Smear Campaign against fishing

Discussion area for political and legal issues affecting Alaskan salmon fisheries.
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Once and Future
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Smear Campaign against fishing

Post by Once and Future »

Here is a link to an article put out by the BBC. An environmentalist group called Oceana has used data taken from the AIS collision avoidance electronic vessel monitoring system to create a "Global Fishing Watch" map.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2018060 ... hing-boats

The article tells the reader to "think about what you see here before you order fish next time you sit down in a restaurant".

Oh, they pay lip service to the legal fishing feet, but their overarching message leads the reader to believe "industrialized" fishing is depleting the oceans.

And most readers won't read the article as critically as you and I will. The images will stick in their minds and they will come away with the vague notion that it is unethical to order fish in a restaurant. This is an example of how electronic monitoring information from a good, yet mandatory, program is bastardized to be used against us. And then a very carefully crafted propaganda program is deployed to snidely mislead the public.
Once and Future
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Re: Smear Campaign against fishing

Post by Once and Future »

Oh, I should have mentioned that the title on the front page of the BBC website that leads you to the article is "How to Spot Secret Crime on the Oceans". Then when you click on it, you get led to a map showing the paths of fishing vessels created over a very long period. So they are planting the seed in the public's mind that feeding the world by fishing the oceans should be considered a "secret crime" akin to human trafficking.

To be sure, responsible fishermen would like to see some of the activities they discuss clamped down as well. But the take-no-prisoners approach of the article paints all fishermen with the same broad brush, while saying just enough in our defense so they can pretend they are being fair.
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