Are You There Cod? It’s Me, Niaz

Niaz Dorry, Clean Catch.

What are three things that consumers can do to help promote healthy oceans?    — Kristin Deason, Arlington, Va.

1. Think globally, but eat fish locally.

2. Don’t expect the same seafood item year-round.

3. Advocate for policy changes that take into account the entire marine ecosystem and give preference to small-scale fishing operations over industrial/factory-scale operations and aquaculture.

The lobster industry in Maine polices itself, for example, by throwing back lobsters less than a certain size. How do you feel about self-governing management styles?    — Bruce Wiggins, Kansas City, Mo.

I am a big believer in self-governance and community-based management. I believe the biggest ecological value of small-scale fleets is their inherent connection to their communities and their realization that it comes with certain responsibilities. One of the most important lessons I learned when spending time on fishing boats was that the person who catches the fish — or in the case of the Maine example, the lobster — is as important, if not more so, than how much they are told to catch by regulation. The reality is that once the boat leaves the dock, the captain’s integrity is the No. 1 thing we have to count on.

Anyone interested in learning more about Maine’s lobster industry’s traditional self-policing practices should read The Lobster Gangs of Maine by James Acheson.

Were you living in Gloucester when The Perfect Storm came out? What did you think of the book? What did the people you work with think about it?    — Name not provided

I was indeed living in Gloucester when The Perfect Storm came out. In fact, when Warner Brothers’ scouts came to town looking for a location, they ended up choosing my office, which was on Gloucester’s waterfront at the time. What you see in the movie as the Crow’s Nest — the bar where a lot of scenes take place — is actually a wrap-around structure surrounding part of that office. I still kick myself for not taking the toilet seat from our office, framing it, and putting a plaque underneath that said “George Clooney Peed Here” to auction off at the benefit following the premiere. We could have raised a load of cash (pun intended!).

Personally, I liked the book more than the movie. Some of the fishermen I work with didn’t like the whole movie idea, particularly the resurrection of a ship that had gone down at sea, taking with it their friends. Some fishermen have told me they would never see the movie as it all felt too spooky, as if they were watching a ghost.

How does being a woman working in a male-dominated profession help and/or hinder your work?    — Name not provided

In many parts of the world, women dominate the business and political end of fishing while the men catch the fish.

Personally, I’ve learned to distinguish between those who think they can use the gender issue to intimidate me from those who are simply uncomfortable with having women around when they work because it’s just not in their culture. I’ve learned to be amused by and ignore the former while gaining respect for the latter. But I don’t let either group keep me from what I need to do. It does mean challenging their comfort zones now and then, but then again I’m challenging my own comfort zone every time I have to pee in a bucket on a small, open-deck fishing boat with an all-male crew walking about me.

How do you deal with difficult and possibly dangerous confrontations with people who don’t agree with you (like the fisherman at the council meeting that almost hit you)? Do you carry any weapons (physical, verbal, or otherwise)?    — Name not provided

I’m committed to nonviolence, which means shunning verbal, psychological, or other weapons. I believe it’s my best weapon in the midst of difficult and possibly dangerous situations. The only weapons I carry are my knowledge of the situation and my convictions, and I believe proper use of both can be quite disarming to the other side.

But I am no saint and do get tempted. During those times, I try to practice silence — an often underused “weapon” in this age of verbal one-upman(or woman?)ship. The fisherman in Alaska finally got tired of yelling at me without getting a rise out of me, so after about five minutes or so, he stopped and just walked away. At which point, I decided it was time for a whiskey!

I also recall once when the representative for a factory trawler we had beat said to me, “is it polite to punch a lady in the nose?” I told him I was always ready for the consequences of my actions, so he should take his best shot. He also walked away.

How do you see taking an agency such as NOAA Fisheries from a single-species management focus to embracing an ecosystem approach?    — Bruce Wright, Conservation Science Institute, Wasilla, Alaska

A truly ecosystem-based approach starts with requiring fishermen to bring everything they catch to shore rather than only what’s marketable, so we can get a good sense of what’s out there. This one requirement alone would be way too restrictive and cost too much for the industrial fishing operations who’d rather fill their hulls or fish farms with only commercially valuable fish even though the ocean carries more than that. The versatility of a small-scale fleet is necessary for ecosystem management to work. But claiming they have invested millions in their boats or fish pens, the industrial fishing interests argue for their interests at the expense of the marine ecosystem and the small-scale fleet.

