Things to do when there is no surf

[Broosta]

Good analogy dude !

[libby]

Yeh, awsome analogy Phil.

It scares the crap out of me how many people are just in total denial about how destructive we are and just kid themselves with lies about how the ocean is fine.

Makes me wonder why i'm bothering with my degree sometimes if people just think i'm making it up for fun.

News flash: I love the taste of fish too and i'm not saying this for kicks. If you actually bothered to read up on it then i think you would be shocked. And i'm not just talking newspapers. Get on google scholar and read some actual science.

[Brent]

Yea I gotta agree with Libby in this, recently I've changed my tune after reading abit about fishing in this country. I live in an area that is popular for big-game fishing & smaller sub-tropical species are caught recreationally as well. Boaties & their equipment is a major business here, thousands of them.

But all I see is rape & pillage of the sea, these guys go out & catch 2-3 bluefin tuna, sharks or whatever a day - if you get 200-300 guys from this town alone going out on their boats with their mates doing that every weekend for about 6-8 months of the year - what happens to the fish??? Even little (great tasting) snapper are getting smaller here every year. Hmmm - I wonder what's happening...and why they now cost $30 per kilo to buy in the supermarket.

We have no licencing for sea fishing in this country for private boaties etc - so we simply don't even know how many fish are being caught, how many thousand boaties are out every weekend depleteing the stocks. Until we have a formal licencing system for recreational sea fishing we simply won't know.

In this country it's a sad tale.

[FidesMaris]

Between Surfing, Scuba, and Rock climbing I get to have fun in any weather condition. (indoor rockwall during rain)

[Brian]

when theres no surf i dont have anything to do i sometimes go skateboarding on my longboard...thats about it

[tomcat360]

skating, kneeboarding, waterskiing, wakeboarding, and starting windsurfing (and kiteboarding if I can find a place). And lots of lots of fishing...

I don't really want to argue about this topic, it's a bit sensitive around my house. Around here, recreational fishing has almost no impact in comparison to commercial fishing. The commercial fishing which is messing up the ecosystem around here is the menhaden fishing. They are used to make cooking oil and Crisco, and a whole bunch of other messy, oily stuff.

Menhaden is the main food source for many larger fish, I could list them but don't want to take the 30 minutes to do so. Virginia (the state I'm in) is the only state that does not have a ban on commercial fishing for menhaden with the method they are using. They use a spotter plane to go find the fish, then they bring 6-8 huge boats, hook 100 yard wide nets between the big boats and smaller ones, and then drag away the entire school of fish.

Also, the area I fish has developed "dead zones". This is due to agricultural fertilzation run-off. The run off absorbs the oxygen out of the water, which chokes the fish. Last summer, there was a "dead zone" from Annapolis, MD, to Cape Charles, VA. That's 300 (rough guess) miles of absolutely no oxygen for the fish.

Anyway, I'll throw some more stuff out tommorow if needed, but for now it's sleep time.....

[Manaiakalani-Mosquito]

Libby, I am going to eat fish either way. I think fish are damned tasty. So why not kill them myself? Are there less fish than 60 eyars ago? Probably, does that mean they are all at risk of going extinct? Not at all. Nature is very resilient and there are a lot of environmental protections in place limiting the number of fish that can be commercially fished. Local fishers catch very few in comparison to commercial fishers so I think you are being a tad extreme over the whole thing.

im all for catching and eating your own fish and suporting your local fisherman by buying fresh fish from them, but fish stocks are geting dangeriously low and some species may never recover, the enviromental protections in place are complete BS limiting the number of fish that can be caught does nothing becuse normaly they just dump the fish they catch over that quota when targeting specific species

Its not just the damage done from catching fish they also completly destroy the sea bed, its like catching cows with a helicopter by draging a net, you dont just catch the cows you catch the trees the, fence the barn roof the farmers wife, beam trawlers drag huge great steel beams along the sea bed that just destroy every thing in there path. but sadly its out of sight out of mind to most politicans and countrys like france and spain just dont seem to give a xxxxx. give it a few years of the current rate of fishing and some speices will be driven to extinction, we seem to be good at doing that

You're my new hero <3

Skateboarding, paintball, oogling sweet vids.

[Hooked Cabarete]

Where I live it is easy; no wind: surfing, wind: kite surfing

[tomcat360]

Oh yeah, snow-skiing! I'm beginning to get in to backpacking as well