Bill Morem: They are humble fishers, not criminals

By Bill Morem

Our commercial fishing friends in Morro Bay and Port San Luis continue to take one hit after another as their industry founders under regulatory red tape.

With many of their brethren already winnowed out of business by gear regulations, heavily restricted seasons on catches and newly formed marine protected areas that close off some of the Central Coast’s richest fishing zones, our commercial fishers should be able to qualify for protection as the latest Environmental Protection Agency endangered species.

In fact, though, the government is treating them like criminals. I’ll get to that in a moment.

The folks who wrest their living from the sea and deliver us fresh food don’t need — or want—to be thought of as victims, endangered or otherwise. They simply want to be left alone to ply one of the world’s most dangerous trades. It’s a life, not a lifestyle.

Like being nibbled to death by ducks, the commercial fishing life has been under unrelenting attack by a regulatory climate that’s been ginned up by overfishing and species collapse elsewhere.

But let’s make a distinction: The remnants of the Central Coast fishing fleet is not akin to factory ships, those massive vessels that vacuum up everything for thousands of miles in their wake.

Nor is our fleet responsible for the Grand Banks collapse of cod, which was hammered by tens of thousands of boats over a couple of hundred years.

Nonetheless, our community of fishers is paying for the excesses of others. But do they have to be treated like criminals, too?

It’s not enough that a fisherman (or any boater for that matter) has no Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search. That’s right; once you step on a boat, your constitutional rights end. Authorities can board your craft anytime they feel like it.

No, the feds now think it’s a good idea that Global Positioning System units be mandatory for each boat.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (the federal equivalent of our state Department of Fish and Game) came up with this one in order to track fishermen 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

That’s right; these are the equivalent of those location-tracking ankle bracelets used on home-detention criminals.

Under penalty of fines, these tracking systems cannot be turned off — ever — unless permission is granted. The expense in batteries alone is going to be onerous.

But it doesn’t stop there. These instruments cost fishermen $3,800 and anywhere from $250 to $400 to install. On top of that, they have to pay a monthly fee of $42.95 for the privilege of having Big Brother aboard.

These devices are ostensibly required to let authorities know if fishers are poaching in marine protected areas.

Yet because of atmospheric anomalies, they’re not guaranteed to record a minute-by-minute location of where a boat has been, can’t be used for navigation purposes and may give an off-the- mark readout of a boat’s location.

Smells to me like the ingredients of a perfect regulatory storm.

Bill Morem can be reached at 781-7852 or bmorem@thetribunenews.com .