What do Rodeos & Interns Scavenger Hunts have in common?

ANSWER: It’s a Race to the Finish!  

SUBJECT:  Fishing Rodeos
A Rodeo is like Disneyland. Yes. Bear with me. Then I have to add: Fishers (fishermen and fisherwomen) are like 5-11 year old children.

Okay, NOW how excited are 5-11 year old children when they are at Disneyland? Okay, THAT’S how excited Fishers are when they are at the Rodeo.

Not THIS RODEO, but THIS RODEO.

Fishing Rodeo is a term used to describe the frenzy of fishers that start fishing out on the ocean RIGHT when regulators announce “The season is open.” It’s a rodeo because, for places that do not have catch-share systems (it’s in the news), there’s limited time to catch fish and so the fishers try and catch as-many-as-possible in that short span of time. Land rodeos are where cowboys rope cows and pigs, Marine rodeos are where fishers catch fish.

STORY: As a CBE fellow this summer, I recieve an internship at EDF. I am just one of many people that flow in and out of this organization, but there is a definite group of summer interns at our office. We are 11 people and besides our Thursday brown-bag seminars, EDF also organizes a team bonding experience for us. Our creative Intern Director (ID) decided to plan a city scavenger hunt versus something like a field trip.

We pulled numbers from a hat: 3 groups of three and 1 group of two, and waited until the next day.

We all went to work in semi-coordinated outfits per team. The ID told us to dress comfortably, so many of us wore gym clothes (so we could run faster). We had a delicious lunch with fancy small bottles of coke in the conference room. Then, we collected our possessions for the ride down the elevator to being our 3 hour scavenger hunt. When we reached the lobby (28 flights down), the ID and our receptionist handed the groups the envelopes, off we went: all darting off in different directions. Here’s the items we had to find, and the rule was that the groups with 3 people had to include themselves in the pictures.

1)    Cable car – a real one that is moving
2)   Sf Fireman or firemen
3)   A person wearing plaid
4)   A live crab
5)   A person wearing a fedora hat
6)   A person wearing SF Giants gear
7)   A male tourist wearing shorts with socks pulled all the way up
8)   A female tourist wearing Capri pants and/or printed top
9)   A street performer (juggler, magician, one of those spray painted people)
10)*Take a picture of someone else taking a picture w/out them knowing you are taking their picture (can’t be another team! Must be a stranger)
11)  Find 3 adorable dogs, need one pic of each dog
12) A dapper well dressed man
13) A bike messenger
14) Any SF landmark
15) Any water fountain
16) A Statue of any type/form
17) Canadian tuxedo (denim on denim)  
18) Cooked or live poultry hanging in any window front
19) *Any person sleeping out in public
20)  A church
 

 We had between 1pm to 4pm to complete our task.

The first group came back at 2pm…..followed by 2:05, 2:06 and 2:25pm….why? Why didn’t we stay out to enjoy the sun and bond (which was the point of this activity)? Because EVERYONE wanted to WIN. The prize: unsignificant, we had no clue of its identity.

REFLECTION: So, what did I learn from that experience?

The design of the system is very important in how you want the outcome. If the goal of the scavenger hunt was for all of us to bond, maybe the goal should have been quality of photos versus timeframe to complete the task. The same thought applies to fisheries. As of now, the goal of fishers is to catch as many fish as possible, but maybe the better goal should be the quality of fish (I would speculate, but this is a complex and political subject). Yet, there are small market forces that encourage collection of poor quality fish for use as fish meal (fish food for aquaculture and livestock feed) and fertilizers (crops benefit greatly from ocean compost). Rodeos are crazy because a) in the frenzy to fish as-much-as-possible in a given time, fishers will take unneccessary risks such as working extra long hours and that creates fatigue which results in dangerous accidents out at sea, and b) because all the fishers are catching the same fish at the same time, market prices for fish drop (great for consumers): which provides terrible returns to the fishers and results in the majority of fresh fish is turned into processed fishsticks: so they last longer.

Due to being done 2 hours early…we were sent out for round 2.

Our choice:

Street perform, whichever team earns the most money wins

 -or-

Convincing people to dance on video.