Fish stocks, growth and sharing the water

I remember as kids it was always “not me” when parents asked who did something. We are so busy blaming the other side and fighting over fish stocks, we can’t see the forest for the trees. Are fish stocks important or is it just we want more? Or are all the fish just for us? Where do we start?

We all complain about less fish. Why do we have less fish? There are many reasons. Could 23 million residents, God knows how many part-time homeowners and about 150 million visitors be the problem? If we only take one fish each, that’s a lot of fish. Many visitors like to eat fish even if they don’t go fishing. Millions add up fast.

With recreational fishermen there are so many restrictions that discards and dying released fish can exceed the total allowable catch, shutting down harvesting. What is the answer? We need numbers on recreational fishing.

We have a few good fishermen, recreational guides and commercials that catch a large percentage of fish. We used to say 10 percent of the fishermen catch 90 percent of the fish. I’m guessing that still applies. More participation and better equipment also means more dead fish.

Skilled fishermen have unbelievably sophisticated equipment. Our boats fly around with powerful engines allowing us to reach everywhere faster. A hundred miles offshore is now common for many powerful fishing boats. We can return to a specific place within 25 feet or less anywhere in the world with GPS. We have electronics that allow us to sight-fish for a single marlin in the open oceans thousands of feet deep. We can sight-fish bass, snook and tarpon, and even individual fish and watch it bite. This is all before AI enters the picture. How can nature cope with our sophisticated advancements?

What is a fair chase?

Add extremely well-funded organizations with large full-time staff pushing their viewpoints and agendas, each fighting to protect what it has gained and fighting for more. When your job depends on success you do what you must to feed your family. The power feels good too. It’s not always working to save fish but to become more powerful and obtain more for themselves. We all understand money talks.

A huge challenge with red snapper commercials is the Individual Transferable Quota system. Fishermen are required to have a quota before they can land controlled fish. Most of this quota required to sell red snapper is controlled by investors and owners who have never fished. The reality is that the shareholders profit from the sales. Some fishermen do own shares and make money from these sales. Many fish brokers own shares and lease them to fishermen so the buyers get all your catch. Most boats don’t target red snapper because the shareholder makes about $5 per pound and fishermen get maybe $2. An important point is that most of our commercial fleets don’t depend on red snapper catches. It’s not profitable if you don’t own the shares.

Each camp believes that the other side is the problem. We spend our money, energy and effort fighting over fish rather than protecting them. It’s easy to blame the commercial or for-hire fleets, but they are accountable for every fish they catch. Some even have cameras to document all catches. We can only guess the number of fishing mortalities. How can we allocate with no accurate data to base harvest and management on?

We have water quality challenges that are ruining the waters fish live in. We are channeling runoff away from new developments and roads, dumping it into our waterways, and adding hundreds of thousands of homes and people then act surprised we have problems. We talk about advanced wastewater treatment but do not fund it. We have pharmaceuticals showing up in our fish yet do nothing to stop their release into the waters.

We alter salinity, clarity, nutrients, pollutants, habitats and wetlands, and act surprised when fish populations have problems. Maybe we need to take our collective heads out of the sand and open our minds and eyes. People are the problem. Al Scortino, a dear friend, wrote and recorded a song called “Human Hands.” It shares how we are destroying everything with our careless greed and rapid development. You might be able to find it on soundcloud.com.

Less can be more. Why sell multiple homes for a pile of money when we can sell one built within natural ways for the same amount? It’s more profit, less work, less developed land and less infrastructure. A winning idea. Most of the folks that buy the big-bucks houses don’t even spend very much time here.

I understand this will not be understood by many of you but just maybe a few smart, thoughtful people might get it. Please think about solutions, not Band-Aids. Let’s start with a more balanced, better lifestyle to protect more natural spaces, wildlife, green space and our way of life.

I still hear about climate change. Can you really convince yourself that destroying green spaces and replacing them with roofs, black-top roads and parking lots is not a problem? Blocking the dominant wind creates problems. High-walled buildings are a problem.

Along an always-changing coast, it is not a question of whether the shoreline changes dramatically, but when. Beach renourishment projects funded by already-strained local, state and federal governments can help slow erosion, but they do not permanently stop the forces of nature. Just look at our local coastline’s disasters after Helene and Milton. Long-time Florida residents understood these risks and were cautious about building too close to the open water’s edge.

Human hands created our problems. Can we still save our state and way of life from ourselves?

Capt. Van Hubbard’s column Hook, Line and Sinker began in the Boca Beacon in 1988. He lives in Placida. Email him at captvanhubbard@gmail.com