This opinion piece was in today's P-I. It basically reinforces all we've been saying about commercial overharvest, mega-mismanagement of fisheries, declining levels of stocks at all levels of the marine food chain...with some dire predictions thrown in. Check it out. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/55565_fishop.shtml

The key here is that the commercial fishing industry world wide is focusing on the lower and middle of the food chain now. Doing so will create a far worse disaster than if the commercials continued to target fish at the top of the food chain. Using the middle of the food chain is bad enough for chicken feed but the article did not mention that up to 27% of the worlds bait fish are now being harvested to feed fish in the worlds fish farm industry. The more fish farms the more coastal habitat such as the worlds mangrove estuaries get cut down in Asia and South America. So now not only are a quarter of the worlds forage fish being harvest but the major breeding grounds and holding areas till the forage fish are old enough to go to sea are disapearing. 27% harvest of forage fish is a very low number when you look at the big picture. We tend to look at commercial fishing as the villian and fish farming as saviors to our reduced ocean fish but look again they work hand and hand.

Land Tuna, thanks for the additional insight. I didn't realize the fish farming industry utilized forage fish that much in their feeding regimen. I thought grain products, mad cows, and roadkill probably accounted for the nutritional make-up of most commercial fish food. Don't hatcheries and fish farms feed a similar pellet to grow their fish? Most of the hatchery trout, I eat, taste like they been raised on tofu!

Another problem with fish farms is that they tend to create biological deserts under them as all the waster from the fish tends to overpollute the water. They are not the wonderful save the ocean industry that they have marketed as and precieved as.

And remember that with commercial fishing, we will never have a shortage of salmon eggs/bait.

you all continue to complaine about hatchery fish. but they are the reason most of you are drawn to sport fishing. plain and simple if it where not for the hatchery fish most of us whould not be catching fish. the native fish population could not support us that is why hatcherys where invented. commercial and sportsmen benafit from them. everybody complains that the nets take all the fish. I agree but if you think about it what is the hatchery doing with there over stock of fish. think about it it is all up to washington D.C. and do you think they realy give a damn about sport fishing no it is all about commercial fishing that is what makes the money

wake up and realize