“Fight for the Right to Fish!”
Those bellicose words, sandwiched between a marlin dressed in Old Glory and an ulua sporting the Hawaiian flag, are emblazoned on a T-shirt offered for sale by Hawai’i Fishing News. In its August issue, the publication warns that “the good old days of loading the family fishing poles in the van and heading to Hawai’i’s vast shorelines for a day or weekend of fishing are being threatened.” A dollar from the sale of each T-shirt, says HFN, will go to a “special fund to help ‘fight for the right to fish.'”
What prompted the campaign? According to HFN, “A national movement to ban fishing sponsored by powerful mainland preservation and animal rights groups has now targeted the state for forced closures from 20% to 100% [sic] for public access to recreational and commercial fishing.”
Fractured syntax aside, the statement refers to a growing movement among marine scientists who are sounding the alarm over declining populations of nearshore fish and deteriorating habitat quality. Sponsoring much of their work has been the Pew Charitable Trusts, which has also underwritten locally, to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars, the Pacific Fisheries Coalition, a project of the Hawai’i Audubon Society.
And yes, the PFC has worked to promote a change in Hawai’i law that would set up a management system for nearshore fisheries that would allow some areas to be declared off-limits to fishing, be it recreational or commercial.
But the Hawai’i Fishing News campaign should also be seen as part of a much larger, well-organized and heavily financed effort to roll back protection of coastal ecosystems across the nation. That same flag-bedecked marlin that leaps off the HFN T-shirt can be found on the website of the “Freedom to Fish” coalition, whose sponsors include manufacturers of fishing equipment, boat makers, and other industries profiting from and promoting recreational fishing.
The “Freedom to Fish” coalition has sponsored bills in Congress and more than a dozen states that would allow closures of areas to recreational fishers only when such closures are supported by rigorous site-specific scientific evidence. Yet that kind of evidence is rarely available. And when it is, it takes many years to gather, costs more than most states or communities can pay, and often it entails closures – the very thing being banned – as well as fished areas (controls) to show what can happen when fishing pressure is relieved.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 15, Number 3 September 2004
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