Sunday, December 10, 2006
Need for a new ocean stewardship…ours.
Recently, I learned of a campaign among Southern California divers to return very large lobsters, known as “monster bugs,” to the ocean after capture. A poster showing two very happy divers holding up extremely large lobsters advocating a catch and release ethic is circulating with the advice “IF you need to bring one up to prove you caught it, take a picture and then put it back into the ocean carefully. That will impress your friends far more than eating it!”
When I first saw this poster on line, I thought it was someone’s idea of a real bad joke. Incredibly, I found that it was not a joke. People are quite serious about this point. Somehow, they have deluded themselves that “catch and release” is somehow ennobling when it really amounts to stressing an animal for no reason other than ego gratification.
Let me state that I have no problem with sport divers, or commercial fishers, capturing and consuming lobster. Granted, scuba makes the taking of these critters less “sporting” than say, if one was breath-hold diving. I abhor poaching, taking of short lobster, diver who take more than their legal limit and distribute the excess to those less fortunate and those who do not consume what they capture.
The problem with “catch and release” of these lobster is that it dignifies what really amounts to “take and torture” removing the lobster from its water environment and placing it into an air environment. The suggestion to take pictures before magnanimously sparing its life seems a bit hideous. I am not sure what constitutes “putting it back into the ocean carefully.” It sounds like a euphemism for “after you take its picture, toss it over the side.” I have observed sheepshead trying to take a bite out of a lobster being held by a diver on the bottom at Anacapa Island. Tossing a lobster back into the water from the surface to let it fend for itself until it hits the bottom and finds a hiding place seems kind of cruel. If you are going to capture it, eat it, if you are not going to eat it, leave it alone. If you need to impress your friends with a picture of the lobster, I would suggest that either they or you need to find new friends.
In the book, Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness, author David Helvarg concludes “…an end to conflict of interest in our fisheries is not likely to be implemented until far more Americans who say they love the ocean decide to take more responsibility for its stewardship.” I am not quite sure that “take and torture” is the kind of more responsible stewardship he has in mind. What the advocates of “take and torture” suggest is a malignant mutation of the old saying “take only pictures, leave only bubbles.”
When I first saw this poster on line, I thought it was someone’s idea of a real bad joke. Incredibly, I found that it was not a joke. People are quite serious about this point. Somehow, they have deluded themselves that “catch and release” is somehow ennobling when it really amounts to stressing an animal for no reason other than ego gratification.
Let me state that I have no problem with sport divers, or commercial fishers, capturing and consuming lobster. Granted, scuba makes the taking of these critters less “sporting” than say, if one was breath-hold diving. I abhor poaching, taking of short lobster, diver who take more than their legal limit and distribute the excess to those less fortunate and those who do not consume what they capture.
The problem with “catch and release” of these lobster is that it dignifies what really amounts to “take and torture” removing the lobster from its water environment and placing it into an air environment. The suggestion to take pictures before magnanimously sparing its life seems a bit hideous. I am not sure what constitutes “putting it back into the ocean carefully.” It sounds like a euphemism for “after you take its picture, toss it over the side.” I have observed sheepshead trying to take a bite out of a lobster being held by a diver on the bottom at Anacapa Island. Tossing a lobster back into the water from the surface to let it fend for itself until it hits the bottom and finds a hiding place seems kind of cruel. If you are going to capture it, eat it, if you are not going to eat it, leave it alone. If you need to impress your friends with a picture of the lobster, I would suggest that either they or you need to find new friends.
In the book, Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness, author David Helvarg concludes “…an end to conflict of interest in our fisheries is not likely to be implemented until far more Americans who say they love the ocean decide to take more responsibility for its stewardship.” I am not quite sure that “take and torture” is the kind of more responsible stewardship he has in mind. What the advocates of “take and torture” suggest is a malignant mutation of the old saying “take only pictures, leave only bubbles.”
# posted by covediver @ 9:33 PM 
