THE INDIVIDUAL waterman seems headed in the same direction as the family farmer and may well reach extinction first. Both are being done in by huge industrial-style competitors that benefit from economies of scale. In the case of the watermen, though, the damage is even greater because giant fishing concerns are also wiping out the […]
Month: August 2005
Fervent ‘Striper’ may catch your fancy
If you thought that animals had to reach the level of your household dog or parrot on the evolutionary ladder to have appreciable brains, ”Striper Wars” will surprise you. Striped bass that once have escaped a fisherman’s hook learn from experience: If caught again, they’ll dive and scramble to wrap the line around a rock […]
Moratoriums for Rockfish, Geese — and Oysters?
Rich Roberts, who covered outdoors for the Los Angeles Times, quit years ago when every story he tackled turned into an environmental battle. Fishing and boating, camping and hiking lose their appeal, he said, when all you get are diatribes about declining resources, government inaction and corporate malfeasance, and it’s your job to ferret out […]
Menhaden catch capped in Chesapeake Bay
Atlantic states fishing regulators agreed Wednesday to cap industrial menhaden fishing in Chesapeake Bay for five years – a victory for recreational fishing and environmental groups, but one that could be challenged by a fleet that’s already been kicked out of New Jersey waters and other coastal states. Omega Protein’s net boats would be limited […]
De Machetes y Marsopas (About Machetes and Porpoises)
With unheard of ferocity, furtive hunters from the town of Santa Maria Tonameca, massacred 80 marine turtles on the beach of Escobilla, Oaxaca, one of the principal nesting sites for the Olive Ridley in Mexico, and in the world. Massive killings on this scale in the middle of the nesting season are bad news for […]
100 Writers Blooming Madly
“There’s only one thing the ruling class really wants: Everything.” M. Parenti “Since we seem to have landed in a battle, let us fight!” B. Brecht A warm night with a hundred writers in a theater on the Westside talking about the government. What are the chances? No, not your typical “writers room” this LA […]
An American Fish Story
Under the surface of the Bay, yesterday’s success story can turn into today’s failure I went to an interesting lecture the other night at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, featuring a fella named Dick Russell who just wrote a book called Striper Wars: An American Fish Story. Dick Russell is an unassuming amateur naturalist who grew […]
Fishy politics under water
Author and conservation activist Dick Russell’s last book, “Eye of the Whale,” told the story of the decimation and recovery of the California gray whale. He’s switched coasts to recount the efforts in the 1980s to bring back striped bass from near extinction along the Atlantic coast. This could be a dry tract on conservation, […]
Chesapeake Bay National Sanctuary — It Has a Nice Ring to It
Fifteen or 20 years ago I wrote a column urging William Donald Schaefer, then governor of Maryland, to do something bold if he wanted to leave a mark. Schaefer should climb to the top of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, that column said, and forever protect the troubled waterway by […]
Review: Striper Wars
The environment is one of those issues that can put to sleep the most troubled insomniac. Full of statistics, scientific jargon, and the kind of flora and fauna one would only expect to find at about 2 a.m. on the Discovery Channel, it’s hard for us to get excited about it. We know that we […]