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Feb. 17th, 2004 12:23 pmI'm procrastinating. For work, I need to write some code that detects when buttons are pressed on the side of a PDA. I've done that before a few months ago, and it's not fun...it's tedious and annoying and I don't want to have to write it again. But I have to. *sigh*
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I'm reading (not at this moment...one procrastinating activity at a time...) "The Hungry Ocean" by Linda Greenlaw. I like the book a lot. But I shouldn't.
I mean, she's interesting -- one of the only (if not the only) woman commercial swordfish captains (she was the woman captain from "The Perfect Storm" book and movie). And the book is about boating and fishing, and she loves it and you can tell she loves it. What's not to like?
Well for one thing, billfish like swordfish are getting endangered. Personally, I won't eat billfish like swordfish and marlin in restaurants. It's telling when swordfish caught in 1920 weighed over 600 pounds, and today a 100 pound fish is considered a good size. I've been fishing for sailfish, which are much less endangered, but I don't know if I'd even go fishing for marlin or swordfish, even if I didn't keep them. Secondly, she's a longliner, and I despise commercial longline fleets. Imagine 40 miles (60+ km!) of fishing line with thousands of baited hooks, dragged behind a boat. "Good" fish are caught, like swordfish and tuna, but a good chunk of everything else in the ocean is caught as well, from seaturtles to seabirds to sharks to inedible fish to undersized fish, all of which would normally be tossed back except that they are all usually dead by the time everything gets hauled into the boat.
Most amateur fishermen are conservationists. In the US, non-commercial fishermen like me account for less than one-tenth of 1% of all the fish taken out of the ocean -- an easily sustainable percentage for almost every species. The complete indiscrimination of longlines bugs the conservationist in me, which is why I applaud Florida in banning them from most Florida waters.
The book is interesting. I really am getting into it though the topic is distasteful. I guess even though I'm against it, I'm interested in how it is done, what the people are like who do it. But, I'm shaking my head as I read.
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I'm reading (not at this moment...one procrastinating activity at a time...) "The Hungry Ocean" by Linda Greenlaw. I like the book a lot. But I shouldn't.
I mean, she's interesting -- one of the only (if not the only) woman commercial swordfish captains (she was the woman captain from "The Perfect Storm" book and movie). And the book is about boating and fishing, and she loves it and you can tell she loves it. What's not to like?
Well for one thing, billfish like swordfish are getting endangered. Personally, I won't eat billfish like swordfish and marlin in restaurants. It's telling when swordfish caught in 1920 weighed over 600 pounds, and today a 100 pound fish is considered a good size. I've been fishing for sailfish, which are much less endangered, but I don't know if I'd even go fishing for marlin or swordfish, even if I didn't keep them. Secondly, she's a longliner, and I despise commercial longline fleets. Imagine 40 miles (60+ km!) of fishing line with thousands of baited hooks, dragged behind a boat. "Good" fish are caught, like swordfish and tuna, but a good chunk of everything else in the ocean is caught as well, from seaturtles to seabirds to sharks to inedible fish to undersized fish, all of which would normally be tossed back except that they are all usually dead by the time everything gets hauled into the boat.
Most amateur fishermen are conservationists. In the US, non-commercial fishermen like me account for less than one-tenth of 1% of all the fish taken out of the ocean -- an easily sustainable percentage for almost every species. The complete indiscrimination of longlines bugs the conservationist in me, which is why I applaud Florida in banning them from most Florida waters.
The book is interesting. I really am getting into it though the topic is distasteful. I guess even though I'm against it, I'm interested in how it is done, what the people are like who do it. But, I'm shaking my head as I read.
