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Wrong Science or Bad Science is definitely a major factor ... but there are also a wide array of factors at play contributing to the bad science ... on the side of the US commercial guys, they are taking it on the chin ... not just because they are being quashed by the Federal govt., but also because the US commercial fisherman are taking far less than foreign commercial fishermen ...
... a little over 10 years ago, the company I was working for had us up for a meeting with the publisher of the National Fishermen magazine up in Portland, ME. The conversation turned to a discussion about the fate of the US commercial fleet ... as it was just after the US Federal Govt. imposed regulations for limiting how much time the US commercial fleet could spend on the fishing grounds before they came back to weigh-in their catch ... meanwhile there were no regulations on the significantly larger, foreign factory ships fishing and freezing far more fish than the US fleet was able to take - ships from Poland, Korea, Japan, etc., were left untouched in international waters and even fishing illegally in US federal waters.
Same goes for the US tuna commercial fleet ... the portion the US fleet takes per global tuna catches is small fraction what the foreign fleets are taking ... so it is not just our US commercial guys ... although their impact is still significant on our local stocks.
Also, a little more than 20 years ago, there was an article in The New York Times about the state of the failing US tuna fishery ... as usual, the media was missing the point, but they interviewed a commercial tuna fisherman and his crew down in NY, who was complaining about the stocks being so low, they were not sure what they were going to do anymore. That same person, who's father started his fleet here in the US ... his father spoke about how he was a commercial fisherman out of Sardinia (or some place in Italy fishing in the Mediterranean Sea) and he stated that the fishing there got so bad they left and came to the US to set up fishing operations here ...and now the fishing here was bad (this was in 1990) ... WHAT?
It's like that children's story book where the creatures land their space ships on a beautiful planet, deplete all the natural resources and pollute the planet and then leave to find another planet to do the same ...
... our US commercial guys are taking it on the chin, and that is too bad ... but at the same time ... there is much more at play and it's a finite resource so there has to be some accountability for actions in not reserving what stocks we have left ... both locally and internationally ...
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