Frankly, there is a need for a nonviolent revolution within the Fisheries Service and many other public agencies that have lost focus. I believe egos are in the way of change, as agencies might have to fess up that there is a need for change in the fundamental way they operate. It often means admitting that their old system was flawed to begin with, and that’s never easy. In addition, there is a need to limit the power of the political arms of agencies such as the Fisheries Service. In my opinion, they are too wedded to the status quo.

Fishing is often mentioned as an example of the “tragedy of the commons”: People will overuse a resource that is held in common, in this case the oceans, because the individual appropriates the gain but the costs are spread over the community. How do you and your fishermen address this, if at all?    — Bruce Wiggins, Kansas City, Mo.

The tragedy of the commons is often used by those who are looking to privatize the oceans through individual fishing/transferable quotas so they can acquire permanent ownership over stocks of fish in perpetuity. They claim that with ownership comes stewardship. Having watched the kind of “stewardship” they are referring to practiced by agribusiness, and what they have done to the land and our food supply, I’m not that excited about giving ownership of the fish and the oceans to another industrial food-production model.

I believe the tragedy of the commons applies to fishing only when you separate the community from the fisherman — which is the case for industrial fisheries. In small-scale fishing communities, the fishermen feel the cost both their real and virtual communities bear.

The industrial fleet has no incentive to prevent overfishing as they can use their fiscal and physical mobility to go elsewhere to look for fish, while the small-scale fleet’s incentive is keeping their families and communities together. While the cost of overfishing to an industrial vessel is the fuel and political favors they have to buy to find fish in some other part of the world, to small-scale fishermen it means watching their communities turn into ghost towns or tourist resorts, their young people moving farther from home to get good jobs, and going farther to sea to catch enough to pay the bills — none of which they find palatable.

Unfortunately, these issues aren’t addressed in current fishery management formulas, which are in dire need of change. The fishermen I work with are focused on showing the ecological value of small-scale fishing and ensuring that fishery managers find a way to quantify their benefits to the larger community — including the one living below the waves …

You mention that the “which fish to eat” guidelines pose ecosystem-wide problems while trying to protect certain species. Given that, what would you recommend for conscientious fish-eaters who like to eat seafood once in a while but don’t have time to follow the intricacies of the current situation?    — Name not provided

The reality is that fish isn’t the only food, and fishing practices aren’t the only practices that we need to think about. We need to think critically on multiple levels and as a global population. To that end, I believe people need to be given the tools to ask the right questions, if for no other reason than to practice critical thinking and decision making. Therefore, instead of telling people what fish is “green” enough to eat, I like to offer some general points to keep in mind when making seafood choices, such as:

• Eat wild fish.

• Avoid farmed (aquaculture) seafood.
• Avoid overly processed, preformed seafood products (such as the most popular brands of fish sticks or squares found in the freezer sections of your food stores or at fast-food chains), and imitation seafood (such as fake crab or lobster).
• Ask how, where, and when your fish was caught — if the server or retailer can’t tell you, don’t buy or order it.
• Buy locally and from small-scale seafood producers — this also allows you to “eat in season” to the extent possible.

I’ve heard that restaurants make up names for fish to make them sound tastier. Is this true? — Name not provided

I don’t know how rampant the practice is, but Chilean Sea Bass is one of those made-up names — the fish is actually Patagonian Toothfish, an endangered fish found in the southern oceans. If you see it on a menu or at your favorite seafood market, don’t order or buy it as it’s almost guaranteed to be illegally caught by pirate ships. Instead, find the chef/manager and nonviolently read him/her the riot act for supporting an illegal fishery that not only harms fish, but puts those fishing legally at a competitive disadvantage.

As an activist dedicated to preserving the ecosystems that nourish us, I wonder, what do you consider the perfect meal?    — C. C., Mount Rainier, Md.

My perfect meal was a couple of years ago. While sitting down to dinner with some friends, we discovered that we could literally identify the source of 95 percent of what was on the table. In this day and age, when most of the time we can’t even recognize the food we are eating, much less know where it came from or how it was produced, that was an amazing meal!

