Put it this way, really simple, the more you fish/harvest, the more you get? Yes, up to a point, then the cost/effort ratio starts to rise dramatically. If more and more pressure resulted in more and more fish, that might work as to "more', but that's not reality. We'd still have all those buffalo and passenger pigeons, yes? More pressure and rising demand and the free market made more of them? Where are they? Well, no, it didn't, obviously. same deal with wild fish stocks. If you carried that to it's logical ends, then an unlimited number of boats fishing in an unlimited fashion would just create "more' fish, from market demand? How, magic?
An example, a very easy to understand analogy. I have a garden, if I go out and pick all the carrots today, or most of them, that means there's magically "more" carrots tomorrow than today because of my personal "market demand"? Or am I going to have "less carrots"? My free market harvesting pressure increases, where's my extra carrots? As far as I know, the carrots can't just be harvested to ininity out of a finite spot, they have to be nutured, controlled, and worked as an energy effort in--> to get food <-- out in order to be "more" carrots. If I just harvest-forage, gather, "fish" my carrot stocks "only"- more and more, I get less carrots until there aren't hardly any left.
Just so happens I did this yesterday, got the last dozen or so from last years beds, now there are "no" carrots left in the garden here. I have over fished them to extinction in my finite sized garden. yes, I know someone else could grow them, that's the point-there's a huge difference between harvesting/foraging/fishing/hunting and growing things as a controlled agriculture deal. A really big difference.
I thought this would be a good analogy. Commercial fishing is *not* agriculture, it's just scavenging, or foraging on a large and increasingly technologically sophisticated scale. It IS possible to over-forage, any crop you might care to look at or name, ocean or land.
And ya, I lived in new england for a spell, the lobstermen I talked to then were already grumbling about it. You go out now try to start to be a lobsterman, chances are one it would be illegal, and two, the other guys would shoot ya on the first foggy night they could get away with it, because the stocks are dwindling and they want to protect their harvesting turf.
I think both political extremes are dangerous. Total control via some world bodies with one world government agendas is nuts, but to go to the opposite extreme and say *no* control is warranted is silly. that's one of the reasons the radical extreme enviros got such political power eventually in this country, because the conservatives back then simply would NOT concede the tiniest point on conservation and pollution, etc. they wouldn't do it, despite the evidence that there is and was some validity to it. When their arguments got looked at by most people years ago when it came to environmental issues and the total denial that there were any of note, they got abandoned by millions who went on and started a much larger and impractical environmental movement, now look what we have, the opposite extreme has taken over, they run the show now, that's obvious.
Extremists-on either side of most issues- always create extreme situations, but the extremism results when common sense moderation is ignored in favor of short term financial or political "profit".
I hope this makes some sense, I tried. Not meaning to be a flame effort or anything. Look at the political damage done when "offical" organised conservatives abandoned conservation, and denied there was any pollution. Wham, we got nailed with millions of people going over to the other side, where they got used-and still are- as useful idiots. We lost tons of suport, and in the critical areas of the young people. Instead of having allies, we now have millions of people who only think of conservatives as narrow minded bigots who deny any sort of resource exploitation or pollution happens, when it didn't have to happen in the first place. We traded some short term profits based on real world denial for long term political loss. Fishing is just part of it, it's all mixed in together.
For my loot, I think it's better to concede early on on some rational points and not let the extremists short term profiteers call the shots constantly, it works out better in the long run. That's just my opinion on it. The bulk of the people in this country are NOT represented by the viewpoints on either dorks unlimited forum, or free reublic. Most people are in the middle on these issues, and can see where reality is in most cases. There's a need for environmental regs, in a lot of instances not as much as we have, but then again, right now, without *any* do you think there would be any clean aquifers left around most places?
I live on a decent sized spread, -theoretically speaking only- if I go out tomorrow and just start blasting all the deer here, just keep popping them and giving the meat away, how long before I only have one or none? Will my market pressure increase the deer herd size? Temporarily it will *look* like that is happening, it will look like by golly there's just more and more deer, I could easily go from one deer hanging to a dozen deer, could even have more hunters show up and harvest more deer, it would certainly appear like there's a lot of deer, because I'll quickly have dozens of deer hanging to look at and count up the lbs of meat, but that will only last a short time until the "collapse" of the herd will be dramatic and sudden.
I THINK this is what this original article is saying. It's a very similar situation, only the scale and importance is different. It's an extremely large scale, and it's globally important.
You may be right about lobsters being smaller and being taken younger and younger than before, but I was just trying keep the lobster discussion seperate from the commercial fish discussion.
I believe that Federal regulation of the oceans, rivers and lakes has been a disaster and we need to try a different way. "Physicist" had the most intriguing idea discussed on this thread, trying to figure out a way for indivduals or corporations to take ownership of certain areas that are now viewed a "communal." Like private game preserves or private stewardship of forests there would be an an incentive to protect and manage private property. The problem with Government regulation is that they only respond to political pressures from a wide myriad of pressure groups. One need only look at how much better private enterprise manages their forests compared to the massive government forests.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm going to re-read your intriguing ideas later when I have a bit more time.