Fishing

A story published by ESPN has made a stir. It speculates that the Obama administration is about to ban all commercial and recreational fishing. I doubt that this will happen. I doubt that even the tone-deaf Obama administration would alienate tens of millions of Americans and eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs. That doesn't mean that fishers have nothing to fear.

What is almost certain is that either strict limits or an outright ban will be placed on bluefin tuna. This will be totally ineffective since Japan is responsible for 75% of the bluefin catch and will opt out.

There may also be new limits on all commercial fishing. Some computer models show that the current fish population is a fraction of what it had been, maybe less than ten percent. Environmentalists have been calling on strict limits on fishing to let the stock rebuild. Here is Greenpeace's position paper. Keep in mind that they have been caught presenting questionable data as established facts.

The ESPN article refers to a document called Transition to Green. I read the section on U.S. Fish and Wildlife as well as some other sections relating to land management but I could not find anything that would apply to recreational fishing. There are several mentions of overfishing. Most are qualified to refer to commercial fishing, fishing beyond the 200 mile limit or fishing as covered by the Magnuson-Stevens Act. A policy recommendation on overfishing on page 369 is not qualified but it appears at the end of a section that does qualify the term to mean commercial fishing. There are also mentions of overfishing under the section on NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) but I am going to assume that their charter is limited to oceans. The context supports this. Most of Transition to Green is devoted to global warming strategies. The recommendations will probably be devastating to commercial fishing and the price of fish but are not aimed at sport fishers.

The ESPN article mentions that the same group managed to stop bear hunting in Canada but this is tiny compared to sport fishing in America. It also mentions attempts to ban lead fishing tackle but non-lead alternatives already exist.

So why the alarm? I think that some of it is guilt by association. While Transition to Green is fairly mild, it has several radical groups behind it. It also appears that the public input was treated as a formality. This is typical for the Obama administration which seems surprised and annoyed when anyone questions it.