1. Commercial non Indian boats no longer fish there, having basically wiped out the fishery.

2. Native American commercial boats still do fish, and take a huge amount of fish. These are protected by treaty, and I have no information that would indicate any change in that over the last hundred years.

3. Sports fishermen, as pointed out at a meeting last night, take less in a year than one load of the Native American boats.

Summary: yes, fish are a huge problem, but allowing sports fishing there would not seem to be a problem.

Robert Blanusa

ps. I am also in favor of stopping or curtailing the whale watching boats.

I will sound rough here, but I have heard nothing but self-serving untruth from whale watch operators. They care about money, and that’s the only motivator that shows through in their recent testimony. We have spent ten years answering their doubts, publishing science papers, studying the whales, and all they do is change tactics.

To answer the above (ridiculous) claim:

1. the commercial fishery is not involved; only native american fishermen are excepted, and guess what, they get excepted without use of lobbyists.

2. the sport lobby is indeed powerful, but we have no evidence that stationery sport fishing boats, or moving kayaks, are much problem at all; personally, I am sure the whales are aware of them, but they don’t chase the whales incessantly, which is the primary cause of starvation, and so, death.

Thanks for asking.

Thanks for publishing this. If people are interested in reading “How We Killed the Killer Whale: a Failure of Capitalism,” I invite tham to read my blog. We’ve moved on from shooting the whales directly to torturing them slowly as they try to find food. It’s cruel and makes no long-term economic sense.

http://www.socialinnovationperspectives.blogspot.com/