BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF THE MODERN FISH ACT

The Wizard of Oz first appeared in movie theaters nearly eighty years ago, and has since become a classic. 

In its climactic scene, the heroine Dorothy, along with her dog Toto and companions the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion, enter the home of the film’s namesake wizard, who presents himself as a great disembodied head surrounded by flames, and tries to intimidate the visitors with his power.  

However, Toto ends up pulling aside a curtain to reveal that the “great” wizard is just a conman who uses tricks—smoke and mirrors—to create a false aura of potency.

The scene gave birth to the cliché “the man behind the curtain” to describe those who use illusions of power to manipulate public opinion.

An essay by Stella Morabito, titled “10 Key Ways to Beat the Mass Delusion Machine,” appeared in a 2015 edition of The Federalist.  It begins

“Perception is everything.  Wars are often won or lost based on how the actors perceive one another’s strengths and weaknesses, not so much how strong or weak they are in reality.  So it goes with any agenda item. 

“When people sense a shift in public opinion on an issue, a fair number will shift right along with what they perceive.  Thus, power elites can shape behaviors and attitudes by applying various techniques of crowd psychology, focused on propaganda and silencing dissent.

“The end product is thought reform, or ‘collective belief formation.’  It’s all about molding your perception of a given issue so your perception will influence others’ perceptions, creating an ‘opinion cascade.’  Effective propaganda also keeps you in the dark about the fact that you are being manipulated.”

Which brings us, the long way around, to the Modern Fish Act, (formally titled the “Modernizing Recreational Fishery Management Act, and designated H.R. 2023 in the House, with provisions incorporated into the even-worse H.R. 200 and S. 1520 in the Senate).

At its heart, the Modern Fish Act is an effort by the recreational fishing and boatbuilding industries, abetted by some anglers’ rights groups, to steal some extra fish from the commercial fishing sector, and from the future, by changing the process by which such fish are allocated between commercial and recreational fishermen, and by weakening the conservation and stock rebuilding provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens FisheryConservation and Management Act.

The Modern Fish Act made its formal appearance on April 6, 2017, when H.R. 2023 was introduced in the House of Representatives, but its proponents—the men behind the curtain who have been pulling the levers, setting up the mirrors and generating all of the smoke surrounding the legislation—began more than two years before.

Behind the curtain, drafts of a “white paper” setting out its basic principles were being circulated by the late winter/early spring of 2013; I became aware of the effort then, after being given a copy, although the ideas were already well-enough developed that it was clear that the work had begun some time before.

The folks behind the curtain were located not in the Emerald City, at the palace of Oz, but instead at a group called The Center for Sportfishing Policy (then known as the Center for Coastal Conservation), an organization formed to find political solutions to sportfishing issues, which included groups such as the Coastal Conservation Association (a Texas-based anglers’ rights organization), the American Sportfishing Association (the trade association for the recreational fishing tackle industry), the International Game Fish Association and the National Marine Manufacturers Association among its founding members.

The first public display of smoke and mirrors came a year later, at the 2014 Miami Boat Show, when Mike Nussman, president of the American Sportfishing Association, compared a pitcher full of gumballs and another, almost completely empty container to demonstrate the difference between commercial and recreational harvest, and argue for a new law.  Nussman failed to mention that most of thatcommercial harvest is made up of fish of no interest to anglers, or thatanglers dominate fisheries for many or the species that they actually careabout, including striped bass, bluefish, speckled trout, red drum and others—but, of course, such omissions are a big part of the smoke and mirrors trade.

Nussman’s exhibition set the stage for the release of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership report, “A Vision for Managing America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries,” which was designed to enhance the illusion. 

The report was created by a “Commission on Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Management,” a name that conveys the perception of being an important, independent body impaneled by someone seeking to find objective answers to recreational fishing issues.

In fact, the "commission" was co-chaired by Johnny Morris, the chief executive officer of Bass Pro Shops, a “Sustaining Member” of the Center for Sportfising Policy, and Scott Deal, a current director of the Center for Sportfishing Policy and president of Maverick Boats, another of the Center’s Sustaining Members.

So much for independence…

And, although though the “Vision” report talked a lot about conservation—it uses the word twenty-seven times in just a dozen pages of text pages—says that

“Recreational anglers are more focused on abundance and size, structure of the fisheries, and opportunities to get out on the water,“

than, presumably, on merely taking home fish, and shows a lot of pictures of smiling kids and families, its take-home message is that the key conservation provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, which required annual catch limits and deadlines for rebuilding depleted fish populations, had to be weakened or eliminated in order to further the “socio-economic” goal of letting recreational fishermen harvest more fish.  Which isn’t about conservation at all.

But as the essay quoted above points out, that reality doesn’t matter; it’s the perception that counts.

So press releases extolling the Modern Fish Act frequentlymention conservation, and try to conjure up all-American images of familiesfishing together, but never seriously discuss the impacts of the proposed law on overfishingand overfished stocks.  Rosy images sway public perception far better than grim and gloomy data...

And the Modern Fish Act supporters also need to promote the perception that the entire recreational fishing community is behind their effort to weaken federal fisheries law.  We see the Center for Sportfishing Policy announcing on its website that

“The Modern Fish Act (included in H.R. 200/S. 1520) will make critically important changes to federal fishing regulations, including several key provisions included in both bills that are supported by a broad coalition of recreational fishing and boating organizations.”

But when we look at a joint press release put out by the Center, praising the Modern Fish Act, we find that of the nine organizations listed, besides the Center itself, five—the Coastal Conservation Association, National Marine Manufacturers Association, International Game Fish Association, American Sportfishing Association and The Billfish Foundation—were the Center’s original “Institutional Sustaining Members.”  A sixth, the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation, is a current Sustaining Partner.

The seventh listed organization, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, doesn’t seem to be a member of the Center, but Center president Jeff Angers, is a former director of the foundation, and Pat Murray, president of the Coastal Conservation Association, is both the Secretary of the Foundation and a member of the Center for Sportfishing Policy’s Board of Directors.

We see the same sort of thing with an eighth organization, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.  It does not appear to be a member of the Center, but its board includes Bob Hayes, Chairman of the Center, and Mike Nussman, president of the American Sportfishing Association.  In addition, CCA, ASA, the International Game Fish Association, The Billfish Foundation, the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation and the National Marine Manufacturers Association are all listed as “Partners” of TRCP.

Only the final listed organization supporting the Modern Fish Act, the Recreational Fishing Alliance, has no connection to the Center for Sportfishing Policy, although it did appoint the legislative counsel for the National Marine Manufacturers Association to its board.

Thus, what the Center for Sportfishing Policy wants legislators to perceive as a “broad coalition” is, once you look behind the curtain, a very small and very incestuous private club.

Anglers, and angler-related businesses who don’t support the Modern Fish Act need to let their legislators know that that the little private club, despite its skill at illusion, does not speak for them.

One fishing tackle trade organization, the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, has already come out with a clear policy statement, supporting an effective Magnuson-Stevens Act that conserves and rebuilds marine fish stocks, and opposing

“measures that would compromise the scientific and conservation principles currently in the law that have led to the recovery of fish populations.”

Such a statement makes it abundantly clear that not all of the fishing tackle industry wants to weaken federal fisheries law. 

Now it’s up to the rest of us to make it clear that recreational fishermen, too, can think for themselves, and don’t merely dance when the men behind the curtain choose to pull on their strings.