Kate Wing's Blog
There's gold in them thar streams
August 7, 2007
Posted by Kate Wing in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
In preparation for a talk I'm giving tomorrow night, I've been rereading the great book "The Fisherman's Problem," by Arthur McEvoy. It's a fabulous book, and if you like Doris Kearns Goodwin or Kevin Starr, I recommend tracking down a copy. It's actually the product of McEvoy's thesis research and it's an indispensable reference for anyone who works on fish in the west, or pretty much anywhere. Here's the passage that stopped me today, from a section about goldminers turning to salmon fishing when the gold dried up:
"A fish, however, is more than a gold nugget. It is part of a species - a coherent, self-perpetuating entity that works...Unfortunately for this particular species, its genetic program included instructions for collecting that accumulated food into a form, a salmon run, which happened to be convenient for the human economy to tap for it's own purposes." p.72
That's really the trick about catching, selling, and buying wild fish. They're not just gold nuggets you can pick up and sell, but complicated living creatures that depend on a web of environmental factors to survive. Even if you never caught a one, you couldn't guarantee that you'ld see the same number of fish in a river every year. Which can make it hard to plan a business.
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Pamela Gibb — Aug 8 2007 07:05 PM
Thank you for all your hard work Kate: Thought you might be interested in this new film about the shark and it's role in balancing the oceans eco-system.
www.sharkwater.com
The movie, Sharkwater, as spoken about on Larry King Live and The Today Show: A beautiful film pointing out the importance of the shark in balancing the earth's eco-system. 90 percent of the sharks are gone.
As part of the Biogems defenders and National Resource Defense Council, I ask you to please go to the above web site and help promote this beautiful and eye-opening film.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Pamela Gibb