Smarting Over Cod Shortages, Fishermen Blame Seals
The codfish catch is declining, and nets are coming up empty. What to do? For some, the answer is to kill the marine mammals that compete with humans for fish.
In Canada, where a resurgent population of Atlantic gray seals is being held responsible by fishermen for the failure of cod stocks to bounce back, the fisheries department’s Science Advisory Secretariat last year proposed an experimental cull of 73,000 of the 350,000 gray seals estimated to live on the country’s east coast.
Once valued for their oil, gray seals were nearly wiped out by hunting pressures, and the population has been rebuilding only slowly. There is very little commercial hunting of gray seals because there is almost no market for them, in contrast to baby harp seals, which have been prized for their fur (although that market is drying up).
But the seal’s gradual comeback has coincided with the collapse of what was once one of the world’s great fisheries, the Canadian codfish stock, which has been moribund since 1992. This environmental and commercial calamity cost thousands of people their jobs and decimated fishing communities. Some fishermen — and, conservationists argue, politicians pandering to them — see a zero-sum equation at work: more seals, fewer fish.
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http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/smarting-over-cod-shortages-fishermen-blame-seals/?src=recg
Same shit, different decade. I swear fishermen as a group are some of the dumbest people on earth. Farmers at least know not to destroy their land, or at least most do if they want to stay in business. Fishermen will happily destroy their resource, all the while blaming others for its destruction
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Years ago, I worked one summer as a cook on a salmon Purse Seiner fishing boat. (never again!)
What I personally witnessed:
If they can illegally poach fish, they will.
If they can catch the very last fish, they will.
They carry rifles, not only to shoot any animals they feel may threaten their catch (Orca whales, seals, sea lions, dolphins, whatever)
but also in case any "fish wars" break out between the fishermen themselves.
I witnessed them regularly dumping their garbage, trash and even engine oil overboard rather than pay to have it properly disposed of (fouling their own nest, anyone?).
A friend of mine who fished in Alaska, witnessed fishermen "bleaching" a river to turn the salmon heading up-stream back down the river into their waiting nets. (these guys were a particular "old country" ethnic group originally from the Mediterranean Sea area)
A large segment are superstitious to the point of being insanely irrational. They have superstitions about EVERYTHING.
Their superstitions can and do dictate how they conduct every aspect of their businesses and their lives.
They are likely to be hard-drinking, sexist, extremely religious and predominantly ReThuglicans.
They are also a dying breed....an aging, uneducated demographic, much like the Neanderthals of the past that they resemble.
dumb-asses.
ughhh...it's enough to make you 
