Letter from the President
Fighting for What I Love
I have a hunch that a lot of American men, if asked about important boyhood moments, might reminisce about their first kiss or a little league game in which they made a run or an out that clinched their team’s victory. Such memories are certainly worth cherishing, but for some of us, something quite different tops the list: pulling a fish out of the water for the first time.
For me, that thrilling experience is a snapshot of a youth spent with water and wildlife. Growing up in Virginia, my brother David and sister Kerry and I often wandered the woods and streams near our house searching for frogs, crayfish and mudpuppies. When my family spent summers at Cape Cod, my cousin Bobby Shriver and I rode our bikes to the tidal inlets at Calmus Beach to crab or to the salt marshes at Squaw’s Island to catch fiddler crabs, killifish and mummichogs in a wire trap. We’d go dip netting for painted turtles and baby catfish from a dinghy on Anderson’s Pond or beach seining for eels, shiners, skipjacks and Atlantic needlefish; we’d snorkel for scallops until we had enough to feed the entire family gathered at Hyannisport – a formidable task in spite of the scallops’ abundance. Several days a week, my parents would take a huge pack of kids in our wooden sailboat to nearby islands where we would fish for sand sharks, scup, flounder, puffers and sea robins, gather hermit crabs, periwinkles and scallops and dig for steamers.
One of my fondest childhood memories involving capturing and feasting on fish was an unforgettable trip with my father and siblings and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who was a great environmentalist. It was a ten-day pack trip to Whiskey Bend in the San Juan range on Washington’s Olympic peninsula. We lived on the mild, flaky meat of trout cooked over an open flame. Afterward we fished for salmon in Puget Sound and caught more fish than I’d ever seen.
Fishing satisfies many of my appetites. Whether I’m getting blown around a boat on open water or up to my waist in a placid stream, I am nourished by my surroundings of water, fresh air, wildlife and nature’s beauty. It can be quiet and solitary or, more often for me, joyously shared with family and friends. There’s satisfaction that this pleasurable labor results in getting a healthful meal. Savoring the sweet flavor of fresh fish is one of life’s great pleasures.
But unfortunately, eating your catch is often no longer wise. Pollution in many of America’s lakes, rivers, streams and coastal areas now makes it unsafe for people, especially children, to eat fish from those waters very often.
I began seeing this first hand around the time I started having children of my own and wanted to share with them the joys of hunting for aquatic creatures. In 1984, the same year my first child was born, I started working for the Hudson River Fisherman’s Association, a group of commercial and recreational fishermen who’d banded together to protect their right to harvest uncontaminated fish from public waters. (I still work for the group today, which later became Hudson Riverkeeper). On behalf of the fishermen, I began suing corporations that were killing fish and making them unsafe to eat by illegally dumping toxins into the Hudson River.
They say that you fight for what you love. Working for the fishermen, I started spending several days a week in and on the waters of the Hudson and that’s how I came to truly know and love it. They took me fishing from boats and from the shore for striped bass, black bass and white perch; we’d go fly-fishing in the tributaries for brown and brook trout; we’d beach seine for exotics and shrimp; and we’d scuba dive from canoes in the marshes. Sometimes, I’d explore the tributary streams on my own, like I did when I was a kid. It surprised me to see tropical fish in the estuary. They are funneled into the Hudson in large cells of warm water that break off the Gulf Stream as it flows north past Long Island. In the Croton River, a tributary of the Hudson, I saw sea horses and a fish called a moongazer, which emits an electric shock when you touch it.
A few years after I began working with the fishermen, we set up a program that enables Pace University law students to play a major role in the lawsuits we were filing against polluters. Under a special court order, the students actually argue the cases in court. They are training to be the next generation of environmental warriors who will fight to make the Hudson safe for people and all kinds of fish and wildlife.
These days, I take my own children fishing as often as possible; in summer, we go several times a week. We line fish in the pond behind my house or beach seining in the Hudson River, catching stripped bass, sturgeon and shad. But we don’t bring home anything to eat from these outings. Everything we catch, we release, regardless of species or size, because the fish in our area are too contaminated with mercury and PCBs to safely eat.
