🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <215@garth.UUCP> phipps@garth.UUCP (Clay Phipps) writes:
>ries@venice.sedd.trw.com (Marc Ries) wrote:
>>
>>We are talking, per year, something on the order of 1 million birds, 
>>1/2 million seals, and 1/4 million dolphins dying 
>>because of ocean fishing practices.
>
>These are large numbers.  
>Can you supply references to substantiate them ?

One of the problems with getting accurate incidental kill numbers
is that the ocean is a big place.  Commercial fishermen can pretty
much say anything they want and you can't disprove it unless there
is something like a videotape record.  The following is an excerpt
from one of my fishing magazines:
-----
     ... in 1988 the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
awarded a contract to study the Washington/Oregon thresher
shark fishery to determine if a dirft gillnet fishery could
be developed...

     The overall program included a plan under which drift
gillnetters would be monitored by government observers to
see what was being caught in their nets besides the targeted
thresher sharks.  Of those net sets made during the program,
70% were actually monitored by the observers while the remaining
30% were left to the fishermen to report on in their log books.
The total number of threshers taken was 396 during the reporting
period.  During the time, the recorded "incidental" kill of other
marine animals included 700 unmarketable finfish, 13 leatherback
turtles, and 28 marine mammals including porpoises, seals, sea
lions, and a large whale .  Oddly enough, the 30% of the sets
that were unobserved accounted for only 7 incidental finfish,
5 of the mammals, and no leatherback turtles. ...
-----
I am wary of using second hand information as evidence and would
appreciate it if anyone can find the NMFS report for this project.
However, it should be obvious that falsifying recorded incidental
kills is ridiculously easy.

And it gets worse.  The DFG has just *two* boats capable of patrolling
the area around the LA-Long Beach-Catalina area (the Hammerhead and
the Marlin if you're curious).  Most sea mammals killed are reported
by private boaters.  And a lot are never seen (except by the fisher-
men responsible).
-- 
John H. Kim                 | (This space to be filled when I
jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu | think of something very clever 
uunet!jarthur!jokim         | to use as a disclaimer)