Environmentalists propose coastal no-fishing zones

If you think the crop of No Hunting signs sprouting in this neck of the woods is enough to sour the chowder, brace your feet because what you are about to read will curdle your coffee. A recent Coastal Conservation Association newsletter states that environmental extremists and their bureaucratic cronies are proposing to place No Fishing signs along 20 percent of this country’s coastal waters. That’s no fishing, period, recreational or commercial. Twenty percent may not sound like much but that, of course, is an exploratory cast that will be lengthened in accordance with the amount of political support hooked and landed.

Can you believe it? CCA president David Cummins couldn’t: “The attack is so brazen you will probably find it hard to believe,” he wrote. Cummins also declared that anyone who had opportunity to view a map of the proposed no fishing zones would be stunned. Located along the coasts of the Atlantic – including Maine – and Pacific oceans, Gulf of Mexico and Hawaii, the proposed zones include the nation’s most productive commercial and recreational fishing grounds.

For the record, the CCA has weathered heavy seas of conflict and confrontation in its efforts to conserve and protect this country’s precious marine resources and ecosystems. Last year, for example, the organization endorsed proposed conservation regulations to prohibit bottom fishing for grouper (large fish found in tropical seas) in certain areas of the species’ spawning grounds off Florida. The National Marine Fisheries Service, however, announced the adopted plan as a total closure of all fishing in the designated areas – without public debate.

Subsequently, the CCA filed suit against the NMFS. The feds got off the hook, though, by giving their arbitrary ruling enough slack to reach a settlement. Hence, the conservation benefits needed to protect Florida’s grouper stocks were achieved while allowing opportunities for commercial and recreational fishing. From its home port in Houston, Texas, the CCA oversees chapters in the majority of Atlantic coast states and all of the Gulf of Mexico states. The organization’s Maine headquarters is in Yarmouth. Phone: 1-800-639-3961.

Granted, Florida and grouper fishing are far removed from Maine and mackerel fishing. Or striper fishing or lobstering or scalloping, you name it. Nevertheless, the ocean fisheries symbolic of Maine’s coastal traditions, cultures and economy are under siege by radical environmentalists and animal-rights activists. Foremost among the latter is the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and its annual protests to the Rockland Lobster Festival. Equally overt, and every bit as silly, are PETA’s displays of opposition to recreational fishing: a member dressed like a fish and posturing as though enduring oral pain is often seen at major fishing tournaments.

Clearly, the proposals to prohibit coastal fishing in certain zones are examples of the social engineering attendant to the so-called changing culture. Imagine, if you can, kids not being able to fish for mackerel off the old Belfast Bridge. Moreover, picture Corea harbor without lobster boats or country fairs without livestock exhibits or Maine’s north woods without logging. If you can.

That’s not hyperbole, friend, that’s fair warning. And no one is more aware of that than Maine sportsmen. Take a look around: Would you ever have imagined, say, 20 years ago, that you would be publicly ridiculed and criticized because you enjoyed hunting or trapping? Or that public access to hunting and fishing grounds would be impassioned political issues? Likewise, leaving a canoe on the shore of a back -of- beyond trout pond and, of course, opposition to gun shows.

Here, the recent Dover-Foxcroft Firearms Festival comes to mind. In spite of the event’s many social and educational benefits – gun safety, responsibility, discipline, accountability are stressed – it was opposed by the anti-gun, southern Maine chapter of the Million Mom March. Simply put, the Maine Moms were pitifully misguided. This state has the second highest gun ownership per capita nationwide and one of the lowest records of gun-related deaths.

A much greater threat to the lives of true Mainers is RESTORE the North Woods. Whoever would have imagined that a save-us-from-ourselves outfit from away would propose turning more than 3 million acres of this state’s magnificent north country into a trail-mazed, campsite-cluttered national park? Hunting, of course, would stand about as much chance in the proposed park as logging, which would be prohibited. Thus eliminating the jobs of thousands of Mainers employed in the woods products industry. But according to Roxanne Quimby, the RESTORE director who moved her tent to North Carolina to sell beeswax lip balm and candles, a park in the real Maine wouldn’t be a problem. Her public affirmations that “there’s not a lot to damage up there” and “very few people derive a living from the woods” are paragons of arrogance.

In besieging Maine’s traditional outdoors recreations and occupations, the aforementioned extremist groups are threatening the way of life that is the foundation of the motto, “Maine: The way life should be.” Coincident to it all comes now a proposal to prohibit fishing in 20 percent of this country’s coastal waters.

Brace your feet.

Tom Hennessey’s columns and artwork can be accessed on the Internet at www.bangornews.com. Tom’s e-mail address is: thennessey@bangordailynews.net