Closing Fisheries, Opening Avenues of Prosperity

© Ellen Peel

It sounds odd at first blush, but big game fishermen are a fish’s best friend. Think about it: without the sport fishing community, the oceans would be wide open to the interests of commercial fishermen. Interests that have depleted stocks of blue fin tuna, Chilean sea bass, 22 species of shark, and scores of other species, to near extinction.

The interests of game fishing, on the other hand, realize that without fish, their sport is dead in the water. To protect their sport, and the fish they hunt for, organizations like the Billfish Foundation are pulling out all stops to put a halt on over-fishing. They've got some pretty powerful ideas on their side too.

It all starts with a man named Dr. Russell Nelson. Dr. Nelson, who has a PhD in Marine Fisheries Ecology and runs a consulting company called Nelson Resources Consulting, combines catch data and other existing science with economic research to convince governments that the sport fishing community is more important to the health of their economy, and their oceans, than commercial fisheries.

Then he convinces them to protect their fish populations. Because, he says, “If people hear there are protective measures in place, they have a tendency to go there.” And, when sport fishermen travel, they spend money. That means a big boost for local economies.

How much of a boost?

Nelson recently worked with an economist to track how much sport fishing tourism brought to Los Cabos, Mexico in a single year. The answer: 765 million. That’s a lot of fish. And it was a big incentive for Los Cabos to close its fisheries and create an economy and infrastructure that was friendlier to the sport fishing community.

Dr. Nelson can tell similar stories about Peru, Costa Rica and Australia, and he's currently working with the Central American Fishing Agency to put further protections into place. So you would think that, given the raw data, his job would be easy right? Actually, no.

“Science is necessary, but it’s not sufficient.” What’s needed, he says, as an expansion of consciousness. “People think that there are all of these fish swimming in the seas and that they’re all there for the taking. People think that the oceans are limitless, but they’re not. They’re little tiny ponds.”

Dr. Nelson laments the depletion of tuna and points out that marlin are often taken by tuna fishing vessles as by-catch. So, despite big wins in a few important places like Los Cabos, “It’s always a struggle.” But, “after years and years of being frustrated and disappointed, I think we’re on the brink of breaking that open.”

What’s needed is more advocacy the kind of which he’s been doing for more than 20 years. “I think that the sport fishing community is sending the message that real sport fishing can generate more money [for a community] than the commercial over-harvest of things like tuna and dorado. If we can accomplish that on a worldwide scale, we’ll be good.

And the fish will be good too.