Who's ocean is it, anyway

Fishermen who have spent their lives learning and working on the water become irate when people who know far less then they do presume to tell them what to do.

Environmentalists who feel the ocean is a common property resource feel perfectly justified is saying it should be left as wilderness - no trawling, no harvesting, no dredging, no economic activity.

These ideas have come together in the environmental embrace of small scale fisheries; the idea being that if fishermen are picturesque, don't use dirty industrial gear like trawls, or manage to subsist on small harvests of a few hundred or a few thousand pounds of a particular species per boat, then all will be right with the world.

In this regard, one of the goals of the Pew foundation is to hold up small scale fisheries as models that show environmental and commercial interests can work together. In some cases they fund and staff these small local organizations at a level that would never be possible from the earnings of the fishing group alone.

There are certainly times when the broad commercial interests of the fishing industry and the interests of the ocean preservationists coincide. One example was the push for a moratorium on oil drilling on Georges Bank. A second, a more relevant example is the opposition to the Pebble Mine site in the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

But overall, in asking whether various public interest groups have interests in common with harvesters and processors, one overarching question is: do you support the use of the ocean for food production? If not, there is little to talk about.

Many of the major environmental issues around seafood, from sustainably managed fisheries, to the regulation and prohibition of illegal fishing, to the protection of marine reserves and use of closed areas, and the growth of aquaculture, are all issues where the industry can be improved and can make common cause with some in the environmental community, so long as the basic understanding is that using the oceans for food is a sustainable and honorable activity.

That means that what is suitable as a small scale fishery in one location may be suitable as a large scale industrial fishery in another location. Demanding that all fisheries be small, boutique, and under capitalized is simply a means to deny the food productivity of the oceans.

Comments

[Mark Powell]

John, I think you're right, small is not always beautiful. I don't think sustainability is measured in boat size. It's not the boat, it's what you do with it.