OF MOVEMENTS, BUSINESSES, RACKETS--AND FISH

A couple of weeks ago a local fishing club invited me to one of their meetings and asked me to give them an update on how angling regulations were likely to change this year.  As the talk was winding down, one of the members asked me what organizations anglers should support, to assure that our fishery resources would be properly conserved and managed.

I gave an answer that I didn’t like.

I said that I didn’t know.

While there are plenty of conservation groups out there that are made up of sportsmen, and are dedicated to the conservation and management of everything from brook trout to mallards, mule deer and wild sheep, the organizations that claim to represent salt water anglers seem to pay little attention to keeping a lot of live fish in the water, and concentrate most of their efforts on putting more dead fish on the dock.

The sad thing is, it usually didn’t start out that way.

From what I’ve seen over the years, there are a lot of anglers who care about conserving salt water fish stocks, although their concept of what “conservation” is may vary quite a bit.  Some see it simply as “getting the nets out of the water” or making some prized species, such as striped bass or red drum, a “gamefish” that may not be legally sold; others have a more nuanced view that recognizes that both commercial and recreational fisheries, as well as habitat loss and other non-fishing-related influences, can have a detrimental effect on finfish stocks.

But most anglers that I know understand that if folks don’t do something to limit the number of fish removed from the water, eventually there won’t be any fish in the water for them and their decendants to catch.  And they realize that is not a good thing.

As these things usually go, something happens that anglers see as a threat to fish stocks.  What it is can vary a great deal.  It might be a proposed construction project that threatens striped bass habitat in an important nursery area, or the dramatic collapse of an entire fish stock.  It might be the threat of pair-trawls stripping the life from northeastern canyons, or commercial overharvest of red drum in the Gulf of Mexico.

Whatever that triggering event may be, anglers get together and form an organization to better fight against the threat.  And in forming that organization, they also found a popular movement, filled with ideals and worthwhile goals.

The start of a movement is a heady time.  I’ve been caught up in such things on an occasion or two, and can recall all of the excitement as we all went out into the world, spreading our message and seeking like-minded souls who would volunteer their time, their knowledge and other resources to help us achieve our common aim.

If the movement’s founders have truly tapped the mood of the community, they will soon find themselves with a host of members, with fiscal resources and maybe even with someone who looks like an employee or two.  They may have hired attorneys, perhaps a lobbyist and maybe an administrator to keep track of all the moving parts.

At that point, what began as a good idea needs to take some sort of formal shape.  Most likely, a not-for-profit corporation is formed.  Leaders, likely first appointed by acclamation, are formally invested as corporate officers, guided by a corporate board.  Bank accounts are opened, newsletters formally published, a website created to further spread the word.  If there weren’t any employees before, about this time, at least one will be hired.

With luck and hard work, some of those original goals will also have been achieved, so the newborn organization will also have earned a bit of a reputation, but also has a little less demanding mission.

It is a time of transition, when what had begun as a movement driven by high-minded individuals, driven by what they, at least, view as noble ideals starts to look a lot like a business.

It is a dangerous time.

It is dangerous because once you take on a payroll, and commit to lease office space, buy the necessary insurance policies and such, money starts to matter a lot more than it did before.  With the initial goals of the organization achieved, unless the organization can clearly articulate a new and inspiring mission, it can get a lot harder to recruit new members, to keep many of the old ones, and to bring enough donors on board.  

Cash flow can get frighteningly thin.

If enough years have gone by, the initial, idealistic founders of the organization, who believed in its founding principles, will also start to retire, and hand over leadership to a new generation that was not in the original fight, and might not be quite as dedicated to the organization’s original mission.  If those founders did their job well, the organization would have grown, and is probably managed by professional staff who don’t necessarily share the mission or principles at all, and are far more interested in meeting payroll—most particularly their own—than in achieving noble goals.

It is at this time when the founding principles of the movement, and its original mission, often become subordinated to the business’ need to grow membership and keep the money flowing in.

It is at this time when the movement often dies.

I’ve seen it occur a number of times.

Once was here in New York, in 1995.  The angling community had knitted together an umbrella organization that included a wide array of fishing-related groups, including everything from fishing clubs to trade associations to the state Sea Grant program, in the hopes of affecting the legislative and regulatory process, and improving the political and natural environment in ways that benefitted both the fish and recreational fishermen.

For a while, it all worked quite well.  The organization grew, an executive director was hired, an office was opened, and some good work was done.  But in 1995, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission declared the formerly collapsed striped bass stock was fully recovered, and problems arose.

Normally, the recovery of a species would be viewed as good news.  But with the bass’ recovery came the opportunity for states to relax striped bass regulations.  New York’s striped bass anglers, and the clubs that represented them, largely opposed any change in the rules; they argued that the current regulations, which permitted anglers to take home one striped bass per day, provided that such fish was at least 36 inches long, would help prevent a future collapse while providing the opportunity to take home the occasional fish.

The state’s fishing industry, on the other hand, saw things differently.  ASMFC was allowing the coastal states to amend their regulations, so that anglers could keep two bass each day, and reduce the size limit to 28 inches.  With the key summer flounder population still badly overfished, and other food fish such as scup and black sea bass not doing much better, tackle shops, party and charter boats saw the chance to harvest more and smaller striped bass as a revenue opportunity, that would provide “meat fishermen” with a new species to target.

Despite nearly unanimous opposition from its member clubs, the leadership of the umbrella group sided with the industry position.  I was one of the louder members of the opposition, so the then-president of the group took a chance to take me aside and explain that the organization “needed about $40,000 a year to pay the bills.  We need these [industry] people’s donations.  Without them, we won’t have enough money to run.”

