Greetings:
The Catholic Church published an encyclical on June 18, 2015 by Pope Francis on the Environment of the world. It is called, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home”.
There are 85 million Catholics in North America and 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. Section 145 of Laudato Si contains a short paragraph, but it applies to all our coastal communities that have ever felt the pain of the local fishermen being banned from earning a living from the water.
The paragraph reads:
“Many intensive forms of environmental exploitation and degradation not only exhaust the resources
which provide local communities with their livelihood, but also undo the social structures which, for a long time,
shaped cultural identity and their sense of the meaning of life and community. The disappearance of a culture
can be just as serious, or even more serious, than the disappearance of a species of plant or animal.
The imposition of a dominant lifestyle linked to a single form of production can be just as harmful as the altering of ecosystems.”
Most of us totally concur with Pope Francis that banning a sustainable harvest of fish by professional fishermen in favor of increasing sport fishing, is as harmful as altering the ecosystems.
Pope Francis has no authority over “Who Gets the Fish,” but once again The Big Fisherman is speaking out on behalf of people who labor at any level of the seafood industry. I have always been proud that, according to most Bibles, the first four Apostles were commercial net fishermen.
How many fishermen and fishing communities have been harmed by the South Atlantic federal fisheries management council that allocated 73% of the finfish to anglers and 27% to the commercial fishermen who provide seafood for those who do not want a boat or who cannot afford the time and luxury to own a boat?
The fish are for all of us.
Bob Jones
Southeastern Fisheries Association