I’ve been a
recreational shark fisherman since the late 1970s. Over that time I and the
folks who fish with me have caught a lot of sharks. We’ve caught blue sharks
and sandbars, common threshers and duskies, shortfin makos and tigers. We’ve
caught bizarre-looking hammerheads, and we’ve had whites that weighed more than
a ton and, in at least one case, weighed more than the boat we were fishing
from, pass close alongside.
We’ve cashed our share
of tournament checks, and eaten our share of shark steaks.
Even so, though I’ve
been a part of the fishery for more than forty years, I still look forward to
the next trip. I still get excited when something unseen swims into the chum
slick, picks up a bait and makes a reel scream.
Yet I got a special
thrill when I received a text message a few weeks ago, which simply said “Our
thresher shark was pinging around Montauk! And one of the sandbars we tagged
too.”
It had been sent by a
graduate student, a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University, who I had been
helping catch sharks for his research, and for the research of some of his
colleagues. I had given up a lot of my personal offshore fishing time, and most
of the good weather windows, to help them out with their work. Getting that
text made me feel far, far better than just catching another fish could have
done.
It’s been said that anglers go through various stages over
the course of their fishing lives, and maybe that explains why.
In the first stage,
anglers just want to catch a fish. The kind of fish, or its size, doesn’t
matter.
Once that’s out of the
way, the next goal is usually to catch a lot of fish, and then to catch big
ones.
Plenty of anglers
stall at that point, and remain content to fill coolers, perhaps win a contest
or two, and star in an occasional photo hung on some tackle shop’s wall. But
others continue their evolution, and seek to catch more challenging species, or
intentionally handicap themselves in order to catch the same species of fish in
more challenging ways. Depending on where you are, you’ll find a lot of such
folks chasing striped bass, permit or steelhead.
But there is one final
stop on the anglers’ road, and that comes when a fisherman stops worrying about
his or her own catch, and turns to helping others, whether those “others” are
fishermen or the fish themselves.
When I found sharks
for the researchers this season, something that I’ve managed to do on every
trip we’ve taken so far, the fisherman in me still took an atavistic pride in
the fact that we caught lots of fish, and that some were satisfyingly large.
But I found more reason for pride in the fact that I could use skills that I’ve
developed over many years to help researchers better assure that the fish I
enjoyed in the past will still be around well into the future, when other
anglers can enjoy them long after I’m gone.
The satisfaction I
gain from that is far greater than anything I have ever gained from putting a fish
on a tournament scale, or putting shark steaks in the broiler. Although, in
their time, such things were fine, too.
Opportunities to give
back to the resource are available to anglers on most of the coast.
Here in New York, for example, striped bass anglers can
participate in a cooperative anglers’ program,
in which they maintain logbooks recording details about their catches, and take
scale samples from all striped bass caught. Such information helps New York
meet its recreational data gathering obligations to the Atlantic States Marine
Fisheries Commission, and so contributes to better management of the species.
Offshore, there are a number of cooperative tagging programs
that allow anglers to contribute to the scientific knowledge of various highly
migratory species. One of oldest of those is the National Marine Fisheries
Service’s Cooperative Shark Tagging Program, which dates back to
1962. I’ve been participating in that one since I first fished offshore. I
participate in the Southeast Fisheries Science Center’s cooperative tuna and billfish
tagging program, too. No matter where an offshore angler fishes,
there is probably a local tagging program that
could use his or her help.
Those who like to work with people as well as fish can also find
ways to give back to the resource. Working with various conservation groups,
including the Marine Fish Conservation
Network, is certainly one way.
And sometimes, anglers
discover that there is no existing organization willing to take on a local
threat; in such cases, dedicated recreational fishermen can band together and
enter the fight on their own.
Down in Florida, a few years ago, a group of anglers and local
fishing guides formed Save the Tarpon to
end what they believed was an abuse of the tarpon fishery in Boca Grande Pass.
They ultimately defeated well-financed industry opponents and convinced the
Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission to ban tarpon snagging around Boca Grande.
More recently, Florida anglers and charter boat captains
created Captains for Clean Water.
They’re striving to change current water policies that divert billions of
gallons of nutrient-laden waters from Lake Okeechobee into two coastal
rivers, causing devastating algae
blooms. Their goal is to restore the natural course of such waters
through the Everglades and into Florida Bay, which is losing its biological
diversity due to a lack of fresh water inflow. The outcome of their battle
will, in large part, determine the health of south Florida’s fisheries for a
generation or more.
It is an extremely important fight. But to me, the best example
of giving back was the late Bob Pond’s fight
to restore the striped bass.
Pond designed the
famous Atom line of fishing lures, and founded the Atom Manufacturing Company
that built them, soon after the end of the Second World War. The plugs were a
commercial success; for decades, they were among the “must-have” lures on the
striper coast, and Pond earned a good dollar from his business. When the
striped bass stock began to collapse in the 1970s, Pond didn’t stand by and do
nothing. Nor did he, unlike so many others in the industry, try to milk as much
as he could from the fishery for as long as it lasted, without a thought for
the future.
Instead, he reinvested
his earnings in the striped bass resource, taking money out of his own pocket
to finance research into the decline. He set about marshalling anglers,
scientists, legislators and fishery managers into a force that would ultimately
help to restore the striped bass to health.
I had the privilege of
meeting Pond during that time, when he stopped by a tackle shop where I worked
during the summers of my college years. He gave me my first introduction to the
world of fishery management, and enlisted me into the legion of anglers all
along the coast who, thanks to him, became advocates for effective striped bass
conservation.
Bob Pond’s advocacy for the striped bass came at a significant
financial cost. He dedicated more time to the health of the striper than he did
to his business, believing that was the right thing to do. As his grandson, Paul Trost,
observed, “He felt that since he was helping get the fish out of the
water [by making and selling lures], he should be helping to put [the fish]
back in. He was adamant about protecting the [striper] species.”
That’s what “giving
back” is about.
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This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog
of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/
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