Consider the headlines of
2003. In January 2003, the Pew Oceans Commission announced that, according
to its studies, ocean resources, particularly those around North America
were so severely depleted as to constitute nothing less than an ecological
crisis. Not surprisingly, the study was publicized at great expense in
order to get across the message that existing fisheries management in the
US was broken and could not be fixed. I assume that no-one here was
surprised to learn that, according to the Commission, the existing eight
existing US regional fisheries management councils need to be abolished and
replaced with a new bureaucracy in Washington DC. I wonder who the members
of the Pew Oceans Commission thinks would be suitable to lead that new
bureaucracy and whether it envisions any role for the fishing industry
itself? Given that the Commission explicitly states that existing
management regimes, in which the fishing industry participates, are
irredeemably broken, I suspect that the industry can confidently expect to
be excluded from the deliberations of this new bureaucracy.
The World Wildlife Fund has now "discovered" and, once again,
announced with a fanfare of publicity, that over 300,000 cetaceans are
killed each year when they are taken as bi-catch by the global fishing
industry. This number is vastly higher than any previous calculation and no
scientific evidence was brought forward to buttress it but I think we can
expect to witness the usual modus operandi, namely, the figure will
simply be repeated over and over again until it becomes a platitude on the
lips of journalists and talk show hosts until it has passed into the
political lexicon as simple accepted fact. As many of you will have
observed, the NGO’s preach that all cetacean species, no matter how
plentiful, must always remain totally off-limits to all forms of
sustainable use and any human activity that interferes with cetaceans –
even whale watching – needs to be carefully circumscribed. Once again, I
think that you can all confidently expect to be subject to an ever
tightening noose of regulation of fishing activities in order to minimize
– no, not minimize, eradicate – any impact that fishing activity might
have on cetacean populations.
In this context, I find it interesting that at its 55th
annual meeting in Berlin this June, the International Whaling Commission
(IWC), an institution now thoroughly subordinated to the NGO agenda, took
its first tentative – and uninvited – steps into the field of general
fisheries regulation when it announced the establishment of a new
"Conservation Committee" that would examine, 
among other
interesting questions – the cetacean bi-catch question. Fishermen around
the world can look forward to receiving new sets of NGO origin instructions
emanating from, and bearing the stamp of, the IWC.
In a document distributed here in Cancun, entitled "Briefing Series
- Fisheries Subsidies", the WWF made an interesting statement.
"What should happen in Cancun
1 - ...
2 - Any WTO rules on fisheries subsidies must include formal procedures for
the participation of international organizations competent in fisheries
management and marine protection."
Considering that WWF was the initiator of the drama of the 300,000
cetaceans cut as by-catch in fishing operations and that WWF was one of the
strongest advocates of the creation, by IWC, of the Conservation Committee,
it is rather easy to understand the full meaning of that statement.
In closing, let me make one final remark. In the world that we now
inhabit, regulations, once issued, are never rescinded. Species, once
identified - rightly or not - as endangered, are never allowed to recover.
There is a delicious, if painful, irony in the fact that NGO’s demand
that we take radical action to preserve endangered species but,
simultaneously, they insist that none of those measures have ever done any
good. This is because their fundamental agenda is to terminate all human
interaction with the natural world around us. Theirs is a peculiarly
post-industrial vision. Since the birth of homo sapiens our species
has survived and flourished in harmony with nature, tilling our fields and
fishing the oceans. Now, it is proposed that we withdraw from nature and
view our lands, our seas and the wildlife that inhabit them as if behind
glass. It is an approach that I categorically reject. Mankind springs from
nature. We should embrace that legacy and continue to live in, and play an
active role in, the world that surrounds us. Any proposal to the contrary
runs in the face of the human – and, indeed, the animal, experience. 
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