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| They are going, literally, to the ends of the Earth to catch a few tonnes of fish. |
Louis Shalako
Fishing
and sustainability.
With
global climate change, unregulated deep-sea fishing, ghost fleets and pure,
unadulterated human greed, fisheries will begin to crash. It has to happen—it
will happen, and it is happening.
(Please
don’t tell me ‘there are too many people in the world’, as if this offers any
kind of obvious solution. One which offers no support, no effort, not one iota
of sacrifice, from the likes of you. I will be honest, sir, one, just one, of
you is more than enough. You do acknowledge that you are assuming that you and your family will be among the last to be sacrificed.)
This
will happen all too soon, and to much apparent surprise from the folks who should have
known their own industry best. The cascade of effects which result from the
sudden and sustained loss of so much cheap, or even ‘free’ protein (what with
all that slave labour, surely the most inefficient form of labour of all,
although Sarnia City Councilor Bill Dennis may have an opposing opinion), will
have serious social consequences, in some cases leading to famine, which we
more normally associate with the failure of land-based cereal crops—surely not here, but somewhere else in the world.
Otherwise, we might have to do something to prevent it. A crash in fish stocks,
combined with a concurrent failure of cereal crops, will be catastrophic, and
no one is safe and no one will be immune from the consequences.
Naturally,
it will be the poor who suffer most, and the marginalized who are saddled with
most of the blame—the guys launching their boats into the surf off of West
Africa, and working for four dollars a day. They and their families are really
going to suffer.
I
used to love the Brunswick brand kippered snacks. These were ‘kippered’
herring, and they were wonderful with mustard, perhaps a little black pepper—to
pour a little liquid honey on there was something of a revelation.
My
buddy Gilmore introduced them to me, and he wasn’t even a Newfie. Back then, we
would experiment with peanut butter and mustard sandwiches, I kid you not.
Peanut butter and pickle, peanut butter and banana. You get the idea.
And
one day, they all disappeared, and you can’t get them anymore, and they have
never been seen on a grocery store shelf since then.
It
seems that the fishery had crashed, and herring was no longer on the menu.
In
this rather privileged marketplace, Sarnia, Ontario, most people eat a little
seafood on some regular basis. Yet the fish sticks have a sixteenth-inch slice
of actual fish, and the rest is all breading. It has become a heavily-processed
food. It ain’t exactly cheap either. I like my shrimp, I like my breaded
scallops, I have a few pan-sear frozen fillets in the freezer. Truth is,
they’re not very good. I fantasize about grabbing some of that wild-caught
fresh pickerel off the native guys. Just when I have the money, they run out,
and just when they have it, I run out…of money, I mean.
And
yet, I can also buy chicken, beef, pork, any number of foods to substitute. I can get a junior cheeseburger for three and
a half dollars. To us, fish and seafood is a kind of luxury, perhaps part of a
balanced diet. For too much of the world, fish is a vital staple of the everyday
diet. These are the folks who will be affected most.
The more privileged of us, will survive on chicken nuggets, Kraft dinner, and pizza pockets, and not only that, but we will look like it, too.
(And ketchup. Don't forget the ketchup. - ed.)
And the rest of the world ain’t much going to like it, either, going hungry, I mean.
Then there is the guy who spends thirty or forty grand on a boat, thousands on tackle, and he's a bit disappointed when he can't catch anything.
Where
there is famine, there is war, revolution, the mass migration of peoples…this
is what I mean by consequences.
***
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| BREAKING NEWS: in a heist worth an estimated $400.00, local fat guy swipes tin of sardines from food bank, uses parkour skills to escape. (Photo by Earl.) |
In
Maritime Canada, the cod fishery collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s. The
government put a moratorium on fishing for ground-fish. A people’s whole way of
life was threatened, (and Newfies are nothing if not people), and there was just a huge amount of angst. Estimates of
the fishery and its productive capacity were flawed, and one would think those
mostly affected, would have known better in some sense, in that catches were
collapsing, even as quotas remained the same or were even increased. This is
what happens when everybody in town wants some little piece of whatever action
there is.
The
only trouble is when the pie keeps shrinking…
Just
yesterday, at a conference of ministers of provinces and territories, the
Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador not very politely asked the federal
government to butt out of provincial affairs, specifically in regards to the
fishery…it’s not that they are incompetent when it comes to managing the
fishery. No, the real problem is that it is part of the commons, and of course
it must be destroyed as quickly as possible, for the greatest possible benefit
of the smallest number of ‘taxpayers’ and ‘stakeholders’, in the shortest possible time. And it will happen.
