sturgean fishing prist point

[CatyMae n Steve]

[Sea Wolf]

No doubt about it, the sea lions have become a major nuisance and cause of our fishing resource losses. The Marine Mamals Act combined with the sea lion's big eye appeal, especially to the touchy-feely crowd and to the overboard enviornmental folks have made them a real PITA.

The commercial fishermen down here would love to shoot as many of them as possible with the 30-30's they usually carry on board if only they could. Most of us who fish for salmon have also experienced the ending of a good hook-up only to find just the head of the fish left on the line after a sea lion took the rest for itself!

Unfortunately, these problems are more complex than just to have a simple, one cause, one cure, easy fix structure. This is too bad, otherwise we could simply string up the one group responsible and have the problem solved!

There are probably 25, 50, or 100 interrealted causes of the loss of fishing resources. While we often look to a 1-2-3 cause-effect-solution type explanation to justify our own conclusions about what we think ought to be done to solve the problem, the truth is far more complicated, and the cure sometimes seeminly beyond our control.

Problems like this, instead of having a short, linear cause-effect-solution structure, are much more like a big complex three dimensional lattice work of interconnected causes and effects that look more like a web of interactions.

All this makes the understanding and control of such problems and their various issues enormously complicated, and often seemingly beyond control. But the bottom line is that each person, interest group, and governmental body must assume responsibility for their section of the web if any progress is to be made at all, least we give up all together and suffer the loss of everything we want to save.

These webs of cause-effect relationships also have many dimensions: social, cultural, biological, legal, geographical, economic, and territorial, among others. Careful study often reveals that the economic causes are fundamental in many cases, e.g., who wants what for themselves.

Too bad personal greed is such a major factor in our basic behavior, but it's a basic factor in human endeavors.

All of this is not to spread dispair about the conservation of our fishing resources, but to help put the various problems and their solsutions into proper perspective when viewed as a whole, and to encourage each individual to assume responsibility for their share in protecting the neighborhood for all. We're all in this together, it's only one world, one Mother Earth to share together in the end.

Joe.

[timetofish]

Ever since the U.S. banned inporting caviar from Russia until they figure how to maintain their stocks the poaching here has gone hay wire. I'd say 3 out of 4 poaching rings that do get caught around here are traced back to Russian deli's who sell the caviar on the black market.

[starcrafttom]

Anlee. Yes I do. If you look back at the history of the sturgeon stocks you will see two periods of decline. At the turn of the last century sturgeon stock were well on their way to being depleted. Large sturgeon were caught in nets and sold to canneries as a commercial fishery. Few if any people ate them at the time. Why would you when salmon was easy to get. Most of the sturgeon were sold for dog food or dried fish. It was not until we discovered that it’s the biggest sturgeon that produces the most eggs that rule where in acted, about 1978. I think. A female will not start to produce until she is about 30 to 50 years old, about 76 inches. Once they reach 10 ft they really kick in and can produce millions of eggs a year. This is why the slot limit was put in to effect. You can only keep fish between 42 and 74 inches (differs state to state by a few inches) once this was established the numbers slowly grew until about 15 years ago. Then they took a down turn. First in California and then on the big c. that’s when the Russians started to move in to the sac valley. Now the Russians are great people, I have worked with more then a few in the concrete field, but they come from a culture were you just go fishing. No rules, limits, or licenses. I have watched them take home 10 salmon on the Feather River when it was closed. Stripers that are under sized by the boat full. If you tell them they are breaking the law they stop speaking English or threaten you. I have called the ca. D.F.G. on many of them and others, I hate poachers. A warden told me that they hate to write them tickets because they tell the judge they do not know the rules and get off. Then you see then on the river at it again the next day. To add to this is the caviar poacher. As several million Russians moved into the west coast the demand for caviar skyrocketed, as did the price. Add too this the ban of Russian caviar and you have a supply demand problem that’s just ripe for the black market and Hugh profits. Just like when Canada raise the price of a pack of smokes to $10, every retired American that crossed the border to go R.Ving carried the maximum amount of smokes allowed by law so they could sell them up north and the black market smuggled the rest. Where there is a demand there is a supplier. The millions of Russians that miss the caviar of their homeland are demanding it and most don’t think that the caviar at the corner store in Russian labels is poached but their wrong.