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"Some of the hottest journalistic action is still in following the money. But don't look to your local newspaper, newsmagazine or public radio station for enlightenment, because the money trails today often radiate from a handful of the nation's wealthiest "charitable" foundations, and end with those media outlets themselves." (Robert Fritchey - author of Wetland Riders) |
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To be kept up-to-date on what's happening in or about the commercial fishing industry, to get notifications when new FishNet issues and Another Perspective columns are available, visit the Commercial Fishing - The Rest Of The Story blog by clicking here and subscribe via email or RSS feed. Of particular interest right now is the upcoming fishermen's demonstration on the Capitol steps in Washington, DC on February 24. |
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Another Perspective, a monthly column that I have written for National Fisherman magazine since the fall of 2005, has found a new home at the Saving Seafood website (linked here). Please visit the site, let me know what you think of the columns, and catch up on what else is going on in the world of fishing. |
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A directory of all past Another Perspective columns and the earliest editions of FishNet USA are available here. |
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Oceans are large, they are constantly changing, they are affected by all sorts of human activitivities and natural phenomena, and most of what goes on in them is hidden to us. Unless you're someone who makes a living dealing with the oceans at some level, your primary source of information vis a vis fishing, habitat degradation, etc. is the popular media. Unfortunately, today's journalists, producers and editors are poorly equipped, either via education, background or budget, to appreciate how complex ocean and fisheries issues actually are. Hence reporting on ocean issues - and the vast majority of the public's understanding of them - suffers greatly from today's soundbite culture. Poorly documented (or completely undocumented) press releases, supposed independent researchers bought and paid for by agenda-driven foundations, recreational fishing columnists who are little more than industry shills, short-sighted politicians whose interests extend no farther than keeping narrowly focused pressure groups happy, and competition among user groups are all conspiring to obscure what's really going on in the world's oceans today. Our goal is to present the "other side" of the picture, to do the research that isn't being done, and to - in the words of Watergate's Deep Throat - "follow the money." We need rational ocean policies, and we're never going to have them if our decision makers, and the public they are serving, don't fully appreciate what's going on. |
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"The total target TAC for the twelve groundfish
species was almost 170 thousand metric tons. The
total catch was less than 43 thousand tons. This
was only 25% of what the fishermen could have caught
without damaging the stocks. Assuming a conservative
value of a dollar a pound for those fish (from 2000
to 2007, haddock returned an average of $1.20 a
pound to the fishermen), they didn’t catch 280 million
dollars worth of haddock, cod, flounder, etc. that
they were allowed to catch. If every dollar’s worth
of fish landed generates four dollar’s worth of
total economic activity, that’s over a billion dollars
lost to the New England economy, and lost primarily
to New England’s struggling fishing communities.."
http://www.fishnet-usa.com/chronic_underfishing.htm
Read "From
another perspective," Nils Stolpe's regular
column on the Saving Seafood website.
Archived columns from National Fisherman are available here.
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