Almost everyone has a friend or a relative who loves to tell the tale of the "big one" that got away. And more often than not, that fish grows larger and larger with every telling of the story. I have to admit, as an avid angler, I may have been tempted to do this a time or two. But not all fish stories are tall tales.
The accounts that older fishermen relate can be filled with valuable information for today's anglers, scientists and managers. Indeed, these so-called "old salts" have decades of experience on the water and vivid memories of the way things used to be, and how different they are today. They are witnesses to a time when people fished without the help of GPS or fish finders, and when species that are now rare were teeming in our coastal waters.
Recently, nature writer and reporter John Nielsen visited several of these old salts, who made their living fishing for cod in the waters off New England. They told him stories of the heyday of cod, when docks were "madhouses" and fishermen formed the "million-pounds-a-month club."
They also recalled the crash of the fishery in the early 1990s, when larger and more powerful fleets pushed cod populations to collapse. They share in the optimism of younger fishermen today, who are heartened by glimpses of a recovery, but remind us that though some populations of cod appear to be on the rise, they remain a shadow of their former selves.
Protecting cod's breeding grounds, adhering to science-based catch limits, experimenting with selective fishing gear technologies and finding innovative ways for fishermen to increase the value of their catch through direct marketing are just a few ways we can act today to help restore this once abundant resource.
As it's often been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, the Pew Environment Group recently put together a short video featuring the wisdom of these old timers -- including historian and former cod fisherman from Stonington, Maine Ted Ames (winner of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship), as well as Mike Anderson and Fred Bennett, both retired fishermen from Chatham on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Additional resources are also available on our website www.pewenvironment.org/cod.
Read the full "Overfishing 101″ series here.
Here in our NOTW they catch perfectly healthy tasty herring ... then let females rot for the egg roe sack for the Japanese market, and freeze males into big bloody blocks ... for stinking crab bait.
Here in our NOTW they catch perfectly healthy tasty sardines ... and wholesale them to Australia for penned tuna feed in the Japanese market.
All taken without letting the fish populations spawn and reproduce first.
Cod gone, herring gone, sardines gone, is it any wonder there hasn't been a salmon season in years, even though we have the most expensive Fish & Game administration anywhere in the US? Don't make the mistake of blaming fishermen! Blame Asian corporations who own the canneries, who own the boats, and who own the Fish & Game patsies, squandering our last life savings to sell off our fisheries wholesale for crab bait and fish meal. Now comes foreign miners and oil mercs to finish the job: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mine#2008_Alaska_Clean_Water_Initiative
Pave Paradise and put in a strip mine: http://www.nunamta.org/
At the same time PEW Environmental funds and coordinates a massive anti-aquaculture campaign whose objective is to shut down or prevent any ocean aquaculture that would compete with these commercial fishermen and possibly prevent their overfishing by making fish cheaper for the consumer. Cheaper consumer prices mean that it is not economical for the commercial fishermen to got after a fish stock, when the density gets too low and the price is low at the same time.
If PEW really wanted to help the environment, they would support marine aquaculture and restrict overfishing by commercial fishermen. I don't understand why they are so opposed to offshore aquaculture, but they are. They spend tens of millions to back up that opposition. The narrative that they have created in their anti-aquaculture campaign is full of falsities and misdirection along with the standard FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).
There have been some very bad examples of aquaculture, but that shouldn't make people discount aquaculture entirely. It is possible to have sustainable, cost-effective operations, as long as we have a framework of good regulations in place, and, most importantly, well-informed consumers.
Researchers and fish feed manufactures have made totally vegan diets for purely carnivorous fish that actually give faster growth and better food conversions than the fish meal based controls. Soy protein concentrates, corn gluten meal, rye protein extract, etc. all work in place of fish meal, especially with small amounts of specific amino acids that may be deficient in a specific plant protein. Some algae based meal are superior to fish meal. It all comes down to cost of the feed ingredients.
At the present time, chicken egg producers want the corn gluten meal, with the high yellow pigment (gives yellow yokes) and will pay a price above fish meal prices for this ingredient. Fish meal also makes eggs and chickens taste like fish, so they limit the amount fish meal in chicken feed. This results in fish meal being more cost effective for use in fish feed.
Fish meal production has been constant amount for 4 decades. The only thing that has changed is the shift of the fish meal market from chicken food to fish food. Since when is a market shift an ecologically relevant variable?