In the 1970s, the pollock industry in Alaska expanded to become the largest fishery in the world. Around the same time, sea lions began to disappear. Despite other possible factors — such as pollution, humpback whales depleting their main food sources, or predation by killer whales — many people thought the fisheries had been caught with the smoking gun. After a July 2000 ruling by the Federal District Court, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that it would close all fishing of pollock, Pacific cod, and Atka mackerel in a large part of the sea lions’ critical habitat. But what were the costs of this decision? And is the solution to disappearing Steller’s sea lions really that simple?
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If the herring fisheries have so depleted in Japan, what has been the effect on their sea lion population?
My Grandfather, when he was a live and working in the fishing industry in England, was a Marine Engineer on the “drifter” fishing boats in the North Sea just about 80 or 90 years ago. he used to say that the boats were so nurmerous you could walk from river bank to river bank when they came into port to off-load their catch of herring. He maintained that what killed the herring industry in the North Sea was over-fishing and enspecially trawling.
If we can bail out the car companies why can’t we ban fishing for three years and subsidise the fishermen until the herring come back?
I was raised on herring and love it but no one here sells it.