matjo1
Contributor
I've been a fisherman all my life. Small stuff really; trout, bass, pike and bluegill. When I moved to florida two months ago to get a job as a scuba instructor, I got interested in spearfishing right away. Who wouldn't right? Well the more I read up on the subject, the more I read about "trophy" fish. Seems it's all a lot of people out there are talking about. All I want to do is bring a few small fish back for supper, but it seems many hunters out there are only out to hunt that big one. To be perfectly honest, I just don't get it. Last time I checked (assuming these numbers are right) 80 to 90 of all big fish have been taken from our oceans. Is that not enough? How can it still be justifiable to kill off the last and best genes of each species of fish? Am I missing something? I know spearfishing is a ecological technique to getting fish on the table because of low by-catch and selective harvesting, but does that mean we have to try to get every last one of them? Yes, everyone has the right to do so, but I think everybody on this board is smart enough to realize that if we all exercise that right, there simply won't be anything left to enjoy. Shouldn't divers automatically consider themselves ambassadors of the underwatewr world? Don't get me wrong, I'm not a crazy-tree-hugging-hippie (although I am a hippie) and I will persue my goal of bringing fish home for supper, I just don't see why it would be right for me to kill a creature 5 times as old as I am to fill my freezer with 100 lbs of tough meat... Please enlighten me.