Hook and Line Fisheries

Our Position

ecent media attention has generated a great deal of public interest in the state of our declining fisheries. Often times the battle for conservation has been lost due to government mismanagement or corporate greed, but at times it has been won, usually with the help of fishermen; the battle to restore the California King salmon, Pacific Halibut and East Coast Striped bass have all been spearheaded by fisheries groups. What is often overlooked is that the first people to take an active interest in Ocean conservation, the fisherman, are often the ones now paying the highest price for the mismanagement of our fisheries resources.

Seldom is it recognized that many fishermen have been fighting the battle of conservation for decades and even generations. Even in the battles that have not been as successful such as the Atlantic cod and Pacific rockfish, the first voice of reason to speak out for conservation has often been that of the fishermen.
Particularly the family hook and line subsistence fishermen have been the ones to speak out for conservation, these are the fishermen who have no impact on essential fisheries habitat, are responsible for very little by catch, and are able to avoid juvenile fish through gear regulation. Yet this seems to be the group that pays the dearest penalty for the mismanagement of industrialized fishing practices.

Subsistence fishermen are committed to keeping local stocks healthy, as they are unable to move on to a different area or species after a fishery has been decimated. Hook and line fishrmen are literally being forced off the seas by management plans which dole out historical percentages of what has been landed in the past regardless of the ancillary impact a method of fishing has on stocks.

Atlantic cod and Pacific rockfish have been severely over fished by industrial-sized, often foreign-owned, trawlers. Not only did these trawlers take too many fish but also have had a tremendous impact on fisheries habitat and by-catch. Much of this over fishing was permitted by poor management practices on the part of the government and exacerbated by corporate greed. It is unfair to destroy the community, culture and livelihood of the family hook and line fishermen who for generations have fished sustainably because industrialized fishing practices were allowed to devastate stocks.

Broad based consumer boycotts which advocate the boycott of an entire species, fail to differentiate fishing methods or area of capture. This only harms the greatest proponents of conservation, the subsistence fisherman. A successful management plan needs to take into account fishing methods and area of capture, as well as the many other factors of importance. Consumer boycotts put the small fisherman out of business yet allows monied industrialized fishing vessels to move on to other species or areas. Our fisheries need the voice of the small family fisherman or there will be no future in our fisheries.

Sustainable fisheries are a very complicated issue constantly in flux; blame cannot be laid at the doorstep of one group or reason. When trying to make responsible decisions about what we eat we must be educated about the myriad factors that effect the management of our fisheries and the people lives who are involved in fisheries.

The most important factor in this debate is that we stay well enough informed to judge each individual situation on it's own merits. There can be no blanket condemnations or recommendations of any sort. There will be times when it makes sense to take a stand and there may be other times when the popular road is abandoned.

We at Monterey Fish pledge to continue supporting family hook and line fishermen by only buying hook and line rockfish and codfish.