They Don’t Get It
Local fishermen have gone to Washington, to complain about the restrictions on fishing, especially red snapper in the Gulf.
The fish population is down, and everyone knows it, but won’t admit it. In addition to years of over-fishing, you have the expanding dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi caused by agricultural run-off in the Midwest, and well as a lack of water in the rivers during the last couple of years of drought in the Southeast. The drought conditions have eased, but the bays haven’t been scoured clean.
We have ever more frequent incidents of red tide, and other problems that affect the population of the Gulf.
The reality is that if we don’t give the fish time to recover, the fishing industry is dead, and not just for a year, but forever. It is happening around the world, and the global climate change isn’t going to improve the situation. We have to clean up our act and our oceans. Nobody wanted to back off when this would have been relatively painless, so the pain is going to come. The only reason the industry hasn’t already collapsed is because of the net bans put into the Florida constitution in the 1990s. Many of the same fishermen who are complaining in Washington, fought those bans, too.
February 24, 2010 5 Comments
Feel The Love?
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