Ceilidh

Jerzfisherman
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Coastal Conservation Association clouds fluke situation

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 03/9/07
BY JOHN GEISER
CORRESPONDENT

East Coast fluke anglers, desperate to preserve a fraction of their fishery, did not get the support from some recreational fishing organizations that they expected.

Some thought that they could turn to the American Sportfishing Association or the Coastal Conservation Association for support, but the former did nothing and the latter revealed an alarmingly radical opposition stance.

Neither acknowledged that the sacrifices of anglers have resulted in gains in the numbers of many species and fluke stocks to historic highs.

Pat Murray, vice president and director of conservation for the CCA, recently penned a piece in the organization's newsletter claiming anglers who want more liberal limits and more fish to take home to eat are bent on catching the last fish.

"They cry that it will limit anglers' interest and may damage the industry, but won't killing the last fish not decisively kill the industry?" he asked.

The CCA was founded in 1976 with the purpose of saving the redfish in the Gulf of Mexico. The fish was in trouble, and the campaign to rebuild the stocks and curb the excesses was successful. The CCA grew and looked elsewhere.

Many anglers signed on to what appeared to be a good cause: rebuilding depleted fish stocks. Then something happened.

The CCA chant continued, but anglers began to question some of the rhetoric, particularly an elitist slant from New York. Few veteran bass fishermen in this area will forget the pompous CCA authority who claimed the quest for stripers should be restricted to experts, fishermen with experience, not common anglers.

Gradually the conservation campaign began to assume the appearance of religious fervor, a protectionist doctrine that made many anglers uneasy.

Now, Murray has resorted to a radical hyperbole that many New Jersey fishermen find insulting.

"It has often been said that commercial fishermen want to catch the last fish," he wrote. "But are we recreational anglers trying to stop them, simply because we want to catch the last fish?"

The question obviously is: What angler ever said or implied he or she wanted to catch the last fish, literally or figuratively? The plea as Capt. Tom Buban, skipper of the Atlantic Star out of Atlantic Highlands puts it: "My people just want to take home a fish to eat."

Is that too much to ask when fluke are more plentiful today than they were in the 1950s?

Capt. Howard Bogan Sr. famously said a long time ago, and I paraphrase: "Hook-and-line fishermen can never endanger a saltwater species."

Anglers do not have the ability to catch fish that will not cooperate, and interest falls off as fish become scarce. A case in point is whiting: No angler fishes specifically for whiting today.

Murray goes on to push "resource first," and calls it an ethic or principle of right that was once the driving force of the early saltwater conservation movement, but is slowly being corrupted by a doctrine of "fisherman first."

What is being corrupted is the understanding of the intent of fishermen. Most fishermen support conservation to enhance stocks of fish that will provide more opportunity to fish, not to frantically stockpile masses of summer flounders and spiny dogfish to record, untouchable levels.

Some members of the CCA may believe that the fish should come first, but it is probable that most recreational anglers would argue that humanity comes first. If it were a question of survival, would it be the last fish or the last human?

Saltwater fish are a valuable national resource, an important source of protein as well as recreation, and they should be sensibly managed and harvested in the best interests of the citizenry.

The shrill charge that recreational anglers are bent on killing the last fish, when they protest harsh regulations that increasingly shut them out of the winter flounder, blackfish, weakfish, porgy, fluke, and sea bass fisheries, is nonsense designed to protect a broken fishery management system.

Murray asks: "Do we want the last fish for ourselves or do we want to conserve it to make a future for generations to come?"

Jersey Coast Anglers Association members who hired buses, as well as other recreational anglers who took trains and drove cars to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission meeting in New York City earlier this winter were not asking for the last summer flounder.

They were conservationists who have seen the biomass soar to the highest level within memory, and mortality cut to its lowest point in 20 years. They went to protest a broken fisheries management system that will slash the New Jersey-New York recreational summer flounder harvest this year to its lowest point since 1993.

The fishermen who made that effort care about preserving the resource for future generations, but they are fishermen who understand that a renewable marine resource can be harvested as it grows, and should be shared sensibly by the present generation.