Oh—and
this is when they’ll be bitching and whining, pissing and moaning, and
wondering why the federal government—and the ‘taxpayers’ and ‘stakeholders’,
i.e., all the other Canadians whose only real interest is to eat a bit of
seafood once in a while, aren’t stepping up to the plate in our good, old-fashioned, highly-despised but still indispensable, socialist manner and help a poor old guy,
not very bright, but something of a cultural icon, ah, out.
Ladies
and gentlemen—the fisherman, an icon. Sacrosanct and beyond reproach, right.
And
tell me it isn’t true.
It
is also probably true, that for too many years and for too many people, fishing
represented cheap food and cheap protein and cheap profits. It was a cheap and
easy way to make a living, with romantic images of some Newf in a dory, hanging
out baited lines and hooks, pulling up a few ground-fish, (bottom-dwellers - ed.), cod and halibut and
the like, just like The Old Man of the Sea, and don't forget all of them National Film Board
documentaries, all of which were a kind of feel-good propaganda in their own right. And
one day, it was all gone.
***
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| Just trying to snag a salmon for the free bait... |
Years
ago, a guy called Swimmy and I went down to the banks of Cow Creek in Bright’s
Grove, Ontario. We were out for a crop-tour, and he was interested to see if
the trout were running, which happens in the autumn in the Great Lakes, as
opposed to springtime for Pacific salmon, for example. (Check this fact, Louis.
– ed.)
We
weren’t fishing, we were just having a look. It seems guys would try and catch
the run, and they would use the triple hook lures and stuff to snag spawning
adults. They would drag them ashore and smash them on the head, and then cut
out their guts, and take the roe—fish eggs, ladies and gentlemen, and that way,
they could dry them out, save them in baggies and film canisters, and get
themselves a couple of dollars’ worth of ‘free’ bait.
Swimmy
and I found a few dead fish, but we didn’t see any live ones in there, and one
sort of has to consider that a fairly small run of lake trout had been wiped
out at the breeding grounds.
Funny
thing was, no one ate those fish—all they wanted was the bait, the eggs, ladies and gentlemen.
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| Various species run at different times, ladies and gentlemen... |
***
The Bluewater Anglers have a hatchery, right on the waterfront by the water pumping station at the ‘mouth’, which is actually the effluent of Lake Huron, (it’s going out and not coming in), of the St. Clair River. (They call it the mouth, otherwise they'd have to admit it's the asshole). They raise and release thousands of fingerlings each year. It is a way of giving something back to the lake, the river, and the sport they love. That part seems all right. Yet one wonders what would happen if they stopped. Would the sport fishery in Lake Huron and the St. Clair River simply collapse? One would hope not, as this is kind of serious stuff. One also wonders how the commercial industry sustains itself, or how it hopes to do so, if they are not putting something back into the system…you know, when a simple tin of salmon is four or five dollars, perhaps even more for the premium brands in high-end grocers, it really should offer some kind of a clue.
So,
do we honestly believe that China needs to claim or conquer some obscure underwater
reef or shoals hundreds of kilometres outside of their legally-recognized
economic zone. Which just happens to be within, the economic zone of some other
nation, for example the Philippines. Of course not—it’s not about security or
sovereignty. It’s about claiming cheap protein as their own. It’s about feeding
one-point-four billion people cheaply, and remaining in power as the sole and
only source of authority, and stability, in a country that will quickly become
a powder keg as soon as the costs really begin to skyrocket.
This
would also have consequences.
And
our local commercial fishery, our local sport anglers would bristle with
indignation, at the suggestion that they weren’t doing everything in their
power, in order to sustain an industry and a sport they so profess to love.
That's probably true of the provincial government as well, and now MPP Bob Bailey, Conservative, is bristling with indignation. Well, you have earned it, sir.
As
for myself, I like to express an opinion once in a while, for example, when I
mentioned the challenges of reforestation here in southern Ontario.
END
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| I'll give you $240,000.00 for number six-forty-one... |
The Collapse of the Cod Fishery. (Wikipedia)
Purdy’s Fisheries, Sarnia, Ontario.
China Seizes Taiwanese Fishing Boat.
China Anchors Ship on Disputed Reef.
Indigenous-Led Watershed Initiatives.
Record Price for Tuna Approaches $800,000.00. That's one tuna.
The Challenges of Reforestation. Article Briefly Mentions Stream Rehabilitation. (Louis Shalako)
Undamming the Klamath River and What Happens Then.
Record-Breaking Heat. Climate Change is Real. (CBC)
Illegal Stocking of Remote Lakes Destroys Ecosystems.
First Person: The Collapse of the Cod Fishery. (CBC)
Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Google Play.
See his works on Fine Art America.
Thank
you for reading.
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