|
Bleak
The Hudson and Chesappeake are toxic resulting in impaired breeding of bass and bait, and poor juvenile bass nutrition. (Someone posted a great article here last year that suggested the reason bass, historically finfish predators, have adapted to grubbing and bottom feeding is that they spend their first few years feeding in estuaries where you couldn't see a baitfish even if there was one left.)
You have commercial "protein" interests vacuuming the remaining bait up out of the oceans at obscene rates, just as the draggers are turning the bottoms into wastelands. Once the bait (including lobster, and crab) population is gone what hope is there up the food chain? Not likely that the bass will be the "last man standing" when everything else in the ocean is gone.
Can't put it on the commercial guys, we take a lot of fish ourselves. Can't put it on either political party as both have their hands out to the same commercial interests under our current system of "government for sale."
Don't have a solution. Though I'll tell you I think long and hard before keeping the few fish I do...
|