GS - I alternate on whether I think it's a bad practice and not to purchase fishing related menhaden products or OK to purchase limited amounts of these products like a bottle of fish scent (I really don't use them much either way). What products cause the greatest impact into the Menhaden biomass? My understanding is that a lot of it is purely used for fertilizer & pet food with a healthy dose of medicinal products as well.
Are you having a negative impact on the fishery because you bought a jar of fish oil 5 years ago? No.
What can we do? The guys in Jersey are doing a good job on some of the fleet working their waters but something needs to be done coastwide. These fish are such an important link on the food chain and should be protected as such yet a handfull of companies are allowed to profit as the stocks dwindle. That is where the change needs to be made.
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Is there anything we as consumers can hope to do, buy consciously thinking about our buying decisions.
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If we as consumers were buying tons of fertilizer per day to work our thousand acre farms or if we burned through 55 Gallon drums of PIGO feed every morning, we might have some leverage. But the people most using these products are probably ther least likely to beetch about it. The farmer in Tenessee? Unless he's a very proactive or concerned farmer, probably not. The beef guy in Omaha? What penalty will he face? Probably nothing. Those people are more likely to be affected negatively if the lose their access to the fish based products. They may need to purchase less effective products for which are more expensive. Not a good thing for their business but if the current 30 year trend continues, they'll pay the higher prices when their is no fish left anyway. Higher prices and the depletion of the primary forage fish in the Atlantic later or higher prices and the restoration of the western Atlantics primary food soucre now?
UHhh - enough rant here. OK - GS, are you doing a bad thing when you buy menhaden based products? Nope.
Are you in the primary user group? Nope.
Will your refusal to purchase products based on this forage fish do any good to sway the minds of those with their hands in the till? Nope, you may feel a little better personally that you aren't supporting it but we as a group aren't making that big of an impact on the fishery.
I haven't ordered swordfish (one of my favorites) at restaraunts or purchased to bring home for 6-7 years now as I don't want to be part of the decline of that fishery. With enough people that would be the primary users of a product stop using it, that would get noticed. If a lot of people using marine products based on menhaden stopped, it wouldn't make much difference as the user group is small when compared to the primary markets like animal feeds, fertilizers, & health products...
Just my oppinion....