What’s the state of the world’s fisheries? What fisheries are in the best shape? Which ones are in the worst? In other words, will there be fish for dinner?    — William Vesneski, Portland, Ore.

It depends whose dinner we are talking about. I’m just as concerned about the cod’s dinner of herring or menhaden as I am an indigenous person’s need for muck-tuck (whale blubber) or an average American’s taste for a salmon fillet or the subsistence fisher’s catch to feed his/her family. Our responsibility is to make sure there is food available for all the creatures that rely on the oceans for sustenance. As long as we realize that the oceans aren’t just bodies of water that pop onto our plates our favorite fish, I believe there will be fish for dinner for anything or anyone who chooses or has to eat marine animals.

But to get to that point, we need to make some fundamental changes in how oceans are taken care of, such as:

• changing the formulas used to manage fisheries around the world to reflect real ecological realities rather than perceived political ones;

• giving right of access to the oceans first to small-scale fishing communities — not the industrial fleet or aquaculturists;
• and, if not eliminating, accounting for the role of non-fishing activities such as persistent pollutants, deforestation, and fossil-fuel exploration in fishery management plans.

Until then, we will continue to spend our energy putting out fishy brushfires.

Have you gone out on fishing boats yourself? Do you fish for fun or for food yourself? What’s the best/worst experience you’ve had on the seas?    — Name not provided

I spent a good chunk of my first four or five years working on this issue onboard fishing boats. I knew I was going to get accused of not knowing what I was talking about, so I felt it was important to have firsthand knowledge of what it takes to be at sea, how different gear works, and how different fishermen operate. I also learned a lot simply listening to the chatter on the marine radio. But I haven’t been out on a commercial boat for a while. I did have a skiff until recently, but I used it to row around, not to fish. I don’t fish for food or fun, but am often the recipient of fish from friends who do both.

My best experience was on my first fishing trip onboard a small jig boat from Chatham (the elbow of Cape Cod). The fisherman usually fished with his ten-year-old son, but since his boat was small, he couldn’t take us both. So I actually had to fish! While dressing (that’s what cleaning, gutting, and readying the fish for the market is called) my first cod, I found a herring in its stomach. It was then that the idea that “it takes an ecosystem to save a fish” occurred to me. At that moment, I realized that if we are truly interested in saving the cod, we need to make sure it has food to eat. So saving the herring, mackerel, menhaden, and other prey species became a key part of my thinking and organizing strategy.

My worst experience was onboard a gillnetter from Stonington, Maine. The seas were very rough, and I got really seasick. Small boats often lack a designated head (toilet area), so the all-male crew had put a bucket in the small storage closet below deck to give me some privacy. At one point when I went to use the bucket, I forgot to undo the lock on the outside of the closet door. I found myself locked in this tiny little closet with the bucket! The engine and ocean were making so much noise that no one was hearing my banging on the door. The tiny vent in the closet wasn’t enough to air the space, and the rough seas knocked the bucket over … need I say more?

At the time, it felt like the longest day I’ve ever spent on a boat, and my entire body was hurting by the time we were back at the dock. Today, I can’t stop laughing when I tell the story!

How can fishers, indigenous communities, and environmental groups best come together? Is there an (inspiring) example of these groups solidifying behind an issue and making a positive impact?    — William Vesneski, Portland, Ore.

Not to be tooting my own horn, but the most inspiring example of fishermen, environmental groups, and indigenous communities working together was in the late 1990s during the fight to stop factory trawlers from coming back to the U.S. East Coast, and curbing their operations elsewhere.

Within a short few months of finding out that factory-fishing vessels were planning to return to New England to fish for herring and mackerel, we had a coalition of environmental groups, fishermen, and fishing community organizations spanning the eastern seaboard organized in opposition to this potential fiasco. The opposition was so diverse that most of the stories about the fight focused on the unusual coalition rather than the actual details of the issue.

The coalition got involved on all levels starting from local city governments all the way up to the U.S. Congress and the United Nations. At the height of the campaign, we were working with fishermen and others in 10 countries fighting against factory fishing.

Although the fight against factory fishing isn’t over, the result of that campaign was U.S. legislation, introduced and passed in record time, banning factory vessels from the herring and mackerel fisheries. It was an unprecedented coming together of both commercial and recreational fishing groups, environmentalists, indigenous communities, and the general public.

And we can do it again!