Trophy Fishing: The Bad and the Good
Today’s lecture was very interesting. I really understood the point that the lecturer Loren McClenachan was attempting to make. While she spoke very passionately about her work, I took a lot of points from her focus on game fishing. Although there are both pros and cons, to game fishing, she gave a good lecture on how we should be mindful of doing such. Some of the pros was the the economy and travel to the area while the con was the dent that it was putting in marine life.
The first pro of big game fishing is the ability for it to boost the economy. One of the ways it boost the economy is with jobs. There are more fishers working. Also on land, there are people working to help with the fish that these fishers bring back or there are more waitresses needed to feed the hungry fishers at the local pub. In all of these small ways, big fishing is helping to increase the economy.
Traveling has also increased since the boom in fishing. When people catch big trophy fish, others see their game and want to fish in that area too. So, often, people travel miles to reach these often secluded fishing areas. Therefore, this brings money into the economy also in the form of tourism. Tourist stay at hotel and frequent the local places. Also, it brings awareness to that town. Someone who visited as a tourist and is very serious about there fishing craft would probably even pick up and move there which in terms help the population of this town.
However, there are obvious cons to big game fishing. One of those cons would be overfishing. It does not take much to deplete a population of fish over years. Therefore, this is a main concern of the fishing industry. However, the industry has accounted for this. In return, the government had put certain rules on fishing. For example, certain fish that you catch you have to throwback. It is because these fish are protected because they are of risk of becoming extinct. Therefore, in order to avoid certain fish from becoming extinct, they plan these rules.
The lecture from last class was very interesting. It taught me a lot about the fishing industry and also the pros and cons that come along with it. I was mainly interested in these pros and cons. They range from helping increase employment and the tourist industry to the con of inflicting harm on the fish population from those who over fish. However, to combat this risk to the fishing industry, the government has introduced laws that fishers must abide by. One of these laws are throwing back certain fish that are on the verge of extinction if you so happen to catch one. With these measures in place, I believe that if done correctly then the fishing industry won’t have as big of a depletion on the environment then what we expect at the current moment.