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| While Ms. Rimel might understand
Jack McDavid's point, she isn't letting it stand in the way of the multi-billion
dollar Pew Charitable Trusts' assault on the U.S. swordfish fishermen who
are fishing in accordance with international and federal regulations.
Proprietor Jack McDavid is perhaps the nation's most outspoken opponent of an effort underway by an organization called SeaWeb, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to get chefs to drop swordfish from their menus. "I saw it coming," he says of the "Give the Swordfish a Break!" campaign. "In fact, I smelled it coming . . . and it smelled fishy." He contends that the campaign won't save any swordfish and could hurt his friends, "the boys who bring in the fish." Says Rebecca Rimel, president of Pew, whose offices are a few blocks south of McDavid's restaurant: "I understand his point." from Steadying the scales of justice deep in the waters of controversy - Our appetite for correctness may filet a vulnerable livelihood (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 August, 1998, Op-Ed Page) by David Boldt . 
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link to the complete paper]
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| Pretending it's so probably
lets Gareth Porter, the author of the study, sleep a little more soundly....
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| The fishermen find the practice
as repugnant as Dr. Safina does, but, in spite of the fact that none of
them (that we know of) are Ph.D.s, they are trying to do something positive
to end it.
to a NJ FishNet addressing the swordfish situation] |
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It was the Flipper phenomenon that was responsible, in part, for having slowed the last vestiges of whaling. But beginning in about 1988, the sorrow spread to the lowly fish, a major source of protein to half the world. Thus began a strange and zealous time. It began in the United States, where, for one thing, fish as food to be hankered after has always been a relatively foreign concept, except on the coasts. A ranking member of the National Marine Fisheries Service once tried to explain the Flipper Phenomenon by theorizing that all peoples live with, in fact need, a shared guilt that defines their culture. Former empires like Spain, Germany, and Japan have a history of conquest, genocide, and conquest-lost to look back upon. For them, fish come guilt-free. Americans, according to his view, have never lost an empire per se, but spend their regret on the loss of their once-rich natural resources. All we've got to remember is a huge pile of buffalo skins somewhere is the way he put it. What he meant, I think, is we've killed more buffalo than Sioux so our guilt naturally flows toward animals. In any case, Flipperholics appear to be created when ordinary persons catch a glimpse of the huge and growing human appetite and the abatoir of corresponding size, through a crack in their society's homey kitchen door. That is, when they sense there are too many of us. Ultimately they begin bleeding comisery for sacrificed fish...." ],
proposes one possible explanation for the puzzling fervor that some
people are willing to invest in the plight of sea creatures that are considered
somewhat lacking in appeal to much of the rest of the world. |
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He says unless the trend is reversed, coho salmon will become extinct. Fraser adds it's not just Canadian fish, it seems the whole life system of the world's oceans is coming apart environmentally. And Fraser says the problems aren't being made up by Greenpeace. He says political rhetoric is putting the best spin on the world's environmental troubles. Broadcast News (CKWX) February 16,
1998 VANCOUVER
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| According to the National
Marine Fisheries Service (in a 1996 report), in 1993 86% of stocks of known
status were considered fully or overutilized. According to the same agency
(in a 1997 report), in 1997 35% of stocks of known status were considered
to be at or approaching the overfished condition.
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“Based on the criteria specified in the
Magnuson-Stevens Act, the Report on the Status of Fisheries finds that
86 species are listed as overfished, 183 species are listed as not overfished,
and 10 species are considered to be approaching an overfished condition;
for 448 species, the status relative to overfishing is unknown.
From the Report on Status of Fisheries and Identification of Overfished
Stocks [ These quotes illustrate one of the most confusing aspects of fisheries management today. The same agency that reported the year before last that 86% of the fish stocks they had adequate information on were being fished at or beyond their level of full utilization. However, only a year later the same agency indicated in a report to Congress that only 35% of the species it had adequate information about were at or approaching the overfished level. Looking at these two statements, how can we determine 1) the overall "health" of our fisheries, or 2) the performance of the National Marine Fisheries Service. It appears as if both are improving significantly, yet we hear nothing from either the agency or any other organizations involved in "saving our fisheries" in support of this seemingly obvious conclusion. |
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The dead zone, researchers say, is emblematic of the growing ills suffered by the planet's seas. Earlier this month, hundreds of scientists, marking 1998 as the international Year of the Ocean, warned that unless action is taken, overfishing, coastal development, and pollution will multiply the kinds of problems that already plague the gulf." From A 'Dead Zone' Grows in the Gulf of Mexico by Carol Kaesuk Yoon in the January 20, 1998 New York Times. ]
that plagued some of the estuaries on the East Coast this past summer.
It's kind of hard to imagine how overfishing could "multiply" the kinds
of problems that kill everything in 7,000 square miles of Gulf waters.
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