Tragically, mercury contamination now makes it unsafe for children and women of childbearing age to eat any freshwater fish in Connecticut, most of the fish in New York State and all of the fish in the New York City reservoir system. The fish in 44 states now have consumption advisories because of mercury contamination.
In the Northeast and Great Lakes states, most of this mercury comes from coal-fired power plants. The mercury in coal can mostly be filtered out of air emissions by modern equipment. The Clean Air Act requires power plants to modernize as they make alterations. But a handful of power plants, many of them in the Ohio Valley, have stubbornly refused to put in better filtering equipment. This mercury lands on water bodies, soils and forests, putting the toxin in everything fish eat and ending up in the flesh of the fish humans eat.
The Bush administration has failed to make these coal-fired plants modernize; it even proposed doing away with the part of the Clean Air Act that requires this upgrading of filtering equipment. This led a group of Northeast states and several environmental organizations, including Waterkeeper Alliance, to file lawsuits to enforce the Clean Air Act. What this boils down to is that my children and the kids of millions of other Americans can no longer go fishing in their communities and eat their catch, because the utility industry has such political clout in Washington. The lawsuits have been forcing the plants to upgrade their filtering equipment and not a moment too soon.
About ten years after I started working for Hudson Riverkeeper I started spending a lot of my time helping to set up new Waterkeeper organizations around the country. There are now 157 local Waterkeeper groups around the world. Each is established and run by local citizens who work together to protect a local river, lake or bay. I serve as the president of Waterkeeper Alliance. We are leading a coalition of environmental organizations that has filed a formal complaint under the North American Free Trade Agreement to force the United States to reduce its mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants.
One out of every six American women of childbearing years now has so much mercury in her body that her children are at risk for permanent IQ loss, kidney and liver damage, blindness and possibly autism because of the mercury. Half of the mercury emissions in our country are coming from those coal-burning plants in the Ohio Valley.
The contamination of American fisheries also amplifies the pressure on our ocean fisheries, which, it is now widely acknowledged, are in great distress. And now, over 70 to 90 percent of the world’s fisheries are considered “over-fished.”
Thankfully, the ocean fisheries crisis lately has been getting attention from media and international organizations, such as the United Nations. But it is a long way from being solved.
When Americans can’t eat the fish we catch, we are being denied more than a meal: we are being stripped of an age-old right that all of us have to take and eat fish from public waters. Fishing was listed in the ancient Roman Code of Justinian as a fundamental right. As a citizen of Rome, you had an absolute right to cross a beach to catch a fish; not even the emperor himself could stop you. Western law and culture has continued to protect this right over the ages. When Britain’s King John began to claim access to fisheries and wildlife as the provenance of the elite at the beginning of the 13th century, it contributed to the revolt that ended with his signing the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta has two chapters on public access to fisheries in navigable waters, establishing it as an undeniable right of all people. American case law and statutes have firmly established that we have the same rights of access to public waters and fisheries, rights that no president, governor or CEO can deny.
There are at least three things each of us can do to turn the tide on the fate of our fisheries. First, I recommend supporting the work of a non-profit organization that focuses on protecting our waters from pollution and over-fishing. I devote my time to Waterkeeper Alliance, Hudson Riverkeeper and Natural Resources Defense Council and there are many other organizations that do excellent work. These groups have scientists, lawyers and, yes, lobbyists, to get policies enacted that will protect fish populations. Do you have a local Waterkeeper program? That’s where to start.
Second, by thoughtfully choosing what we eat, each of us can support sustainable fishing and avoid supporting the worst practices.
Finally and I consider this the most important, we must choose people to represent us in government who are committed to addressing water pollution and over-fishing. There are successful models for re-establishing depleted or contaminated fisheries. Iceland, for one, has been showing the world what a committed government can do to rebuild our ravaged oceans. This work has to be done at the state, national and international levels with enforceable laws and treaties. Supporting politicians that recognize the urgent need for protecting our fisheries is simply the best thing we can do to reclaim our fisheries for future generations.
