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Overfishing is not a natural disaster. It is man-made

By Henry Clement

Many bad things are happening to our oceans and freshwater Piscis. Only a few good things happen to our world’s game fish: trout, salmon, billfish, bluefin, tarpon, and bonefish. We capture fish by the boatload and discard dead ‘bycatch’ in alarming numbers, like 130,000 prime Chinook salmon in Alaska while commercially fishing for halibut in 2008.

Two good things are happening to our game fish stocks here and abroad

In the world of tarpon, bonefish, permit, and other so-called flats game fish, as well oceanic traveling species like billfish, tunas, and sharks, the good comes mainly from small resources that get significant results. Think Bonefish and Tarpon Trust, and the International Game Fish Association are fighting way above their weight classes. Be informed, join…

Follow the baitfish

The oceans are aquatic highways with sustenance eateries for our game fish controlled by seasons and water temperatures that support deposits of protein-rich zooplankton to schools of baitfish the size of menhaden up the food chain to animals that can bite a sailfish in half or fit a juvenile dolphinfish into its mouth.

With the rest of the game fish with an ocean connection, the good news is only awareness. Awareness of something terrible globally does not necessarily mean we, humankind, willfully and quickly manage our salvation. We are, it seems, not that smart and lean more favorably toward ‘gimme,’ me first, and ‘eff you.’

To many of us who deem the saltwater water flats the most essential and rewarding fishery on the planet, we need another Aaron Adams-like proponent with expanded skill sets including but not limited to dealing with policy issues at the highest federal level to conserve habitat, restore freshwater flows, improve water quality, and improve fisheries management in specific states and at larger spatial scales.Skip Clement

It is good to know that the genus Thunnus (bluefin) and Salmo salar are overfished and at a crossroads. However, their collective demise, nearing a critical juncture of extinction, merits no consensus on a moratorium or fishing to sustainable limits. Talk-talk and scientific studies ad nauseam do nothing to fix the situation.

Publically aware of the majestic open ocean bluefin tuna running full throttle into extinction and knowing Greenland’s aggregations of Atlantic salmon are in the same unholy camp has yet to spark an all-in and doing something.

Thom Glace, the award-winning watercolorist’s commissioned striper, is one of the best illustrations of Morone saxatilis.

We the people

The following reportage about the world’s most selfish countries that add to the decimation of migratory and non-migratory species angers responsible foodies and chefs, sportsmen and women, politicians, kings and queens, and enlightened citizens worldwide. But all we have right now to fight the good fight is reportage. Sadly, reporting about overfishing is either buried on the back pages of national newspapers the world over never on any page in a Russian or Chinese news service. It is barely mentioned in the free presses worldwide, and significant globally attended conferences suffer even worse public enlightening.


OVERFISHING




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