Zoned to Extinction

Overzealous regulation may soon render commercial fishermen a dying breed

Sean Paige from the October 2001 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

Fishermen make the following, experience-based observations to challenge what they see as a windy academic theory. First, a lot hangs on the unique characteristics and habits of the fish you want to catch. For instance, territorial species that spend their lives on a reef aren't going to suddenly leave en masse for open water, where they can fall into the waiting nets of fishermen. And highly migratory species passing through seasonally aren't likely to settle down and retire to a fishing-free reef, escaping capture. As anyone who's ever put a hook in water knows, fish (like fishermen) tend to congregate in certain areas (reefs, wrecks, humps, walls, etc.) and are unevenly distributed throughout the seas. Making these crowded areas off limits to fishermen may affect their numbers, but likely will not alter the overall distribution of fish.

So one of the basic ideas behind MPAs is mistaken. When the Tortugas zone was first proposed as part of a Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary management plan, it was billed as a "replenishment reserve," a name suggesting that it would somehow repopulate the seas. But that name was dropped after sanctuary officials were pressed on the specifics of how this "replenishment" would occur, an acknowledgment that the term and, by extension, the concept, was spurious.

Perhaps more important, the whole exercise skirts the most fundamental issue, according to many fishermen I spoke with. The question isn't whether you will have more fish if you stop fishing (common sense tells us that's so), but how you can have sustainable fish stocks and sustainable fishermen, too. The traditional, species-based approach to fisheries management, though it functions imperfectly, is at least based upon established procedures, benchmarks, methods, and decades of trial and error. It is also based on the assumption that we can adequately negotiate between our desire to eat fish and our desire to preserve species. No-take zones, by contrast, represent a radical departure, based on immature and uncertain science, which will have a direct and detrimental effect on the fishermen being displaced.

"It is a fad, but it is being effectively campaigned by national environmental groups that have gotten a lot of foundation money to promote this," says Ted Forsgren, spokesman for the Florida chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association, a group representing saltwater sport anglers. "The label 'marine protected areas' is false advertising, camouflaging what's really going on, which is the creation of no-fishing areas. And when they talk about prohibiting fishing in just 20 to 30 percent of the ocean, what they're not saying is that these are the areas that have all the fish."

Though President Bush vowed that he would not be formulating policy based on environmentalist "fads," he seems to be giving in to this particular craze. He recently announced that he would not be reversing the last-minute Clinton administration executive order that called on federal agencies to develop a national system of MPAs. In June, Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans took a trip to California, where a no-fishing zone is being proposed near the Channel Islands, over the objection of commercial fishermen. Evans not only signaled that the Bush administration would continue to implement Clinton's executive order, but announced $3 million for scientific research in support of the concept. Evans specifically lauded the Tortugas Reserve as a model that should be followed elsewhere, as has the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Neither paid any mind to the concept's potentially devastating impact on Watkins and fishermen like him.

When the Tortugas no-take zone became law July 1, Harvey Watkins and at least two dozen Tortugas fishermen lost large parts of the fishing grounds it took them decades of hard experience to master. "They just took half of my livelihood," Watkins says. "I've got a lot of people here who count on me for support." Now Watkins will have to place more of his traps near shore ("Where I first started fishing 27 years ago," he says), inviting gear conflicts with boats already established in those areas, or even further out at sea, exposing himself and his crew to even greater hardships and dangers.

At night on the water, with the mates asleep, not a light on the horizon, and an anchorage at Fort Jefferson still a long hour away, Harvey Watkins' usual mood of manic defiance gradually yields to sadness and resignation as he ponders the government's apparent antipathy toward his chosen way of life.

"When I was a kid growing up in the '50s, I used to watch Westerns, cowboys and Indians, and I sided with the cowboys, like all the rest of the kids," he says, peering through the darkness for some sign of safe anchorage. "I've been reading lately about the Indians and how they were treated, and today I feel more like an Indian. Today, as an Indian, I say, 'To hell with the cowboys.'"