This is my post for #freewriters 2802 prompt credibility hosted by @mariannewest
When Florida said they were going to stop net fishing in State waters, there was no credibility in anything that the media was telling the public, and the way it was worded confused people about how to vote. If you wanted to let the fishermen keep fishing, you had to vote NO on the ballot. This even confused me.
the day we took our nets from the fishhouse dock
The day of the vote, I kept all 5 kids out of school, we had made signs and stood outside of the voting place. I had people ask me how they were to vote because voting no seemed like they were voting against the fishermen. The entire thing was one big confusing mess, but that is how "they" wanted it.
hanging in net (making a new one)
The fishermen never had a chance against the money being spent to slander us. They took videos from where universities were intentionally trying to catch turtles in shrimp nets to study the nets to make what they call TEDS, turtle release devices, and made commercials on TV of it, shrimp nets and gill nets are two different things, but they made it look bad for us because the general public does not know the difference. The shrimp boats were not even being stopped, and the videos came from boats off of Georgia, not Florida.
only Jacks not another kind of fish
If there was a dead fish, dolphin, shark, turtle, or bird that had washed up on shore, they would say they were killed by gillnets and put it on TV. Nothing died from natural causes or by a predator. They also had ads on the radio.
some of our nets
They said a net will catch everything that swims. If that was true no one would use a net, we do not want everything that swims. Imagine the junk we would have to deal with, it makes me shiver.
Not any other fish except mullet
We target the type of fish we wanted to catch, which means we had to have different nets for the types of fish we target. A 3 and 3/4 inch mesh mullet net will not catch a fish we call spots, you need a 2 and 7/8 mesh for them, a 3 and 1/4 mesh will catch pogies, a 4 and 1/2 inch mesh will catch jacks, but not mullet or spots or pogies.
I am a third generation fisherman, and I have never seen a dolphin caught in one of our nets. They have sonar, and there is no way one will get caught.
only mullet
We told the sports that once they got rid of us, who do they think the State is going to go after next? And they are doing it. A few years ago, they stopped them from keeping redfish, they took them from us years before the net ban, and now there are talks about meetings to stop them from keeping trout. This will also hurt us.
photos are mine