Fishing Culture Bygone?

I am dumbfounded by the abject lack of humanity demonstrated by the nonprofits, university heads, and aquariums who are the backbone of the Marine Protected Areas (MPA) law. Their promised socio-economic studies have failed to materialize, while they divide tens of millions of our tax dollars for their pet projects. They have trampled on our Constitutional rights and decided that fishermen are less important than their tax-dollar-driven agendas.

Fishermen are among the most decent and interesting group of people I know. I consider them the true endangered species.

It is not the MPA concept that we fear, it is the fact that a non-elected group of people have hijacked our system to hugely expand government, which now will do their bidding. If the eco-community continues to refuse to weigh the human and moral cost of their often non-reality-based blueprints for our society, I fear that they will encourage a backlash and undo all of their hard work.

Killing the culture of fishing will destroy a vast reservoir of wisdom which so many fishermen have: When one hunts in the ocean, it engenders a certain non linear form of thinking that opens up mental pathways which results in deep and meaningful wisdom. It is lack of true wisdom that has created the current conflicts over the MPAs.

It is my hope that we can now work on reconciliation and put together a massive, reality-based, artificial reef project. We can make an entire second row of reefs along the coast for sea bass, lobster, abalone, rockfish—all while preserving human freedom. Long live a free ocean!