I went diving at Crashboat Sunday with our friends Heidi and Hernan. Mostly it was a beautiful dive. Heidi and Hernan had not been to Crashboat for a while and wanted to see all the new fish.
The one downer -
This was one of four or five - I lost count - massive fishhook and line mess we picked up. It's hard to tell from the photo, but that's a 2" hook. That's not even the biggest one we found! I can't for the life of me understand what the idiots who leave this stuff on reefs and crowded popular swimming areas like Crashboat think they are going to catch with a hook like that. I've been out there - a lot! There is nothing around those piers that could even take a hook like that. Then the hooks are just left there to snag divers, swimmers, snorkelers, and small fish.
For years I've wanted to respect the local fisherman but they make it pretty much impossible. They don't respect the environment or other people. At Crashboat and on pretty much every near-shore reef and rock formation we find hooks, fishing line, spark plugs they use as sinkers. Fishermen at Crashboat even yelled at friends of mine who were going in to dive. Yesterday Coda found a barracuda head just left to rot on the beach. The fishermen don't deserve our respect.
I cannot understand how people whose livelihood depends on the ocean can have so little regard for it. How can they so wantonly participate in its destruction? I would think fishermen would be at the forefront of ocean conservation efforts. Instead they are at the leading edge of destroying it. The "culture" is "I take what I want and to hell with the rest."
It's so sad. I try to imagine what it could be like if we all worked together to protect the ocean. fishermen and boaters have opposed every conservation proposal put forth in the nearly 13 years we've been here.
So we just keep keepin' on, doing what we can to clean up other people's messes.
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