This is an important ethical issue for environmentalists.  The principal agents of destruction in this story are all the international fishers, with large and sophisticated vessels, who devastated the Northwest Atlantic fisheries from way back in the 1950s.  The environmentalists who now are seeking very tough restrictions on fishing in those waters are not themselves villains, though possibly their style can be less than charming.  Angela Sanfilippo, the woman in Gloucester, asks a very interesting and troubling question: Where were all the environmentalists a few decades ago?  I hope she understands that a few decades ago, environmentalist activism was in its infancy; if organizations such as our friend Andrew's Oceana had existed back then, she can be sure they would have been involved.

It is urgently important to listen to these family fishers, and to understand their experiences and sentiments.

I do not know Chatham, and the Nantucket Sound side of Cape Cod -- and it was a bit disconcerting, to read of the Chatham woman's resentment of the healthy population of seals that live around the southeast Cape.  Why must hunters and fishers always cultivate a hatred of carnivorous animals?

But I happened to pass through Gloucester this past summer.  It really is a serious little fishing port, with a short stretch of ugly waterfront in the midst of a beautiful coastal resort area.  For those of you on the West Coast who are acquainted with Monterey, the two towns are similar in some regards.  It is interesting that Angela Sanfilippo is an immigrant from Sicily; perhaps her husband's family came from there originally.  And not coincidentally, Monterey has an old community of Sicilian-American fishers.  Presumably Leon Panetta belongs to that community.  In recent years, they have erected a pretty bronze statue of their patroness, Santa Rosalia of Palermo, on the waterfront.

As a supporter of animal rights, I consider it regrettable that the ancient prejudice is still with us, that creatures that live in water deserve no regard from us, and that taking them out of the water in order to eat them or otherwise use them is not at all morally questionable.  Perhaps there are signs that attitudes are beginning to change.  I am skeptical.  But even as they should continue to speak out for what they believe, people who feel as I do about animals need always to express themselves in a respectful and understanding way.

Plainly, these small fishers in Massachusetts deserve sympathy.  Like them are the fishers of Newfoundland, with whom I am angry for participating in the winter seal slaughter.  Really, they are all basically decent people, living with the constant stress of financial insecurity.  And their financial situation is fairly bleak.  They are pretty much friendless, and nearly resourceless; and so I cannot help feeling very sorry for them.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Let us take a look at tuna fishing in the Gulf of Maine.  The small boats usually 30-foot lobster boats, can catch one or two a day.  They watch helplessly as a factory trawler can come in and take up to maybe 20 metric tons.  It just isn't fair!  It is clear in this example that if the entire industry was hook-and-line, the fishery ought to be much more sustainable.

For once I'd like to see the small person, and not the factory ships, get the business.  It is just like organic farming on small truck farms - you pay more for a good product but have the satisfaction you're doing the right thing.

The western Gulf of Mexico is another story, but to make it quick the NMFS has imposed draconian red snapper regulations, which is a longline or hook-n-line fishery.  Most the the data was based on the eastern Gulf, which is truly over fished.  The "scientific" studies did not take into account the fact that the shrimping fleet (which uses large nets) was off by maybe two-thirds due to hurricanes, high diesel prices, and low dock prices for shrimp due to foreign imports.  Local snapper fishermen noted this and the fact that their catch rates were actually increasing, in spite of this so-called "population crash."  They also noted that new artificial reefs were allowing for a huge come-back in snapper populations - perhaps the "quota" should be for the reefs and not the fishermen, a truly innovative thought.

Sorry to be lengthy but some of us really like native fish caught in a reasonably sustainable manner - and not some fish factory crap turned into unrecognizable fried fish sticks.  Friends don't let friends by imported fish, either.  /sam

Onward through the fog