R. Chianese's Report of an Excursion Boat Captain's Tale 

            On a short channel crossing from Ventura to explore the waters and environments of Santa Cruz Island, one in the Channel Islands National Park chain, I noticed a fishing boat captain I had fished with before in his new role as excursion boat captain and asked if he decided like me to give up fishing, his former livelihood. "Yes" he answered. "I just couldn't watch all that waste. Nice people out for a day of fishing kept bringing in more and more fish they didn't need just to feel they had a good day. Some fishermen gave away extras to others so they could go on and hook and fight and reel in more without going over limits.”

            “I understand that. I did that too, when we had a good run. I would keep the biggest ones and give smaller ones way. That was rather sneaky.”

            “I didn't mind that so much, but when in certain seasons we ran into a run of jumbo squid, the huge white Humbolts, then the waste was too much. Few people took them home, so when it was over, the crew and I were left with a boatload of them covering the whole deck, sometimes two deep, with not one person taking even one home. Every day this happened I tried to shut the fishing down, but the thrill was too great. The sport was lost in wasting these animals.”

            “So what did you do?"

            "I kept it up for a while. I was sick of it, but then I saw we were taking too many of all fishes. Fewer and fewer were full-size, even though we stayed within limits. I made sure of that. Still I had had it, those boatloads of jumbo squid, and stopped fishing.”

            ”You then became excursion captain out to the Channel Islands with the Park Service?”

            “ It took me a while to figure out what I had done and what I could do now to make up for it. I went through a period of wanting to give up the boat and do something else. I had a bad time of it. Then I said to myself, people going out to the Channel Islands are going for an experience like no other. These are unique islands and so close to shore. We have a biologist with us, a naturalist to give nature tours of the islands, but I volunteered to talk about what we are seeing out and back. I took a course in marine biology, but I had practical experience in locating lots of animals. Pods of dolphin are easy to spot, but when the gray whales show up or even an occasional blue in the distance, then my eyes come in handy. And what I talk about is preserving these big mammals and the fish I once made money from.”

            “What do you feel about this new task you gave yourself? Has it made you feel better?”

            “I do feel satisfied. In some way I am making up for all that taking and waste. If I can educate people on the rides out and back about the need to support this fishery with being careful to use what they might catch or to leave it all alone, letting it take its time to replenish, then perhaps I've made up a bit for too much waste."

            “Have you ever thought of telling your story to the island visitors on your boat?”

            “No I haven’t. They didn’t come for that.”

            “Do you think they will get the environmental message from the biologists and rangers on the island? They are often just speaking objectively about the natural history of the place.”

            “ That will help. I hope so.”