Scientists and environmentalists have raised questions over the power watermen managed commercial fishing industry flouting major regulations. It is said that they didn’t stop fishing until the oysters and crabs were almost gone. It means where a fisherman benefits from every creature he catches, and the damage he does to the fishery is shared by everyone else.
It is a well know fact that the Chesapeake Bay is a big commons, and its fishery is a very big tragedy. Watermen didn’t cause the problems in the Bay but they are the fault of a rapacious menhaden industry that has repeatedly, through history, depleted its own fishery. Watermen support the Virginia Marine Resources Commission’s difficult decision to set rules reducing the crab take long enough for the population to recover.
John Miller, a Newport News Democrat, has introduced a seemingly innocent bill, SB1087, which passed the Senate unanimously and this week begins its House journey. The main aim of the bill is to expand the VMRC from eight members to 10, and to add two watermen to the panel. Since the bill passed unanimously in the Senate, it’s unlikely that lawmakers fully understood its import, or the effect it would have on the Bay’s species.
