Today’s anglers are more dependent upon fisheries management
and fisheries managers than they have ever been before. Swelling coastal populations place additional
pressures on local marine resources, and regulators respond by placing
restrictions on commercial and recreational harvest.
Such regulations, in turn, put a lot of pressure on the
commercial and recreational fishing industries, who respond by becoming politically
active. In their fight against laws and
regulations that might put a crimp in their incomes, they spend a lot of money
on lobbyists and public relations, and they seek to use anglers as pawns.
Since I was in college, I have written for outdoor publications,
often focusing on conservation issues.
That was fine when striped bass collapsed back in the late 1970s and
everyone was on the same page. Magazines
were filled with stories about saving the striper.
But starting about 20 years ago, with the passage of the
Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 and the beginning of real marine fish
conservation, things quickly began to change as regulations began cutting into
industry incomes. Suddenly, conservation
stories came with a price that the angling industry wasn’t willing to pay.
They began doing their best to dissuade writers and
magazines from printing anything that supported recreational harvest
restrictions—writing about commercial cuts was OK—while encouraging them to publish
articles intended to undermine conservation efforts and make anglers suspicious
of fisheries regulators.
Here on Long Island, I recall countless “conservation”
columns filled with vitriol aimed at efforts to rebuild summer flounder and
other species. I sat on the Mid-Atlantic
Fishery Management Council back then, and am proud to say that I was the target
of some of them.
But being the target of anti-conservation industry spokesmen
means a lot more when you own the magazine.
Back in 2000 or 2001, the owner of a weekly fishing publication and
associated website found himself in the crosshairs of a widespread industry
boycott the morning after he spoke at an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries
Commission striped bass hearing, because he noted that a poll of his readers
supported more restrictive regulation.
When his magazine came out the next week, there was a very
prominent editorial explaining to everyone why killing striped bass was OK—particularly
for charter and party boat passengers.
His cash flow was then restored…
I and other folks that I know have been blackballed at some
publications for our conservation efforts, even when what we write is straight
fishing how-to, and some industry folks have tried to get us blackballed at
others.
Back in 2013, I received a message from an industry
representative (who will remain unnamed) who didn’t like a fairly innocuous
Facebook comment, of all meaningless things, that I made on a regionally
controversial issue.
“So how do you reconcile your stance with the advertisers who
support your writing?
“…Your stance is not popular with a lot of folks on the rec
side who are also well informed and whose businesses support many.
“You are certainly entitled to your position, but it galls
some of us quite a bit that you promote it while being active in a recreational
fisheries publication. That is not
opinion, it is fact.”
My response to him was pretty simple. The first paragraph pretty much said it all.
“I write what I believe to be true. Doing anything else, just to please a
potential source of funding, is too close to prostitution for my taste…”
I would never be surprised if I was closed out of more
markets, because some of these folks can be ruthless. Even so, I’m bound by one
rule:
As a writer, whether of this blog or of something that is
published elsewhere, I have an absolute obligation to tell the reader the
truth. Opinion is fine so long as it’s
labeled, but anything dishonest is not.
That obligation doesn’t change just because the truth is
offensive to an advertiser or two.
Advertisers who, one might argue, shouldn’t really be trying to mislead their
customers by limiting what they may read.
After all, one of the reasons that the United States
Constitution guarantees a free press is so that people can learn both sides of
an issue, and make up their minds for themselves. Unfortunately, the First Amendment only
prohibits governmental restrictions, and not censorship imposed by private persons.
Still, from a purely ethical standpoint, aren’t anglers entitled to a full airing of both
sides of the issues?
That becomes a very important question as legislation
reauthorizing the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act moves
forward in the House of Representatives, and could begin moving in the Senate.
Because the big salt water advertisers—the boat and boat
equipment manufacturers represented by the National Marine Manufacturers’
Association, and the tackle manufacturers and associated businesses belonging
to the American Sportfishing Association—are out there actively trying to
weaken America’s fisheries laws.
They are seeking legislation that would promote “flexibility”—the
“flexibility” to not employ science-based catch limits, the “flexibility” to
keep overfishing, the “flexibility” to delay the rebuilding of overfished
stocks—in order to reap what they call “socioeconomic” benefits.
And if those “socioeconomic” benefits—some might call them “industry
profits”—mean that the public will be denied healthy and fully-restored fish
populations, well…that’s something they don’t want anglers to think about.
So they convinced the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation
Partnership to create a “Commission on Saltwater Recreational Fisheries
Management” co-chaired by—hopefully, to no one’s surprise—the CEO of one of the
largest fishing tackle retailers and the President of a fishing boat manufacturer. Ten organizations “contributed” to the
Commission’s work, including both the National Marine Manufacturers’
Association and the American Sportfishing Association, five of their crony
organizations from the Center for Coastal Conservation and the Center for
Coastal Conservation itself.
That makeup pretty well assured that the result, a report
entitled “A
Vision for America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries,” would be very
industry-friendly, and that it would say such things as
“…the 10-year rebuilding deadlines should be revised to
provide greater flexibility than is currently allowed under the law. Instead of having a fixed deadline under the
law…the regional councils and fisheries managers [could] set lower harvest
rates that would allow fish stocks to recover gradually while diminishing
socioeconomic impacts.”
That’s a nice way of saying that, at least for a while,
there will be fewer fish in the ocean so that the industry can have better cash
flow…
Yet, if you pick up a magazine, you’ll probably read that
the TRCP “Vision” report represents the future of sportfishing, and that
anglers should all get behind it.
You won’t read a critical word.
And that makes sense, given that that the folks behind that
report hold the magazines’ very survival in their hands.
There is no easy way to fix the problem.
And that, in the end, makes things very difficult for
anglers to learn much about the issues involved.
I can only ask those who do dig a little deeper, and who take
the trouble to understand both sides of any important fisheries debate, to share
what they learn with their fellow anglers, fishing club members and such.
People try to control what anglers can read because they’re
afraid of the truth getting out.
It’s our job—and the job of all writers—to set that truth
free.
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