Number 2
August 23, 1998

The commercial fishing industry - target of opportunity?

The negative impacts - sometimes actual but more often exaggerated - of seafood harvesting have made up a large part of the ocean dialogue for over a decade. In recent years there have been attempts to relate virtually every out-of-the-ordinary occurence in any body of salt or brackish water to one commercial fishing activity or another. Every time a recreational angler needs an excuse for why, with a $50,000 outboard motorboat and $10,000 worth of fishing poles and fish-finding and navigational electronics, he didn’t catch enough fish, he can blame commercial fishing. Every time an environmental organization needs a boost in membership, a larger foundation grant, a cause to flog or a "let’s get the bad guys" sound byte, there’s commercial fishing. And whenever anyone suggests that the U.S. taxpayers might not be getting much return from their half a billion dollar a year investment in fisheries management, the response from the managers always seems to include shifting blame to the commercial fishermen.

In the last decade various people and organizations have become exceedingly adept at pointing out in elaborate, usually overblown [], detail what’s wrong with commercial fishing. It seems to have become an almost guaranteed way to attract high levels of funding at a time when the quest for research dollars has become exceedingly competitive. While it’s probably not necessary to state it here, finding - or manufacturing - fault with commercial fishing has become a sizeable industry.

The commercial fishing industry - what is it good for?

At the same time we seem to have lost sight of the enduring and ongoing contributions that working fishermen and the results of their labors have for generations made to our health, our economy, our quality of life and our coastal heritage.
 

• Starting with the most obvious and stated most simply, fishing provides an awful lot of high quality protein. As a global community we need to efficiently harvest and distribute the sea’s bounty (and, of course, other forms of protein) to avoid mass starvation. That would seem to be evident to just about anyone with either a television and a social conscience or the tragic misfortune to have been born in the wrong place. However, a handful of people who are fortunate enough to be from protein-rich nations like the United States have the luxury to rhapsodize about zero-impact, low efficiency, sustainable fishing and try to impose their vision on the rest of the world. Understandably, that rest of the world is much more interested in whichever management techniques will allow them to most effectively wring the maximum amount of protein from the coastal and ocean waters they control. Unfashionable as it might be in our well-fed, home-grown ocean advocacy circles, they probably consider their practical approach to fishing to be somewhat better than starvation and somewhat easier than population control. From any kind of global humanitarian perspective, non-impact fishing should probably be considered a non-starter. The idea of automatically condemning efficient fishing techniques should be unconscionable anywhere in a world in which thousands of people are starving every day, yet it is in vogue in the "right" environmental circles.

• The dietary benefits of seafood are obvious to those of us who can afford the luxury of controlling our diet. For us, seafood will keep us alive longer. This can’t be said of any other kind of animal protein.

• The environmental benefits of harvesting seafood from the wild as compared to culturing it in controlled systems are becoming more apparent as aquaculture production, and the scrutiny applied to its impacts [], continues to increase worldwide. Until - or if - closed system aquaculture becomes practical on a large scale, any significant fish or shellfish farming operation is going to come with built-in environmental liabilities.

• While we’re saving an in-depth treatment for a future FishNet, the cultural contributions that fishing has made to our coastal communities are so significant (and appealing) that tourist attractions such as San Francisco’s Fishermen’s Wharf and Monterey’s Cannery Row strive to maintain their fishing aura even after the largest parts of their fishing industries have moved on. And anyone who has spent time in coastal New England knows how pervasive the fishing traditions and atmosphere are and what importance they have had in developing the character of the communities there. The same can be said, perhaps on a lesser scale, of other towns and cities up and down both coasts.

• On a related note, commercial fishing is the major - and in many instances the only - source of year-round employment in those coastal communituies that are otherwise dependent on the vagaries of expenditures by seasonal vacationers.

• We’ve discussed the significant positive impact of domestic fish and seafood production on the balance of trade in a previous FishNet []. In view of the rapid growth of our trade deficit as a response to the economic troubles in Asia, seafood exports are even more important today.

• Then there are the simple contributions, usually taken for granted, that working fishermen make to the quality of all our lives. What would a trip to the New Jersey shore be without a dinner of ocean-fresh bluefish or scallops or fluke - preceded, of course, by half a dozen cherrystone clams on the half-shell? A trip to Maine without a steamed lobster? Boston without a cup of chowder and baked scrod? Baltimore and no blue crabs? And the list goes on and on.

