Net Ban Would Hurt Fishermen

I am responding to the letters recently published regarding the use of gill nets. I am not involved in the fishing industry; I work in a service-oriented, non-environmentally threatening industry. However, I will definitely vote no on the initiative to ban gill-net fishing.

Contrary to what Irving Friedman states in his letter (May 20), gill-net fishing has been around since the beginning of time. I’m not against progress. I think automation and an advanced society is inevitable and healthy to a degree. However, I also believe the line must be drawn somewhere, as was done in the fishing industry by issuing limited permits and placing net size regulations.

In Assemblywoman Doris Allen’s response (May 20) to Steven Burklund, she said she wanted to set the record straight, but she didn’t. In fact, she said very little about the issues Burklund raised. Her letter was as full of holes as a gill net, just another politician saying nothing.

The report she refers to is 5 years old. She fails to mention that there are ongoing studies and updated reports conducted after the implementation of regulations for gill-net use. She also states that fishermen will be compensated to convert to less-destructive equipment. Yes, they will, but the compensation is based on a narrow time frame that is unrealistic and unfair. Like any other industry, fishing has had its good and bad years, and fishermen are not, in fact, compensated based on the cost of the so-called replacement equipment but rather on their income tax return in a time frame the government designates.

What does their income tax return have to do with the cost of that equipment? The fish and marine mammals will have a better chance of survival in gill-net-fished waters than these men will if this passes and gill nets are banned. They will lose not only their livelihood but their heritage as well. I personally feel that human lives are, by far, more important.

If Assemblywoman Allen really wants to do something about the depleting population of the ocean, she would concentrate on exposing those industries that are blatantly dumping hazardous wastes into coastal waters and wherever else they arbitrarily choose. Has everyone forgotten about the recent oil spill off the Huntington Beach coast? What about all the children dying from cancer because they have been unknowingly exposed to toxic chemicals dumped illegally near their homes? How many raw sewage “spills” along the Southern California coast were there just last year? How long will we tolerate these atrocities before someone does as much about it as they are about gill nets?

It’s very easy to feel for a sweet-faced sea lion versus a gray-haired, scraggly looking old fisherman! The overpaid politicians rallying to ban gill-net fishing should stop preying on our sympathy to get reelected and get involved with and contribute to the real issues that are threatening to destroy our natural resources. The ocean population will naturally repopulate itself if a healthy environment to do so exists. Nothing can survive in a chemical-, oil- and sewage-polluted earth and ocean.

LYNDA K. SMITH

Cypress