AND THE CON GOES ON...

I’ve been writing this blog for more than four years, and in that time penned about 450 separate essays on fisheries management and related matters.  Sometimes, I worry that, at some point, I’m going to run out of topics.

Thus, today, I thought that it would be appropriate to thank the Center for Sportfishing Policy, and affiliated organizations such as the American Sportfishing Association, Coastal Conservation Association, National Marine Manufacturers Association and others, for running what may be the longest continuous effort to con Congress and the American angler ever attempted, and so giving me plenty of things to write about.

I’m speaking, of course, of the continuing effort to weaken federal fishery conservation and management laws, which has taken various forms over that time, but can be pretty well boiled down into three words:  Modern Fish Act.

And yes, I know that I write about the Modern Fish Act in every other blog, and you’re probably tired of reading about it by now.  But if it’s any solace at all, you can be pretty damned certain that you’re not anywhere near as tired of reading about that misbegotten piece of legislation as I am of writing about it, but because this is such a long-running and multi-layered con, with so much invested in its ultimate success, the second we let our collective guard down, the folks promoting the law are going to slip past and steal the future health of our saltwater fish stocks, so it pays to keep paying attention.

Today’s observations were inspired by an op-ed in The [Illinois] State Journal-Register, which was written by Thom Dammrich, the president of the National Marine Manufacturers’ Association, a group which seems to be making an end-of-session push to get S. 1520, the Senate version of the Modern Fish Act, and by another op-ed, penned by John Pfeiffer, president of Mercury Marine, a strong NMMA supporter, which appeared recently in the Kenosha (WI) Journal. 

Both op-eds are similar, not just in the fact that they support the Modern Fish Act, but in the fact that they target an inland audience, and inland legislators, who are not all that familiar with what goes on in coastal fisheries, and in the fact that in making their case, they have engaged in the sort of deceptive language that has been a hallmark of Modern Fish Act supporters from the beginning.

Dammrich’s begins with an interesting twist. 

Freshwater fishermen, as a group, have been subject to size limits, bag limits, seasons and other regulations far longer than saltwater anglers.  Most have long recognized that in most areas, good regulations are a prerequisite to good fishing; without them, most waters would quickly be, and in the past often were, “fished out.”  So they’re not likely to be swayed by the complaints about “annual catch limits [that] don’t fit” which appear in some of NMMA’s other Modern Fish Act propaganda.

Instead, he makes a broader, more general attack on the regulatory process, writing

“With Lake Michigan to the north, the Wabash River to the east, the Ohio River to the south, and the Mississippi River to the west, Illinois has access to fishing no matter where you turn.  But following all the rules and regulations can quickly turn a peaceful fishing trip into a major headache.  [emphasis added]”

It’s a good gambit because, let’s face it, no one likes to be regulated.  We complained about enforced bedtimes as kids, and about curfews in high school.  As adults, we rail against red light cameras, even though we all know in our hearts that not running a red light is a very good way t avoid both traffic fines and a possibly fatal collision.  But somewhere back in our minds, there’s this whole anti-Big Brother thing…

Thus, appealing to that rebellious instinct by a broad attack on fishing regulations is a sure way to win some degree of sympathy from anglers and others, even though most of those anglers probably don’t have much of a quarrel with Illinois’ angling rules, and probably realize that without them, there wouldn’t be too many fish left in the state’s waterways.

But once you have that sympathy, it’s easy to transfer it to salt water anglers who, according to Dammrich, are suffering under the current version of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.  He tells the folks in Illinois that while their

“regulations may seem burdensome…they are actually far less constricting than those faced by saltwater anglers.”

The key to his argument is to present his allegations without any factual support.

If he tried to provide facts to shore up his position, it might be hard to explain why a regulation that allows a fisherman to retain 15 bluefish on the Atlantic coast, with no minimum size or season at all, is more “constricting” than Illinois rules that allow an angler to take home 3 northern pike of 24 inches or more, or 1 36-inch-plus muskellunge.  Rules in the Gulf of Mexico that allow anglers to keep 15 foot-long Spanish mackerel per day seem a lot less “constricting” than Illinois rules that permit anglers to keep 6 14-inch walleye or 5 trout and salmon.

Yes, some salt water regulations, for a few species, are more restrictive than that, but then there are plenty of places in Illinois that have special regulations much more restrictive than the general rules, too.

But those are facts, and we’re talking about the Modern Fish Act, where facts are a threat to the con.  That becomes particularly true when Dammerich makes a misleading statement that we hear, in various forms, time and time again in Modern Fish Act debates:

“…[T]he Modern Fish Act…would also protect fish populations by continuing the important conservation work started by the Magnuson-Stevens Act in 1976.”

Really?  Just what “important conservation work” would that be?

To begin with the Magnuson-Stevens Act, as passed in 1976, did just about no “conservation work,” important or otherwise, at all.  It pushed most foreign boats out of United States waters, but merely replaced foreign overfishing with overfishing by our domestic fleets, and provided financial incentives for the domestic fleet to build bigger, more modern vessels that only made it easier for them to catch too many fish.