• While it’s importance has been completely ignored by an environmental community that would normally be expected to recognize and capitalize upon it, working fishermen provide the most important link between the public and solid ocean values. Increasingly the oceans are viewed as some larger, slightly less predictable version of a Disneyworld or Three Flags over wherever theme park. You splash in them, swim through them, observe other people exploring them, and watch trained, costumed dolphins and orcas and seals perform in them. Located on them are an ever increasing number of floating mega casino-resorts that let you spend a week "at sea" without tasting salt spray or smelling salt air and they’re where you tear about on your jet ski after you get it off the trailer. And, of course, they’re where you catch fish for fun.

When was the last time anyone agonized over the loss of natural habitat in Orlando or Las Vegas? Actually, when was the last time anyone thought, or cared, that there was any natural habitat left in either? When was the last time you saw someone watching a nesting osprey from an idling jet ski [ coincidentally, two weeks after writing this we came across a sign in front of a watersports concession in Corolla on Cape Hatteras, NC that advertised both jet ski rentals and ecotours. Perhaps a candidate for the most internally inconsistent sign of the deacde?]. But as we’ve seen - fortunately much less frequently in recent years - the public responds immediately, loudly and convincingly whenever there’s an assault on the quality of their local seafood. When it affects what’s on their table, ocean quality issues become very significant to people very quickly. Commercial fishing provides tangible proof that our waters have a value that far transends their use for recreation, entertainment and transportation.

• Finally, and this is another one of those seemingly self-evident benefits that tend to be ignored, commercial fishing docks are much more environmentally benign than anything likely to replace them. With the rampant development that our coastal states are afflicted with, we don’t need any more condos, motels, golf courses, marinas, jet ski/parasail concessions or night clubs on our waterfronts. Zoning or no, what are the chances that any commercial fishing dock, minus the commercial fishing, is going to be transformed to a less intensive use?

Waterfront development on the southern coast of Spain  (P.Stolpe photo)

It would seem there are compelling reasons for maintaining a healthy, economically viable commercial fishing industry. But are we?

This is the big question. Commercial fishing is facing challenges today that few people outside the industry are aware of, challenges that are having dramatic cumulative impacts on the small businesses that make up the domestic fishing industry, impacts that many of these businesses aren’t capable of absorbing. In this FishNet we’ve tried to show you what’s at risk. We’ll be looking at the specific challenges and the effects they are having - on the fishing businesses and on the communities they are an integral part of - over the next several months.
 
 

The Natural Resources Defense Council - that group that brought us the Alar apple scare a few years back [] - is one of the leaders in the anti-commercial fishing movement. With their publication Hook, Line, and Sinking - the Crisis in Marine Fisheries they "make their case" for inflicting on working fishermen the equivalent of the impacts their Alar hysteria had on the agricultural industry. But are the conditions in the fisheries all that bad? Following are parts of titles of NRDC publications listed on their web site. While such titles would seem to be more appropriate to the shelves overlooking supermarket check-out counters, they’ve evidently become quite important in influencing public opinion*. We’ll leave it to our readers to judge how justified the levels of hysterical alarmism they reach actually are:  "Year of Living Dangerously…. Public Health Threats From.... Arsenic, Radioactive Radon, and Trihalomethanes in Our Drinking Water…. Failure of the Nation’s Drinking Water System to Protect Public Health…. Politics and Pollution…. Congress’ Continuing Attack on the Environment…. Gutting Environmental Protection…. Congress’ Assault on Clean Waters…. Are Children Its First Victims?… Exposure and Toxicity to Infants and Children…. Out of Breath: Children’s Health and Air Pollution…. Our Children at Risk:…. No Safe Harbor:…. Violations of Federal Health Standards in Tap Water…. Hog Wash: Factory Farm Giveaways…. Testing the Waters VI: Who Knows What You’re Getting Into…. Healing the Waters of Greater Cleveland: Poison Runoff Problems…. Children and Environmental Carcinogens…. Getting the Dirt on Your Electric Company…. Gathering Storm: Coming Environmental Battles…. Forests on the Line…. Flying Off Course: Environmental Impacts of America’s Airports…. Falling Trees and Fading Promises…. The Dirty Little Secret About Our Drinking Water:…. Whale Sanctuary ‘In Danger’…. Damage Report: Environment and the 104th Congress…. Contaminated Catch: The Public Health Threat from Toxics in Fish…. Breath-Taking: Premature Mortality Due to Particulate Air Pollution…. Breach of Faith: How the Contract’s Fine Print Undermines America’s Environmental Success." *Surprisingly, in the titles of over 20 listed publications dealing with nuclear power, research or weaponry - in various countries including China, Iran and India - the NRDC’s vocabulary doesn’t get much stronger than difficult or alert. Kind of makes you wonder who’s setting their priorities?