Fish and fishing - what the popular media miss

Domestic fisheries aren't on the verge of collapse. The U.S. commercial fishing industry has been landing the same tonnage and the same species mix for well over 50 years. U.S. commercial fishermen are among the most heavily and effectively regulated fishermen in the world. These are all documented facts, and they fly directly in the face of the foundation funded professional crepe hangers who have built an industry on attempting to convince you otherwise.

If you've gotten to this page, it's safe to assume that you are interested in fish, in fishing and in seafood. That being the case, we can further assume that, like the rest of us, you've been assaulted over the last several years with a barrage of media pronouncements that the Armeggdon of the oceans is at hand. It's likely that you take these with a grain of salt. If you don't, you should.

While our oceans are certainly facing problems, those problems are not - as the ocean crisis industry would have us - primarily caused by fishing. And in fact, the crisis industry's slavish devotion to demonizing fishing is responsible for the public's turning a blind eye to the real threats: the mass movement of the people to the coasts, the loss of critical coastal habitat to the attendant development, and the continuing and increasing release into our estuaries of an ever-growing spectrum of household pollutants. But who's looking? A well-coordinated, multi-million dollar "research" and public relations campaign blaming it all on fishing has effectively diverted the public's attention since the Exxon Valdez disaster over a decade ago.

Does overfishing happen? Of course, but less each year as we learn to more effectively manage our fisheries. Can the uncontrolled use of fishing gear negatively impact vulnerable areas of ocean bottom? Sometimes, but mechanisms are now in place to identify and protect critical areas (note here that fishing impacts can be readily controlled but most "upstream effects" from rampant coastal development continue virtually unabated).

Below are links to various websites where ocean issues are put into a more realistic perspective. Please invest a bit of time in visiting them and in considering the information they present. The health of the oceans depends on well-informed political decisions supported by a well-informed electorate. You're not going to be well-informed without knowing what's going on behind and beyond the headlines.

Thank you,

Nils E. Stolpe

p.s. Please visit the websites of our sponsors, which are listed to the left. Their generous support allows us to continue to present "the rest of the story" about fish and fishing, and no matter what part of the commercial fishing industry they are in, they are and will continue to be among the leaders.

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