I feel like I've been conned by Mike Rowe - I was under the impression that it was brutal work that at least paid pretty well. On the boats at least.

lmao. Mike Rowe is a San Francisco resident soy boy who studied communication sciences, an actor/singer made to play tough. His blue collar media schtiks reaks like he's compensating for something.

In the Netherlands the fishing industry has basically evaporated to less than 1% of GDP. But the loss of jobs has been amply compensated in other sectors.

Our labor market is probably robust enough for the time being that the felons and immigrants will find other work.

Not sure about the natives. Their way of life was wrecked by western influence and fishing even on a modern vessel is about the closest thing they have to continuing their way of life while making some income near their home. I have no idea what they would shift to if they moved.

In any case USA's highly regulated Bering Sea fishing industry is shared with Russia. Even if we eliminated/downsized our fishing it'd have to be done in concert with Russia to get the desired outcome, otherwise we'd just be handing the lions share of our catch to Russian fisherman.

fishermen constantly accuses everyone and anything "stealing my fish" ?.. it is a ridiculous spectacle that repeats regularly, even as catches go from a boat load to a cargo container ship full. That means other companies, other animals, other countries .. always "them" ?

Well, I didn't claim that, and in any case, what you're saying reinforces my point. All that money is accruing to a small number of people, because of our government's love of privatizing shared natural resources.

I'm pretty sure the ocean has the opposite problem of privatization. In fact it's the prototypical example of tragedy of the commons.