Of the sea

[smokingboot]

After all my earnestness yesterday, I had no intention of writing anything even remotely well-meaning for the next month. This morning, I decided to whip through my friends list before attacking loadsawork (I am better you see! Ha ha! *hack gack*)only to find, via thomryng's post, this link from captainweasel.

http://www.american.edu/TED/MINAMATA.HTM


I am so shocked by this. I am a great believer in putting things right; cut-down forests make me very sad, but some part of me hopes and believes we will replant. The desert is a garden but for water. But what f*ckwit poisons the sea? Where do they think this stuff is going to go?

Greed is bad enough, its inevitable combination with stupidity is terrifying. What do you do about someone who will poison sea-life to get money in his/her wallet, in order to buy...to buy what? The base of the food chain is made toxic. The birds and fish are poisoned. What's the fool going to eat?

I feel less anger, but also a certain inexorable practicality when I hear of fishing villages on the coast protesting about fishing quotas. No, I don't want to see their way of life become redundant; I love boats, and harbours, I love fresh fish sold off the quay. But in certain areas the cod are being fished to oblivion. It's a case of cutting quotas now or finding new jobs in a few years time, with cod off the menu forever. No-one wants this.

I don't want to write about the sea like this. I want to write about it as inspiration, in its beauty and moods, its infinite variety. In art or science, in emotion or fact, what aspect of the Sea lacks wonder?

As usual, I feel helpless and useless in the face of real life, and write this here in the hope that some answers come to me.

I'm a dreamer really; One of my way-out-theres has always been to put together an anthology of oceanic stories/songs/poetry and get it published, with all profits going solely towards the recovery of the Big Blue. But I can't imagine a publisher who would want it, and where's the market for it? The sea is to be experienced rather than talked about.

Enough, I am writing myself into a funk. I am going to go away and come back when I have something pointless to say.

Comments

[november-girl.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of the protesting about the fishing quota stems from the suggestion that the fishing will then be done by others rather than not at all, and therefore cutting the quota is damaging the economy without benefitting the fish. Recalling the cod wars and the number of Russian trawlers I've seen moored in Ullapool, it's not as far fetched as it might sound.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

In which case, the protection of the breeding waters and prevention of unregulated fishing becomes an important issue. The argument that 'if we don't take the fish, someone else will,' is a dangerous one. There is a depleting resource. Everybody wants it. Some will try to steal it, and thereby hasten its end. The point is not to join them, but to stop them.

Most of the material I have read has focused on whitefish suppliers protesting at the quota cuts, not because someone else will take the fish, but because it puts the industry through such hard times. I understand their dismay, but what other option is there, if people want to be fishing for cod 20 years from now?