good article in most recent The Local Palate about sustainability with our local fishes…I think this goes hand in hand with the push for “truth in menu” that has become a hot topic lately…enjoy the read…
http://www.localpalatemag.com/features/item/scales-of-justice.html
The Morris Island Lighthouse www.savethelight.org
Good stuff!
and today seafood fraud is front page of the paper http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20140617/PC16/140619370/1006/seafood-fraud-xyhy-xh-hyhy-hyh-y-hy
The Morris Island Lighthouse www.savethelight.org
The “Sustainable” Seafood Initiative at the Charleston Aquarium has feet of clay. According to their own definitions (no longer easy to find on their website), commercial crabbing for Blue Crabs is NOT sustainable. Because it causes severe problems with populations of non-target species (namely Diamondback Terrapins). Yet even though the Blue Crab fishery clearly fails to meet their own definition of sustainable, SSI lists it as AOK and sustainable. CRAP!
The Diamondback Terrapin fishery used to employ a lot of people and provide a lot of food - but with unceasing pressure from road mortality and the crabbing industry their populations cannot bounce back and are in steady decline. It is sickening to see a dozen or more dead little terrapins in crab traps they pull up - so wasteful. This is clearly a case of one fishery ruining another that used to exist.
If crabbers used Terrapin excluder devices, they could be considered sustainable - but until then, it is B.S. to give them the sustainable seal of approval.
Shrimp trawling borderline violates SSI’s criteria for “sustainability” but it’s not as clear-cut as their bogus call on crabbing.
Commercial crabbing has imploded, the Department of natural resources has failed to limit the number of out-of-state licenses therefore decimating our crab fishery for folks from Maryland and Virginia. I truly believe peeler fishing has not only hurt but is going to completely destroy our Bluecrab industry here in South Carolina. Right now wholesale prices for blue crabs have never been higher. Most of our crabs that are being caught in the cooper the Wando and the Ashley, are being loaded on trucks and taken to Maryland. Take a ride through the Harbour or up the Cooper River and the number of crab pots has exploded in the past two years. The crabs don’t stand a chance, the ones that don’t make it past the peeler stage are scooped up in one of the thousands of pots that litter the river, something has to be done. I would like to see a ban on out-of-state permits and a reduction in the number of peelers that can be taken per season. They need to make interstate transport of South Carolina Crabs only available for wholesalers, that would curb the majority of our Crabs being sold to Maryland and Virginia. If we sit back with status quo there will be a complete collapse of the commercial fishery in our state just like the Chesapeake Bay. Time for the SCDNR to step up.
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PROUD YANKEE
Oyster Baron
NMFS = No More Fishing Season
“Back home we got a taxidermy man. He gonna have a heart attack when he see what I brung him”