Congresswomen Darlene Hooley and Nancy Pelosi, Senators Gordon Smith, Patty Murray, John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, Congressmen Pete DeFazio, David Wu, Sam Farr and Wayne Gilchrest, and many others are paying close attention. The rockfish crisis calls for bipartisan political action. The management challenge is to find solutions that protect these remarkable animals while respecting the needs of communities that depend upon the harvest from the sea. Here we clearly observe an economy wholly dependent on the environment. We are actually bumping up against the finite ability of the oceans to feed the people of this planet.
Fishermen are optimists.
Many think that some species will prove more abundant than presently believed. I hope they're right. The challenge to fishermen is to demonstrate that they can fish clean, bringing in abundant species efficiently while avoiding the rebuilding stocks. Getting the observer program operating will benefit both fish and fishermen. Fish ecologist Milton Love has dedicated much of his life to the study of rockfish.