From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “The Bluefin Slaughter” (editorial, Nov. 17):

As a young man I was privileged to work for and to know Capt. Charles A. Mayo II of Provincetown, Mass. He was the legendary sport fishing captain of the Chantey I, II and III, the inventor of skip baits and a lover of the oceans.

On a late summer day in the 1960s, we stood on McMillan wharf in Provincetown harbor watching as the Silver Fox came steaming into port after setting the first purse seine around a school of giant bluefin tuna in Cape Cod Bay. My recollection is that it took an additional two beam trawlers to help Captain Silva bring in his catch of 600,000 pounds of tuna he had captured in one set of his net.

Captain Mayo told me to remember that day as the beginning of the end of tuna in the North Atlantic; how prophetic and how sad a day it was. Incidentally, the catch was all sold for cat food at less than 10 cents a pound.

We need to stop making holes in the world’s oceans.

Stephen E. Goldsmith
Wailuku, Hawaii, Nov. 17, 2007