To the editor:
Re: the articles in your June issue about the Newfoundland crab fishermen’s demonstrations, occupations of government offices, blockades, and whatnot (“Canadian Crab Protests Escalate to a `Fishermen’s Arrest’ ” and “Crab Fishermen Vote to End Strike”). I wish you’d be a little more balanced in your coverage of the Atlantic Canada commercial fishery, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador. I don’t know the merits of the two sides in this dispute. But let’s not forget that fishermen and their organizations were a central part of the fisheries management system in the province — along with the government regulators, scientists, politicians, processors, and processors organizations — that brought us the Northern Cod collapse a decade and a half ago. And back then they frequently used the same PR tactics they’re using now.
Kent Blades, in his book Net Destruction: The Death of Atlantic Canada’s Fishery, points out how selfishly some sectors of the Atlantic Canada inshore sector, led by the dragger fishermen, consistently behaved during the period leading up to the cod collapse in the late 1980s. He shows how they would freely use tactics such as occupying government offices, imposing blockades, etc. — which sound attractively like the “little guy” standing up for his legitimate rights against the power of the state — to further what were really nothing more than selfish and extremely ecologically destructive ends. What their blockades and occupations of government offices back in the 1980’s really showed, Blades writes, was “…wanton disrespect for authority and…disregard for the conservation of fish stocks…[this was not] a justified response by desperate men to an oppressive system of fisheries management. Greed and overzealous ambition…[are the only way to] describe the mind-set of [the] fishermen [who were] involved in these activities.”
As I say, I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong in this case. But considering the track record of the party involved, I think a little — make that, a lot! — more reportorial skepticism is in order. The crab fishermen’s union of course is entitled to use whatever tactics they please. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to take it at face value. Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks loudly and violently like a duck and starts issuing press releases and calling in the media…chances are, there’s a duck in there somewhere.
Bart Higgins
Boston, MA