Lobster boat help?

[Riverjim]

Originally Posted by 47onthewall

Oddfish hit it right on the screws. Enviros will use the right whales to end ALL commercial fishing, and when the last boat is tied up they will move on to something else. Do you really think they will do anything positive to help a species that is on its way out? They probably harbor deep seated guilt that their great grandfathers were whale barons who hastened the demise of this race and now want to make today's fishermen pay. They need to tread softly, because when you take away a person's livelihood and identity they haven't got anything left to lose.

This subject has been so heated over the years because both sides of the argument often have valid points. For someone like Pete, who's liveing is based on wise decisions, the consequenses from incorect actions can be devastating.

Lets take one recent environmental happening in the last few decades, The resurging populations of ossprey and eagles. You asked "Do you really think they will do anything positive to help a species that is on its way out?" Well with all due respect, that could have been the feeling of many farmers in the country, when it was proposed to ban DDT, But retrospectivly it was a good thing to be able to save those species from the brink of extinction. The congress is made up of 22 farming States, or 44 Senate seats representing farming interests, yet the farmers had other alternative forms of pesticides available...I guess my question would be, how can you protect the whale from the brink of extinction while at the same time protecting the fishermans livelyhood? In my humble opinion it should not be a one or the other sollution, but how to do both....

Oh, and btw, It is good to see you back 47. It had been kind of quiet in your neck of the woods recently.

[47onthewall]

Jim, the lobstermen have been saddled with increasingly burdensome regs for the last ten years for little benefit other than making the greenies feel like they are accomplishing something. What purpose does it serve to make gear "whale safe" in the Piscataqua River and Great Bay? They have mandated a ban on floating groundlines so now fishermen on hard bottom have to spend dollars they don't have for sinking rope that snag bottom and reults in "ghost gear" littering the bottom. Their policy makers now have a stated goal of removing all vertical lines, connecting bouys to traps, within ten years. You cannot conduct a trap fishery on a commercial scale for lobsters with some sort of James Bond style electronically deployed bouy when a fisherman arrives at his trap. Educate yourself by picking up a copy of Commercial Fisheries News to see how far the other way the scale is tipped. Oh yeah, and the Navy can kill as many whales as neccessary to keep their sailors sharp in training exercises (high-powered sonar is bad for marine mammals). When a species is at such low population levels that it can't find enough mates to successfully increase its numbers it is on its way out. I would have liked to see a wooly mammoth somewhere besides the Discovery Channel but its time came and went,and I don't feel guilty our ancestors ate them.

[Merrillizer™]

Oh boy, this is some serious Thread Hijacking!

Start yer own threads!!!

[47onthewall]

Anybody know this "Merrilizer" dude? Is he a newbie?

Nice to hear from you, fearless leader!

You know us older guys are easily sidetracked. Sidetracked? I once saw a track on the side of Mt. Pisgah that me and Nate followed 'til almost dark and...

Point taken, Jon. Hope your roomie gets a job.

[Riverjim]

Sorry Merrilizer, you are right.

Good points there 47. I agree the radical idea of making gear whale safe in the Bay is a joke, and is what I meant about radical ideas giving the environmentalists a bad name. On the other hand, I hope a solution would be there for both sides of the argument. It is not good to just say F it to the whales either...Only 417 breeding pairs of Eagles were left before the banning of DDT, and it could have been argued that their numbers were too low to save them also. but today there are almost 10,000 breeding pairs...This would not have been done without good stewerdship of the environment.

Saving Our Symbol: The Bald Eagle's Path to Recovery - National Zoo| FONZ

Bald eagle soars off endangered list - CNN.com

We need more articulate people such as yourself to look for a compomise that will protect both the fisherman and the species...Radicall ideas just make the division deeper, and result in people holding steadfast to their viewpoints rather than looking for attainable solutions...I will look at the commercial fisheries news to better understand your position. Thank you for the recomendation.

Once again sorry merrill, I will keep my ears open for your friend.

[HarryG]

I like cheeseburgers.

[oddfish]

Merrillizer,

The guys I checked with today are set for now, sorry, I will keep my ears open.

Oddfish

[oddfish]

now back to hyjacking,

Now that the coffee has worn off allow me to explain a little more rationally. I think envirtonmentalist are great, we need everyone to be one, but what we have today are people who call themselves enviromentalist that have no Idea what ecology is all about much less how humans interact with it.
Then on the back side of that there are the WOLVES (sierra club chuckle butts, etc) who in the begining may have actually had a good cause, but today they only stand for causing as much trouble as possible for any industry or individual who wishes to use the enviroment in any way shape or form.

We can't take whitewater kayaks through yosomite because its bad for the enviroment (how? We don't stop, we don't litter, unless we break our boat in half, our impact is minimal we are a feather on a river we leave no foot print), but no that is bad. The stated goal for ground fishing is to remove 1/3 of the boats, not to save cod by indivdual quotas. Set the limit at 800# of cod and then go out and tow for two hours kill 2000-4000# of cod take 800 and throw the rest back, how the hell does that make the enviroment better.
a man in calif grows readwoods on his own property for his grandchildresn education money. when it comes time to harvest the "ENVIROMENTALISTs" step in an say no that is an endangered species you can't cut them down. And an A-hole liberal Judege in Sanfrancisco agrees WTF, remember the guy owned the property and planted his OWN trees and lost, again WTF.
And lets not leave out the flawed otter trawls that all the groundfish reports were based on and the judge agreed that they were flawed, but since there was no other data they could use the flawed data, again WTF.

Point being these people are not true enviromentalist they are loser idiots that have nothing better to do than be a thorn in scocieties side.

I think we shoud all be enviromentalist, and I think that most of us are, but these people that make the news are just sad sad people who don't belong on an enviromental pannel.

These people don't understand that things evolve and that we are part of the ecosystem, we cannot be taken out of it. We will inadvertanlty kill off some species, we do that. much of it could be stopped but we are greedy by nature and you can't stop greed by laws, maybe just maybe by education, but laws will just be broken.

OK I'm done for a while

Oddfish