Help support your freedom to fish!

[JohnR]

Likwid - the problem is that several groups want to go and say "Close here... here... and here". Keep everyone out unless they want to take pictures - for one, it sounds like "user group reallocation" to me,

A protected Ocean Wilderness Area is an area in which all fishing and other extractive activities are prohibited, where people take only pictures and leave only bubbles. In these areas, living marine communities have the opportunity to thrive, largely unaffected by human activities, and people can study, explore and experience ocean life in an untrammeled condition for generations to come.

Reallocation is the root of half the problems as it is between rec & comm - why should this be any different - but I digress... To have the ability to shut an area down, completely, totally sets a couple bad precedents. First, the ability for one user group (like Ocean Conservacy) to be able to close an area will only be followed up by more areas LOCALLY. It will not end at one. You WILL see more and more areas closed to no fishing. And we are not talking 300 miles of shore but 1-3 miles and then 3 to 200. Second, the reasoning for creating these no take zones negates the need for any serious fisheries management. If you keep everyone out there is no need to manage, right? What the Freedom to Fish essentially states that BEFORE you create an Marine Protection Area, you must reasonably prove that fishing is the cause of the failure and that intermediate steps or regulation would not foster a recovery of a species or a habitat. If a doctor thinks you have a bad back but he can treat it and rehab it back to health, do you want him to just fuse it instead? Sure, you can walk stiff backed and both solutions "fixed" the back (I'm tired couldn't think of a better analogy) but you would rather try the rehab, right?

In nutshell, this is just the beginning. More and more areas will be closed if we do nothing. What we are saying is that you need to prove that other methods will not bring about positive change before shutting down an entire section of the ocean...
Damn -0 will need to approach this again with a clear head - gotta watch Pats...