And faced with an argument like that, it was pretty clear where mission and principles stood in the order of things…

So that’s when another “movement” began.  Striped bass anglers abandoned the old organization wholesale, and began looking for other options.  Eventually, we decided to harness our star to that of a national angling group that, at the time, was doing outstanding conservation work elsewhere in the country.

Again, it was a time of passion and selfless dedication to a cause.  We worked for more than a year, trying to prove that we were good enough to be made a state chapter of the national group, a national group that, at the time, was proud to number “putting the fish first” among its guiding principles.  

Eventually, they let us in the door.

And, again, we grew.  In time, we were the seventh- or eighth-largest of fifteen local chapters, even larger than some that had started up years before.  We hired an executive director, and rented out an office.  Membership grew.

And as part of that membership effort, two of our local chapters decided to put on a lavish, light-tackle tournament as a way to attract both members and their money.  It was a successful event, that undoubtedly helped us to work toward our conservation goals here in New York.

But only for a while.

After a few years, things got turned on their heads.  Instead of the tournament supporting the organization and its goals, folks began to tell us, the organization should be changing the way it does things, and the public positions that it took, in order to support the tournament.  We should be putting on kids’ fishing clinics and cleaning beaches and such, because those generated good publicity, but we shouldn’t be getting involved in hard conservation issues, because “Conservation is controversial,” and conservation advocacy led to conflicts with the industry, fewer donations and bad comments in the local angling press.

From a business standpoint, they were probably right, but there seems little point in running a conservation organization that doesn’t support conservation issues, so their point seemed a little moot.  Most of use decided to adhere to the then-expressed principles of the national group, and let the other folks stalk off with their tournament and go home.

And that was good for a while.  But then business considerations began to intervene at the national level, too.

It all probably started when a fisheries issue in the South Atlantic started to raise a public outcry.  At first, the folks on the ground tried to do the right thing, but their leadership began to fear that a local magazine with a big readership and a cranky publisher would criticize them for taking a pro-conservation, rather than what he might deem a “pro-angler” position, and do real harm to—yes, of course—membership and the money that those members generate.

Conservation principles were compromised while business principles prevailed.

Despite a unanimous vote by member reps to keep putting the fish first, other fisheries problems along other coasts, criticism in the press and in on-line forums and related membership concerns led even the national group to eventually abandon its “fish first” principles, ally itself with industry and adopt an “anglers’ rights” agenda that is contrary to much of the work that it did before.

At that point, I just walked away, a bit wiser and far more cynical than I had been at the start.

I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by such outcomes.  

A week or two ago, I came across a quote that says it all.

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

It is attributed to someone named Eric Hoffer, and his book The Temper of Our Time.

Hoffer was one of those folks who, like the writer Louis “Studs” Terkel and folk singer Woody Guthrie, knocked around in—and got knocked around by—various occupations during the Great Depression, a time when both movements and rackets were thick on the ground, and came away with insights that are still worth considering today.

Fisheries conservation is certainly a “great movement,” that shows many faces, and attracts many new followers even in today’s increasingly jaded world.  And the angler-based fishery “conservation” groups are certainly all about business, their actions and political positions making it clear that they care about money and members far more than they seem to care about the future health of fish stocks.

But a racket?

Clearly, the answer is yes.

That comes in the form of the “Modern Fish Act,” more formerly the Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act.  

A host of angling-related organizations are trying to con you into supporting that bill, which would let them escape our current science-based management system in order to kill a few more fish—mostly red snapper—and sell a few more boats, rods and reels, over the next few years--while mortgaging the future of our public fish stocks and leaving it up to your descendants to pay off their bill.

In the Senate, the bill is S. 1520, and there’s an all-out push for anglers on every coast—and even largemouth bass fishermen in the heartland—to support it.  Advocates claim that it would be good for everyone, but you only need to read the allocation section,

“Not later than 60 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Commerce shall enter into an arrangement with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study of South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico mixed use fisheries—to provide guidance on criteria that could be used for allocating fisheries privileges…and to develop procedures for allocation reviews and potential adjustments for allocations.  [emphasis added; internal numbering omitted]”

to understand that the anglers’ groups pushing the hardest for such legislation--all headquartered in the South--care as much about anglers in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the Pacific as they care about whether there will be anything left for your kids and your grandkids to fish for, after they have all had their fun.

Which is to say, they seem to care nothing at all…

In the House, most provisions of the Modern Fish Act bill, H.R. 2023, have been incorporated into H.R. 200, the latest iteration of what conservation advocates have dubbed the “Empty Oceans Act,” a bill that may very well undo most of the progress that has been made in rebuilding fish stocks over the past twenty years. 

That, too, tells us all we need to know about how sincere anglers’ groups are about real conservation.

Thus, when I answered that question the club member asked, my “I don’t know” came with a lot of frustration and sadness, because it made me admit how badly at least one part of a “great movement,” and a part that I once was very much involved in, has failed.

But that doesn’t mean that fisheries conservation itself is a lost cause.

On every coast, grassroots groups have made a difference in the future of a number of species, ranging from cobia to tarpon to striped bass.

So please, join that movement.  Work with other anglers to fight for the fish that you care about.

Organizations, on the other hand, aren’t worth fighting for.  

They’re just a tool designed for a purpose.  When that purpose is done, it’s better to put them aside and discard them, lest someone else comes along with some racket, and ends up vandalizing the good work that others, before them, have done.