they have fished for decades They've been fishing those waters for thousands of years. the religious argument does seem a stretch to me, and wouldn't be neces

they have fished for decades They've been fishing those waters for thousands of years. the religious argument does seem a stretch to me, and wouldn't be necessary if common sense was used. Their religious argument is actually an expression of common sense, and has more to do with the scientific method than it seems. Indigenous people hunted, fished, and gathered every year for generations. Through direct observation, they noticed many patterns. When you hunted the same area too consistently, fewer animals came back in the following seasons. So they came up with a belief system along the lines of, "If you hunt too much, you have offended the animals, and you must stop hunting for several seasons until they return." The scientific approach makes the same observation, and the same recommendations, from a different explanation. Dismissing the religious approach is easy when people don't understand how it was developed, and what role it has in guiding people's interaction with their entire environment.