The meaningful conservation work didn’t begin until after passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, which required federal fishery managers to promptly end overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks, and the 2006 reauthorization of Magnuson-Stevens, which required that annual catch limits for almost all managed stocks and held fishermen accountable if those annual catch limits are exceeded. 

Given that the text of the Modern Fish Act (more technically, the Modernizing Recreational Fishery Management Act) as originally introduced, clearly attempts to exempt recreational fishermen from the annual catch limits that prevent overfishing in many fisheries, and the associated accountability if they do overfish, and creates broad exceptions to the rebuilding requirements for overfished stocks, the notion that the Act would continue Magnuson-Stevens’ conservation work is more than a little hard to believe.

Then there are the true statements that appear in both Dammrich’s and Pfeiffer’s op-eds, which make anglers feel good about themselves but hide a deeper and darker reality.  

Dammrich says that

“Casual anglers are careful to leave healthy fish populations because their favorite pastime depends on it—they want to enjoy their sport and understand the risk of overfishing.”

Pfeiffer echoes that sentiment when he says that

“Anglers have an inherent vested interest in making sure fish populations are healthy and capable of sustaining themselves year after year.”

Fair enough.  I may agree that such statements, particularly Pfeiffer’s, are true.

But I also know that most salt water anglers don’t spend a lot of time wondering whether regulations give fish stocks adequate protection; they have faith that their regulators won’t allow overfishing and will prevent stocks from falling into decline. So when rules are ultimately issued, anglers feel that they're doing the right thing merely by obeying the law.

And there’s a big difference between “anglers” wanting healthy fisheries, and the sort of more liberal harvest rules that various members of the tackle and boatbuilding industry are seeking.

They're looking for rules that will let anglers kill more fish, and so hopefull generated more industry revenues.  Pfeiffer admits that his goal is

“more demand for boats and marine accessories like those we manufacture and sell at Mercury Marine,”

which he believes would be generated by the Modern Fish Act’s changes to current law.

Nicole Vasilaros, who works for Dammrich at NMMA as a legislative specialist, appears in a video in which she says,

“Today’s system of fisheries management is outdated, and hampering access for our nation’s recreational anglers.   People won’t purchase boats and equipment if they see no reason to get out on the water.”

Again, it's all about generating revenues.

So while anglers might very well worry about overfishing and maintaining sustainable fisheries, it seems that the folks writing op-eds and appearing in videos for the boatbuilding industry want to see a law that allows

“alternative [to catch limits] management for recreational fisheries,…smartly [that is, slowly] rebuilding fishery stocks, [and] establishing exemptions were annual catch limits don’t fit…”

in order to maximize recreational harvest and—at least in their hopeful eyes—maximize the amount of product that they sell.

As is the case in every con, you need to listen very closely to what the folks say, and not listen to what they want you to hear…

But the greatest Modern Fish Act con is that, the "Modern Fish Act" is what the folks who have been pushing the bill are actually trying to pass.

Last year, two bills were introduced in Congress, H.R. 2023 in the House and S. 1520 in the Senate.  The House version was the worse of the two, although neither was much good and both threatened managers’ ability to manage fish stocks for sustainable abundance. 

The Senate bill was reported out of committee, where a strong bipartisan effort stripped most of the bad language out of the bill, and put some good language in; what remains is somewhat spiteful and petulant, but won’t prevent federal fishery managers from doing their jobs.  

As S. 1520 stands today, it’s largely harmless.

However the House bill, H.R. 2023, is effectively dead.  It never made it through committee, and with just six months left in the legislative session, and elections in November,it’s almost certain that it never will. 

Instead, the House is getting behind H.R. 200, a bill formally titled the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, which did make it out of committee.  

H.R. 200 is essentially a retread of bills that have been rattling around Congress with little effect since Magnuson-Stevens was reauthorized in 2006.  H.R. 200 includes some language taken from the Modern Fish Act, but it also includes a lot of far worse (and yes, there is far worse) language that would create very broad exceptions to the fishery conservation and management requirements of Magnuson-Stevens, and threaten the sustainability of many fish stocks.

If the inoffensive S. 1520, which Modern Fish Act supporters can point to as a seemingly benign bill, is passed by the Senate, it will be sent to conference committee not with H.R. 2023, but with H.R. 200.  The mating of those two bills would produce a chimera, a misbegotten hybrid that would likely include all of the worst aspects of the original Modern Fish Act, along with even worse provisions from H.R. 200, and do it while avoiding most of the public debate and bipartisan negotiations that would otherwise have taken place if the bill had to go through the normal lawmaking process.

That, then, is the ultimate goal of the Modern Fish Act con.

To sell anglers and Senators on the mild S. 1520, the only pure “Modern Fish Act” that has a chance to pass in either house, and then conference it with H.R. 200, in order to bring back all of the bad—and more—removed by the Senate’s bipartisan effort.

It’s a classic slight-of-hand, in which one hand distracts while the other hand steals.

But cons only work if you fall for the patter, and don’t watch what both hands are doing.

Once you know where the con man is heading, it’s easy to get out of his way.  And once we do that, we have an obligation to reach out to others, expose the con for what it is, and run the con men out of town—or at least out of Congress.

For if they stay there, we all stand to lose.