Kate Wing's Blog
The great white whales
August 24, 2007
Posted by Kate Wing in Reviving the World's Oceans
The other weekend we found ourselves caught up in "The Company," which isn't a very hard sell for me since I grew up in the DC area and had a lot of friends whose fathers worked for "The Government" and had to travel to mysterious locales for long periods of time. "The Company" is about the CIA in the 1950s and it has a lot of shots of men sitting around long tables, talking earnestly. Since it's a drama, they've cut out all the inevitable conversations about typewriter purchase orders and George's analysis applying game theory to the economic system in Panama. Because you know they had to talk about those things. What struck me after the third or fourth table conversation was how you could add a few pounds and twenty years onto the guys around the table and that would pretty much be the world I work in today. Fisheries management in the U.S. is still essentially a lot of white guys sitting around a table talking.
Now, people are going to want to point out the exceptions and yes, in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands you have a broader group of folks at the table. Some fishery management councils have a dedicated tribal seat, and more and more women are coming up the ladder as scientists, advocates, and lawyers. I'm lucky to work with seven of them here at NRDC. But often we're the only women in the room, or the youngest person in the room, or both. If you're someone who actually attends these public meetings, be honest here. The faces in those hotel ballrooms don't reflect the community I see fishing off the local pier on the weekends, or even the faces in the California Legislature.
The lives of fish may be free, but the way we catch them is highly structured. That management structure has changed little since it was created in the 1970's as a way to promote fishing in the U.S. and keep foreign boats out of our waters. The goals have evolved but the players are much the same, as former Gulf Council member James Fensom found out after two terms. He declined to be appointed by then-Governor Jeb Bush to a third, saying that Council members with direct financial interests in the decisions they were making never recused themselves from a vote and made decisions that "strain all logic and applicable science."
One of the Council members I like the most just finished his third term of his third set of terms. That is, you get three consecutive terms (3 x 3 = 9 years total) and then you have to take a break, but you can come back for more later. He's been on a Council for half of my lifetime. And he's a good guy. But I would love to see some new faces up at that table, maybe faces of people who eat fish or just like fish or just like to solve a good problem. We need new blood here in fishworld. It's not really all that complicated, any more than learning C++. Just ask, and I'll give you the tour.
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Comments
Mark Powell — Aug 25 2007 01:01 AM
Is it the faces, or the decisions that are the problem? Oh, maybe you're suggesting that they're linked? Something like the same tired faces making the same tired decisions?