Diving a wreck off West Palm w/ my Son

[danvolker]

Spot on Dan. I think we can also thank Jaques Cousteau demonstrating to us how to treat the ocean then condemning all spearfishing and USDivers discontinuing their spearfishing product line.

I STILL REMEMBER reading the first Cousteu book, "the Silent World".... He was spearing in it, and free of the illness that would be associated with later actions.

There is one Tourism related issue that does need addressing....say you have a place that dive tourists would flock to in huge numbers.....the concentration of spearfisherman could be intense at such a spot, and this would be in no way, a natural relationship --- to the "natural" concentrations of humans in coastal areas. This is an "advertising based" concentration, and if we want to believe the "best" about the early Dive Marketers, perhaps this was the thinking they were going through, which led to the mistaken vilification. I think a far better solution, would be to make spearfishing a good thing in your local area, but if you travel to a tourism destination, only the locals can spearfish there--to avoid having hundreds of speafisherman on one reef in each day, and the decimation that an advertised and artificial concentration of divers could cause.
So for the traveling spearfisherman that really wanted to shoot on a vacation someplace they are not locals in---then you could have "a number" of special permits issued, that would be closely monitored by Fish and Wildlife, to ensure that the concentration of divers spearfishing over given reefs in each area, are not at levels that will cause overfishing. At a very popular destination, this might almost need to be a lottery....at less popular places with little chance of overfishing, it would be more about just buying a special license, so that the regulating agencies could maintain good data on the fish populations and stressors.

And then in this "perfect world scenario", we would all be launching a major campaign in Facebook and all places possible, to make commercial trawling/netting/long lining of fish be seen by consumers as a great evil, and we would do everything in our power to effect the way Seafood markets and grocery stores are able to get a way with selling irresponsibly harvested seafood.

Unfortunately, 99% of the divers on this board that will read this, will remain "functionally" apathetic to this issue.


Then, on the emotional issues for traveling divers.... Think of families that would hunt Deer or pheasants for food.....If they go to a beautiful National Park for a hiking trip, will the hunters be able to enjoy the sights without hunting?

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Wow... it was just one little snapper...

If people stopped eating wild caught shrimp, that would be extremely beneficial..