Posted by finfan on October 28, 2002 at 13:00:59:
In Reply to: Re: Thanks ever so much for reinforcing the stereotype.... posted by msblucow on October 28, 2002 at 11:44:54:
I notice a little hostility in your response. Let me guess you don't like it when someone doesn't let you get away with calling them some things they aren't.
Where again was I joking about poaching rockfish? Can you show me exactly where I said I was using poached rockfish in that ceviche? I fish in Mexico on average at least once a month, the fact that I'm making rockfish ceviche doesn't begin to suggest I doing so illegally. Just to set the record straight for you or any of the others on the board like you, I follow every fish & game rule to the letter (that would be size, season, limit, location). One other tidbit for you, I eat lingcod regularly and have never done so from California waters (excluding baja california). I find it personally offensive that anyone who had no personal knowledge of anyone elses hunting habits would begin to suggest that the person hunting is doing so illegally. It's almost comical for someone so quick to judge others to include the words "stereotype" in their message header.
You asked what is my beef. Slow down and read my original post and I think it is clear. I don't think the decision to reserve or not to reserve, how big the reserve should be, what areas it should encompass are questions that should be decided by 2 people. That's what this decision came down to - a commission where 2 of 5 members didn't have the guts to show up for, including the chairmen of the commission. It came down to republican vs democratic (gray vs wilson appointees). It came down to politics when it should have come down via a scientific committee and a public vote.
About the only thing you have right so far, is my disdain for F&G. You bet! My personal opinion is that they are a bunch of incompetent puppets. If I could, I would clear out the entire lot of them. Not because I don't want "big government" either. I want effective government and if you can't hold the agency in charge of managing our marine resources accountable for this mess who can you. See, I unlike you, don't rush out to hold people with different beliefs than mine accountable. Most of us (probably contrary to your beliefs) operate within the F&G laws. So why don't you stop stereotyping fishermen and start to hold f&g accountable for not managing the resource properly. Any "reasonable person" would have long ago. If you honestly believe it is purely about "take" then how do you not blame at least a little of this on bad F&G policies. That's right, we just poached the worlds fish supply in obliviation.
My solution - Well it's a whole lot bigger than a marine reserve. See I don't think it's about fishermen (at least not by itself). It's about food sources and habitat, as much as it is about "take". That to me says it has a lot to do about pollution here in the So Cal Bight area. You can set up all of the reserves you want, but if we don't get the pollution going into our marine systems in check then, the baitfish won't return to the levels necessary to sustain any level of fish population off this coast.
Have you ever stopped your campaign of stereotyping long enough to ask yourself what impact if any the decline in the anchovy population off the coast has had to do with the rockfish decline. Better yet, ever even start to question what effect pollution and red tides might have on sucessful breeding seasons in the baitfish populations. How about the effect that global warming might have to El Nino's and their impact to the depletion of the once massive kelp forests off our coast. Call me stupid (h*ll, you have just about called me everything else), but I don't think it matters how much area you set aside if the area doesn't have good habitat (kelp forest) to support new hatches every year and baitfish, then the rockfish present will simply have a poor survival record and neither you or I will ever see any impact from the reserves. Reserves may be the beginning of effecting the hatch rate, but without habitat and an abundant food source those new hatches just become food for the adults. You have to significantly change the hatch rate and more importantly the survival rate.
You like Bradley keep throwing out reserves in warm waters like Florida and Austrailia. What makes you think for one minute shallow water, cold water, rockfish which by their very nature are not pelegic will migrate and re-populate all over. I don't know if they will or not, but before I start assumming so because F&G says so, I'd like the scientific community as a whole (not just paid and brought in from Oregon)say so. Guess is they won't, because if you fished for them you would know they lock down in areas that has the right food source and habitat. That's what made it so easy for party boats and commercials to locate and deplete them. Remember, there is a reason why they refer to them as "resident" shallow water rockfish.
My solution -
We'll it may or may not have reserves in it
It would have tougher pollution rules (across the board)
It would start by cleaning up and protecting the food chains breeding areas, the estuaries and coastline marshes (what's left of them)
It would include a hatchery program to offset and improve survival rates of key species (rockfish quite possibly being among them)
It would revise take, size and season limits
It would include probably many of things to be successful, because I would bet you I don't have all the answers and probably have only a handful of the things necessary.
It wouldn't be allowed to flounder about for years to serve the political incumbants cause for re-election.
It certainly wouldn't be based on extremism and yes, it would have the one thing F&G lacks - It would be based on consensus!
You see, whether I am on the winning side or losing side, I don't think it should be based on two peoples vote. I'd even let the photographers vote. Even if they couldn't stop stereotyping the rest of us or at the very least stop calling us "poachers". By the way, my wife is an avid underwater photographer who finds it rather personally satifying to live in a house with a hunter. It's too bad the rest of the world can't find the same level of compromise.