm just attempting to put your outrage in some broader perspective. It's admirable but it's subjective.
And it's not like other commercially viable biomasses haven't been overexploited, it's damn hard to get a fried passenger pigeon meal anywhere these days, or sauteed`sea turtle hatchlings anymore, and after 150 years bison is just starting to make a comeback but the average carnivore has to hunt for it at Publix or Trader Joe's if he wants it on the table tonight.
Have fish populations been exploited yes, have they suffered more than all the other species that have been exploited that's debatable. Are the exploited fish species extinct I don't think that can be claimed. There is still a a commercial fishery but regulation and "stock preservation" have severly impacted it, first driving it backwards towards a much less efficient "many small boat model' combined with the implimentation of ITQ, individually Transfereable Quota system, the industry is now moving inexerably towards fewer larger harvestor corporations, sometimes those which are very vertically integrated. Places like Whole Foods, are looking to buy quota, process and merchandise fish that will only lead to monopoly conditions for consumers.
But heck, day boat cod prices are around $10+ a pound so whoever can catch them can do pretty well. And there is a very strong thriving black market in shark fins, word is $500 a pound and all you can get! But the poor folks can only eat lobster which has an at the boat price of about $2 a pound this month, so it could be worse!