Shrimp, snapper and sodomy

Louisiana professes an official belief, at this point that its fisheries can be better managed at the state level than nationally, and toward that end pushes an on-going campaign of disinformation that puts fishermen – commercial and recreational – on the losing end.

You’ve probably heard the maxim that if you tell a lie loud enough, strong enough and long enough it will be seen as truth. This worked very well for Germany seventy-plus years ago, and it worked well for the Communists in Russia, too.

Louisiana claims a limit of state jurisdiction for fisheries nine miles out to sea, basing that claim on a collection of old papers that didn’t hold water before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1960 and certainly won’t hold water today.

“Louisiana is entitled to submerged land rights to a distance no greater than three geographical miles from its coastlines, wherever those lines may ultimately be shown to be,” was the high court’s ruling in Louisiana vs. the United States, a case born of a squabble over mineral rights.

Louisiana had tried to show that, like western Florida and Texas, she should be granted a three-league limit rather than a three-mile limit. A league is roughly three miles, in less nautically technical terms.

That the Pelican State might doggedly hold to a position despite its being declared incorrect by the judicial branch of the federal government is nothing new, and Louisiana has a long and sometimes sad history of doing so.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ordered integration of schools with “all deliberate speed” it took almost two decades for Louisiana to come into total compliance. Even years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Texas equivalent of Louisiana’s “crime against nature” statute unconstitutional, the federally-failed law remains on the books, however unenforceable. That it remained is one of the excuses Baton Rouge officials used to round up men in a city park under that pretense. And while their gatherings were arguably for ignoble purposes the flouting of federally proscribed behavior by the state cannot be ignored for its foolishness and meanness.

There were other laws the miscreants might have been charged with violating. But those officials chose to use the one that can’t be enforced anymore.

So there you have it. You can now say that you read a column that somehow links sodomy, shrimp and red snapper. But we haven’t gotten to the fishy part.

So Louisiana claims, by declaration of the Secretary of the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, that it regulates waters nine miles away from shore. Kind of like when I was a kid how I told someone I owned the Empire State Building. The effect is about the same.

But my folly didn’t harm anybody.

Here’s the rub when it comes to Louisiana’s whopper.

Because the claim is included in a pamphlet of rules for commercial shrimp fishermen, there exists the potential that somebody might actually believe it. Like a shrimp fisherman. This is of vital importance because the feds require a permit for fishing shrimp in their waters that is not longer available from them, and which can only be purchased from someone already holding it.

Most fishermen – like the captain of the trawler pictured below – they know they are supposed to have the permit and have known so for years. Not so, perhaps, some other people.

So if a vessel without the permit is stopped in federal waters – which the feds know good and well begin where Louisiana’s federally-recognized three-mile limit ends – the fisherman can lose his catch, and possibly a lot of money because he will go to court.

Likewise is the issue that concerns red snapper, a fish that likes deep bottoms which is usually found at least five miles out except in rare circumstances.

The feds – for reasons they have explained but may still have trouble justifying to a rational person – are only allowing snapper to be caught by private anglers in private boats for a ten-day period this year.

Louisiana has declared its own snapper season to run from March to an unspecified time, which will likely be some time well after Yom Kippur. It states in its own literature that it declares its limit – again – to be nine miles out.

Some of the state’s own enforcement agents have said that the likelihood of getting caught is nil. The feds have personnel shortages. The Coast Guard has better thigns to do.

Oh, and anglers – unlike the shrimpers – are reminded that they should be mindful of the mean old federal government’s potential of taking action should someone be caught with illegal snapper.

Louisiana’s shrimpers and her recreational fishermen are important. They make tremendous contributions to the state’s economy, which needs all the help it can get. Neither deserves being used as a pawn in Louisiana’s game of chicken with the federal government. The last time citizens were made to take part in a war between this state and the federal government, over 150 years ago, the toll in lives was heavy.

The outcome of this war won’t result in anything like that happening. But it is still unfair, particularly when the state has the ability, if its congressional delegation can focus, on a legislative cure to its unhappiness with the way things are.

Should Louisiana fight for a nine-mile limit? Why not? Fight for twenty miles if it can be done. But to use innocent fishermen as cannon fodder is unjust, irresponsible, and ill-advised.