An essay on the Outlook of Fishing
by
Andrew D. Hawkins

  To enjoy fishing is to rely on a fragile resource especially vulnerable to human actions. Any man or woman who does so has a responsibility to do so in a sustainable manner. The correct philosophy of a fisherman is to look upon whatever waters he fishes, as well as what he takes from them, as a gift and not a right. Certain responsibilities follow from this view, as well as certain beneficial habits.

First and foremost, anyone who takes from the water has a responsibility to realize that it is not an infinite resource and that sustainable practices are of the utmost importance. The view which comes out of this is one which recognizes that each person who fishes is part of a larger group and has certain obligations. If everyone who fished decided to ignore laws about length or legal limit which they were allowed to keep and instead decided to devote themselves to selfishness, the amount of actual manpower devoted to enforcing those laws would surely fail to task. Any policy which relied solely on force would fail. Success in sustainability is only possible if each and every person who uses the water adopts, on his or her own, the behaviors and practices necessary for sustainability. Each fisher-person has no choice but to rely on the good behavior of all others. As part of this interdependence he or she has a responsibility to adopt responsible behavior. Everything said above about responsibility to others who fish is all the more true about responsibility to future generations. They are not here to put in their two cents and remind us to think about them. They rely on our thoughtfulness in taking them into consideration.

Fishing and the outlook that comes from it has had several important influences on me. It is certainly a strong part on my environmentalism. An even stronger influence this outlook has had is the appreciation it has given me for luck. At he same time as fishing requires one to be aware of his/her own actions because of the consequences for the resource, it draws attention to the limits of action as well. While absolutely not diminishing the importance of knowledge, skill, patience and experience, the nature of fishing lends itself to the accepting the role of chance. This is healthy because it teaches one to separate the failures which one is responsible for and those which are a product of chance.  The ability to not dwell on those things which are a product of chance and concentrate on what can be controlled is a skill which I put great value on and the water is one of the first places I learned it.

My graduate studies over the next two years will focus on Ordovician extinction, the second largest of the five mass extinctions which have occurred during the history of life. Studies of extinction like this have been used to better understand the modern ecological crisis. One of the main conclusions that has come out of this work is how entire global ecosystems can be ravaged and even the most abundant species can be obliterated when conditions are pushed too far. We may be motivated to practice    conservation and marine resource management for the self-interested reason that we like fishing, however this is not a very convincing reason for those who don't share that sentiment. The best real argument that I can think of for the philosophy of responsibility advocated above is to note that entire families, orders and even classes of organisms just as amazing as the fish and the other organisms which we enjoy today have been wiped out forever when conditions for them have become unfavorable. Humans are pushing conditions to such a state for many organisms today. The work I am just now starting encourages a appreciation of life's vulnerability which is directly in line with what I was taught as an angler.