Maybe economic self-interest will save some fishing species under pressure, like the sharks to whom the shark fins at left once belonged.
In his blog, Green, New York Times writer Dave Jolly points out that the government in the Bahamas is beginning to realize that sharks are more valuable as a tourist attraction for divers than as shark soup.
The state of Florida came to a similar conclusion recently when it declared the bonefish a catch-and-release species not long after a report argued that each bonefish in Florida water was worth as much as $3,000 in money spent by angler tourists to Florida.
Maybe this new wrinkle in conservation thinking will start to catch on more widely.
-Rick Bach
