About a week ago I got a call from my friend John Edens the fisherman. He told me about a rally in Washington, DC, protesting the Magnuson-Stevens Act. A bus was going to take fishermen from Hampstead, N.C., up to the capital. After all the years I filmed in Sneads Ferry making Wild Caught, I had to film it—so I called and got the last seat on the bus.
The Magnuson-Stevens Conservation Management Act was passed in 2007 with the goal of controlling endangered fish species—but it’s turned into a rigid tool that endangers fishermen, especially the small-scale fishermen like the guys in Sneads Ferry. Two bills are in Congress that will allow more flexibility in applying the guidelines of the act. www.unitedwefish.com has information on the bills to make the act more fishermen-friendly.
The bus left at midnight Tuesday night, drove through the night to DC. I was surrounded by with a bunch of angry (but very amiable) fishermen.
Imagine a busload of fishermen in their slickers carrying signs walking through Union Station—we got a lot of stares! We took the Metro to the NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration/National Marine Fisheries) offices in Silver Spring, MD. For John Edens, his son Rob, and many others, it was the first time they had ever been on a subway). When we got to NOAA, I was immediately ordered to shut my camera down! we were essentially thrown out of three office buildings; at the third building, I was threatened with arrest for stepping too close to the building. (Shades of Michael Moore, but I’m better looking.) We were forced to picket on a snow-piled, icy strip by the road.