FIRST, FIGHT FOR THE FISH

It’s long been said that a fisherman’s life goes through shifting phases. 

At first, fishermen just want to catch a fish.  Just about any fish will do.

After that, the goal is to catch a lot of fish, then to catch big fish.  And once those goals have been achieved, perhaps numerous times, they grow into an understanding that it’s not all about them, and what they catch, but about the greater connection between man and nature, about introducing others to the outdoor experience.

Around that time is when many fishermen take the next step, and start becoming advocates for conservation.

And when that happens, it seems that advocates move through phases, too.

At first, they tend to be enraptured by their own point of view, and evoke memories of the old Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth.”

“What a field day for the heat

A thousand people in the street

Singing songs and carrying signs

Mostly say, hurray for our side”                                  

Ideologically driven, and largely unfettered by data or any other sort of objective truth, early-stage advocates tend to say “Hurray for our side” too, and rush into attack mode.  They have little desire to work with anyone, for everyone—regulators, management bodies, legislators and, most particularly, anyone who doesn’t share their point of view—is either an enemy to be defeated or an obstacle to be overrun.

When anglers first take on the advocacy role, their preferred foe is usually the commercial fishing industry.

While it’s impossible to deny that the commercial industry has, in many cases, done real harm to fish stocks—it certainly wasn’t anglers who overfished Newfoundland cod—it’s also impossible to deny that anglers also play a role in depleting fish stocks.  That was the point of a recent paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; anyone who wants to see a real world example need only look at the currently overfished striped bass stock, where anglers are responsible for 90% of the fishing mortality.

Now, anglers are calling for the stock to be rebuilt.  And quite a few of those anglers are saying that the best way to rebuild the stock is to first completely shut down the commercial striped bass fishery, even though it’s only responsible for 10% of fishing mortality.  Some of those so-called “gamefish” advocates are even suggesting that if the commercial fishery was closed, the recreational size limit might be lowered so that more anglers might have “a bass for dinner.”

Calling for regulators to completely shut down one sector, in order to reduce mortality, while seeking to increase your own sector’s kill, is a logically inconsistent and indefensible position, but it’s the sort of thing that you see inexperienced advocates (and many experienced advocates, too) call for quite often.

Because, in the end, it’s always easier to conserve someone else’s fish, instead of your own.

Such finger-pointing doesn’t just go on between major sectors.  Intra-sector squabbling goes on, too.  Hook-and-line commercial fishermen look askance at gillnetters and trawlers.  Harpooners don’t care for longliners.  In the recreational fishery, I’ve heard anglers from Pacific islands, where subsistence fishing is still embedded in the culture, implicitly criticize catch-and-release fishermen, saying “We don’t play with our food…”

But the plain truth is that all of those fishermen, whether recreational or commercial, need healthy fish stocks if they want to keep fishing.  It’s also true that all of the intra- and inter-sector bickering doesn’t help the fish stocks at all.

So the second phase of an advocate’s life comes about in that instant when such advocate comes to the realization that it’s better to seek allies than enemies.

Because enemies will always find you, but allies aren’t always around.

Thus, I was pleased to read a recent article by Hannah Heimbuch, a young, Alaskan commercial fisherman, which appeared in the National Fisherman.  It was a call to stop fighting against each other, and start fighting for the fish.  

Ms. Heimbuch wrote

“…From local fishery to national stage, in varying degrees across the country, fishermen are willing to fight their opposing sector into oblivion convinced of a certain righteousness.

“If there is anything I hope my generation can improve on and off the water, it’s that.

“We’ve seen major community schisms at the End of the Road…Every few years a new issue re-ups the ante on old bitterness and fingers start pointing…What to me seem like natural companions—Alaska’s community-based commercial and sport fishermen—have long stayed at loggerheads, at the expense of their common interests and the ability to problem solve the large-scale issues that impact all of us:  habitat protection, sustainable harvest, ocean policy and substantial upheaval in the ecosystem.”

For a while, I’ve been thinking about the same thing.  

Everyone is fighting over the fish, trying to wrest a bigger piece of an oft-shrinking pie for themselves, instead working together to fight for the fish, and thus create a larger pie that all might better share.

That was a big point that groups like the Center for Sportfishing Policy failed to comprehend while pushing their so-called “Modern Fish Act” in the last Congress, a bill that, as originally written (but, fortunately, not as passed) would have impaired conservation efforts while driving a deeper wedge between the recreational and commercial sectors.

But Ms. Heimbuch gets it right when she says

“I won’t say I want us to stop fighting.  That isn’t going to happen anytime soon, and I’m concerned that if it does, it means that we’ve chosen a winner and a list of losers, and one type of fisherman is sitting at the peaceful, lonesome top…

“But I would like to see us fight harder and first for the fish.  For leaders and policies that are committed to growing the resource for everyone…

“None of this is new.  But it’s becoming drastically more important.  Our differences have prevented us from asking smart questions about the resources we share, and the biggest threats facing them in a modern era.

“While we’re fighting about whether rod or net is more deserving of the salmon, whether that halibut should land on a charter boat or longline vessel, let us not forget to fight first for the fish.  For science-based ocean and habitat policies that leave us something to fight for, for community access for this and future generations, for diverse working waterfronts that understand how their businesses complement one another, and the ability to evolve our fisheries side by side rather than in opposition, for the greater good of the resource and those who depend upon it.”

It’s an eloquent argument that gets to the heart of the matter.

The fish come first.  Without them, fishermen, whether recreational or commercial, become obsolete.

And that’s something that advocates, from every sector, must grow wise enough to understand.