Greenpeace

You've heard it before: politics makes for strange bedfellows.  If that's true, well then let's be honest:  environmental politics and the news media make for totally wild orgies.

I'll give you a little background.  There's a little fish that lives in many places, including the Chesapeake Bay called the menhaden.  A smally fish, yes, but an important fish nonetheless.  To make a long story short (for all you newshounds), these tiny fish get vacuumed out of the water, crushed, ground up into tiny pieces, and have all sorts of nasty things done to them in order to create those intersting little dietary supplements of omega-3 acids, since menhaden are so strong and healthy that they're chock-full of the stuff.  Courtesy of Houston-based Omega Protein.  The governing body over these fisheries has placed a cap on how much menhaden that a certain dietary supplement company (whose initials are OMEGA PROTEIN) can take from the bay.  Now, you're probably thinking they set a totally unreasonable cap, and you're wrong.  And, believe it or not, Virginia's governor decided to let that unnamed company (pssst! Omega Protein!) take 110,000 metric tons of these fish (which are about the size of an adult human hand) from the Bay.  Yes, that's taking 110,000 metric tons (LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS) of fish that are the food source for other critters living in the Bay.  Good government at its best, people.

Don't worry.  Of course Greenpeace took a stand against this (as you've all probably already read in our lovely Greenpeace USA Press Center), and has for a while now, but check out what the Washington Times, which from time to time has been known to have a conservative tilt to it (we hope that last line sent your sarcasm alarm off loud and clear), has to say about this, in Gene Mueller's Outdoors column on p. C7 of the August 9 edition of the Times:

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"Meanwhile, I'm no friend of the radical action group Greenpeace, but I agree with its reaction to the governor's decision to keep the menhaden reduction industry in business.

"Governor Kaine's proposal [would] give the industry favorable treatment with regard to any 'underages,' meaning that if the fishery failed to catch the full quota in one year the deficit would be added to the catch limit for the following year," said John Hocevar, a Greenpeace oceans specialist. The measure was mulled over by the ASMFC last year, but was not adopted.

"Gov. Kaine's proposal is too little too late for Chesapeake Bay," Hocevar said. "After dragging his feet for nearly a year, Gov. Kaine has come up with a watered down plan that has made Houston-based Omega Protein very pleased but will do little to protect the Chesapeake ecosystem or the fishermen that depend on it."

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Mr. Mueller, we're glad that you can agree with us on this issue.  Perhaps in some people's minds advocating for sensible policies and healthy oceans, rivers and bays is radical, but for us here at Greenpeace, being radically sensible really is a way of life.