The real enemy

(from the December, 2006 issue of National Fisherman)

Why this column is called “A Different Perspective” surely isn’t a secret. I tend to look at, and write about, fisheries issues with a disregard for the conventional wisdom. This month, however, I’m writing from what is a different perspective for me.

It’s been pretty obvious that I haven’t been much of a fan of most of the politically active recreational fishing groups – and I hope I’ve made my reasons for this obvious as well. However, it’s time that all of us who have made fishing, either commercial or recreational, a part of our lives realize that what we have in common – our freedom to fish (sustainably, though with some resemblance to how we’d like to fish) – is being threatened by a common enemy, and that we’re only going to maintain anything approaching that freedom if we come together with a common goal. And that goal is to put fishermen, both recreational and commercial, back into the driver’s seat of the fisheries management dreadnaught.

Can you imagine anything more ridiculous than having national fisheries policy dictated by mega-foundations working through false-front environmental and conservation organizations established and maintained by multi-million dollar grants and giving the appearance of being “grass roots?” Can you imagine anything more ridiculous than politicians and the media buying into the fallacy that most fishermen have no thought for tomorrow and are only interested in maximizing their catch, whether for income or for enjoyment, today? Can you imagine a management agency that is so paralyzed by the fear of foundation-funded litigation that it will allow fishery after fishery to be destroyed in the name of “conservation?” And can you imagine fishermen – the guys and gals who always fought in and often initiated, the battles for clean water and protected habitat – considering “conservationists” the enemy?

Well, that’s where we’re at, folks. And it isn’t going to get better until we make it better.

Fishermen will butt heads with other fishermen over allocation. Always have and always will. Small boat commercial guys won’t agree with big boat commercial guys, draggers won’t with dredge boats, longliners won’t with seiners, catch and release anglers won’t with those who take ‘em home and eat ‘em, pin hookers won’t with sports who don’t sell their catch, and recreational fishermen won’t with commercial fishermen. But we’re all fishermen, and we’re quite capable of managing our fisheries in the family and without the interference of foundation-funded “Astroturf” organizations trying mightily to pass as grass roots.

Which brings up a conveniently coincidental op-ed piece in the October 4th Asbury Park Press. The writer, identified as chairman of the Ocean County (NJ) Sierra Club and the New Jersey Sierra Club's delegate to the Atlantic Coast Ecoregion Task Force, obviously realizes the growing breach between his (and Pew’s – the Sierra Club has received at least 800,000 Pew dollars) brand of so-called conservation and that practiced by New Jersey’s recreational and commercial fishermen, who are working together to put some much needed flexibility back into Magnuson. This situation was galvanized by the imminent crisis in the summer flounder fishery that I covered here two months ago. He wrote “I live on an estuary of Barnegat Bay, where I love to fish. But I am proud to be an environmentalist. No doubt flounder is the most popular recreational fish on the Jersey Shore. I know it's mine.” We sure need more “environmentalists” living on estuaries, don’t we? And though I have no reason to doubt his claimed credentials as a recreational fisherman, he’s almost certainly the only accomplished salt water angler in New Jersey who doesn’t refer to summer flounder as fluke. But the readers are now supposed to accept him as a fishing environmentalist rather than as a representative of a foundation-funded anti-fishing Astro-turf activist. (He also refers to commercial bottom trawlers and dredgers as “an environmental obscenity.” I’d trade a few more responsibly fishing trawlers and dredgers for a few less people – Sierra Club members or not - living on estuaries any day, and so would anyone with a solid grasp of estuarine ecology.)

Nils E. Stolpe