It it weren’t so damned infuriating and downright scary, the antics of the NMFS would be hilarious. They are like the Three Stooges starring in “Let’s Go To Washington Where We Can F*#CK Up Your Life”. [Read more →]
I never thought I’d find myself in agreement with anything that a Pew spokesman had to say about Gulf of Mexico fishery issues and the Gulf Council, but I find myself tucked snugly between the sheets with the author of this statement:
“Rushing to allow open ocean aquaculture in the Gulf of Mexico is an accident waiting to happen. If the council is going to create a series of fish farms in federal waters, a national system with uniform guidelines should first be in place.
“Environmental concerns must play a critical role if and when we create national standards for offshore fish farming. For too long, untreated waste, escapes and disease have plagued the aquaculture industry. We cannot ignore their impacts on our fragile ocean ecosystems.”
– Andrea Kavanagh, Pew Environmental Group
At least it was spoken by an “Andrea” not an “Andrew”. I can only handle so much “strange” in my bedfellows.
Statement quoted from this release.
(Editor: The poster of the preceding is a commercial fisherman, a boat owner and a reef fish permit holder who is expressing his own opinion.)
The Gulf Council, in an apparent bid to completely seal the fate of the Gulf Of Mexico fishing industry, has given approval for large scale offshore fish farming to proceed. They do this in the face of objections from seemingly every single involved group and person with the exception of those who stand to personally profit from this plan and in the face of a very real question of whether they have any authority to rule on this issue at all. [Read more →]
My cynical gene is acting up again, in fact it has gone into overdrive.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is charged with protecting the fish and regulating fisheries of the United States. While they sometimes seem quite zealous in their protection of the fish, they also seem determined to regulate the fisheries out of existence. How does this benefit the public? Well, they also appear to have another plan. They are seeking to replace the American commercial fishermen with American Commercial Fish Farmers, taking the right to produce fish for the American consumer away from the group who have developed and worked in the fishery and handing that right over to a small special interest group. [Read more →]
The Center For Biological Diversity have announced plans to step up their campaigns. This group, somewhat infamous for their original cause, the spotted owl, is another conservation group willing to use hyperbole, poor science and artificially inflated figures (translation: lies) to achieve their extremist goals The group has a history of supporting heavy handed regulation that completely ignores the economic impact of the regulations they propose. They also appear quite proud of their history of attempting to bully by lawsuit or threat of lawsuit our regulatory agencies into rushing into regulations that frequently impose crippling economic penalty on American workers in whatever industry they target next. This group is well funded and despite their frequent use of exaggerated figures, poor science, and a marked tendency to raise a hue and cry of “the sky is falling in”, they appear to be respected, or perhaps feared, in numerous circles of power. [Read more →]
