What's Going On With Our Fisheries?

[bulletbob]

Originally Posted by Fishguy1

How soon you forget. A lot of the people who post here are older guys. I know this bc they post ad nauseam about “back in the day” when there were no regulations…which led to regulations bc people are greedy and foolish and treated the resource as though it were unlimited. You know what else was true “back in the day”? There were no environmental regulations either. It got so bad that Richard Nixon created the EPA. (That’s right, guys! A republican created the EPA!) Why? Because of places like Raritan Bay and the Hudson River and NY Harbor which were industrial dumping grounds for corporations and sewers for the general public. Make no mistake, the striped bass fishery we enjoy is the direct result of actions by the federal government to reign in pollution. Like it or not it’s reality. There is a tremendous amount of historical scientific data to back this up and I invite any doubters to do some research. Yeah the government sucks a lot of the time but sometimes they do good. It’s the reason there isn’t lead in the paint on your kids toys. It’s the reason cars are the safest they’ve ever been. It’s the reason GE and Dutch Boy paint and Carborundom and United Lead don’t dump industrial wastes into our home waters anymore. It’s the reason Raritan Bay isn’t a festering , lifeless cesspool. My 2 cents.

You are omitting a few painful facts.. Yes, stripers are back, and swarm in the "clean waters" that were facilitated by the creation of the EPA.. yeah great.. However, when those same waters were a "festering lifeless cesspool" 50 years ago, they were choked thick year round, with flounder, weakfish, fluke by the millions,swarming schools of blues of all sizes, all sorts of bottom fish such as porgies, sea bass, blowfish, kingfish, spot, eels by the millions, and just outside the bay were blackfish everywhere,as well as Whiting , Ling Mackeral, Sea bass, etc, not to mention all the rough fish by the billions Dogfish, sea robins, skates etc etc etc...So did the EPA regs get rid of those fish, and
"bring back" stripers instead??... I dunno, if you wish to credit the EPA regulations for the restoration of striped bass, should you also credit them in the same breath with the disappearance of a half dozen other species???.. It would seem that it should work both ways -no??... bob