THE QUIET FIGHT FOR THE SOUL OF RECREATIONAL FISHERY MANAGEMENT

Fishery management debates have a public face that shows itself at meetings and hearings, when commercial fishermen, anglers, conservation advocates and fishery managers each present their views on both the state of the fisheries in question and what measures—if any—are needed and most appropriate to either maintain a species’ abundance or, far too often, to rebuild an overfished stock.

The meetings can get contentious, and it’s a rare issue that doesn’t see at least one person’s emotions boil over.  Heated remarks, insults, curses and threats are, unfortunately, an unavoidable part of the landscape.  But on the positive side, there’s no question about where anyone stands.  Their comments, and positions, are made—often too loudly—in a public place, and are transcribed on the public record.

But at the same time, there is another, more subtle battle going on.  It’s a fight that tends to stay in the shadows, although its ultimate goal is to impact public opinion.  It is, for the most part, a propaganda war, a fifth-column effort intended to undercut the angling public’s faith in fishery managers, fisheries science and the management process, in order to push public opinion in a direction that favors those in the angling industry who feel that the regulatory process, while perhaps good for the fish, is bad for their bottom line.

It’s all about what the military calls “shaping the battlefield.”  A high-ranking artillery officer describes it this way:

“Shaping the battlefield is a concept involved in the practice of manoeuvre [sic] warfare that refers to shaping a desired situation on the battlefield and gaining military advantage for own forces.  Successful shaping of the battlefield facilitates channelising the enemy to conform to own strategy and will…and employing appropriate fire power assets with the intention of making them lose their initiative,  coherence and force them to fight a disorganized battle while ensuring the integrity of own forces and plans.”

In the military, that’s often accomplished with artillery and air strikes.  In fisheries debates, it’s usually done with the help of sympathetic members of the angling press, who are willing to muddle the message provided to trusting readers, in order to convince them to take a side against the management system. 

One of the best examples of this is an editorial that appeared in The Fisherman Magazine in late 2016.  It’s title,

“Will Angry Anglers Respond to Fluke Fiasco?”

set the tone, and made it clear that anyone delving into the piece wasn’t going to find an even-toned piece describing the state of the stock, its declining abundance, and the management measures that might be needed to halt such decline.  It was clear that the piece would be nothing but a diatribe against summer flounder management, and in that respect, it did not disappoint.

The piece began

“I’m about to really tick you off.

 “Seriously, reading any farther is just going to make you incredibly angry.”

and then it did its best to live up to that promise with its next words, saying

“There’s no way to sugarcoat this, the coastwide quota for summer flounder (fluke) in 2017 is expected to be cut by about 40%.  That means a shorter season, lower bag, an increase in size limits or any combination of the three.”

At that point, there was still no explanation of why the quota needed to be reduced, no mention of anglers overfishing their allocation or the relatively few newly-spawned fluke being recruited into the population.  Instead, there were merely the words

“Pardon my French, but I told you that you’d be pissed.

“The question is what are you—what are we going to do about it?”

And thus the call was made to recruit anglers into a fight against the fishery management system, even though those anglers had no idea what they were really fighting about, or what the fishery managers did that was wrong.

Anglers were just encouraged to feel indignation about having their landings restricted, and for the purposes of that editorial, such indignation was enough.

It’s easy to say that this is the United States of America, and that the author of that editorial had every right to express his opinion that way.  And that comment would be perfectly right. 

But leaving things there would ignore the fact that, more and more, editorial opinions in the angling press are being shaped not by editorial staff, but by the advertisers who expect editors and writers to take public positions and shape public policy in a way that helps the advertisers' profits to grow.

Think about it:  When was the last time that you saw a pro-conservation piece in an angling magazine?

OK, you might have seen one in a fly fishing publication, because the fly fishing industry figured out, long ago, that they’ll sell a lot more tackle, for many more years, if people have something to catch.  But in the mainstream salt water angling press, pro-conservation pieces are pretty scarce.

Yes, you might see an editorial attacking pelagic long lines, gillnets, selling billfish or such.  Attacking the commercial industry is still well withing the rules.  But when recreational fishermen are part of the problem, and need to be part of the solutions, too, the press is surprisingly quiet.

That’s because they know that their advertisers won’t support anything that might hurt their income stream.

And woe betide the editor or publisher who tries to buck that trend.

A little over 15 years ago, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission was drafting the document that became Amendment 6 to theInterstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.

Those debating the goals and objectives of that Amendment fell into two basic camps.  One supported a high fishing mortality target, which would allow a larger harvest and a smaller minimum size, but would also remove a lot of the older, larger, most fecund females from the spawning stock, which would then be composed mostly of large numbers of smaller fish.  Such a spawning stock, that lacks a broad age structure, is at greater risk when striped bass recruitment falls below average for a few years in a row.

The other camp supported a low fishing mortality target that would restrict landings, but would also allow older, larger females to survive, and provide a more stable spawning stock structure.

As is always the case, the ASMFC held meetings on the proposed Amendment all along the striper coast, including here in New York.

At the time, I was pretty friendly with the owner of a media company who, among his other activities, put out a regional angling newspaper that was supported by a very popular website.  He was very involved in striped bass management, and we worked together on other fishery issues.  In the weeks leading up to the ASMFC’s striped bass meeting, he polled visitors to his website about what they would prefer:  management that allowed the harvest of larger numbers of smaller fish, or management that provided for more older, larger fish in the striped bass population.

Managing for older, larger fish won in a walk, being the choice of a significant majority of responding striped bass anglers.  But it wasn’t what the local angling industry wanted.  Both the tackle shops and the for-hire boats strongly preferred management that effectively rendered striped bass a panfish, and relaxed regulations enough that just about everyone could take one home.  That, they felt, would be best for their business.

So when the media guy stood up at the meeting to report the results of his poll, he was clearly nervous.  He made it very clear that the results he reported expressed the opinions of his readers, and not his own.  But he had the integrity to say that a broad majority wanted to see the more restrictive regulatory scheme put into place.

His advertisers’ reaction was immediate and harsh.  When he got into his office the next morning, many thousands of dollars in advertising was being cancelled, and the future of his publications was clearly threatened.  In the face of that assault, he relented, wrote an editorial supporting the for-hire fleet, and retired from the conservation scene.

The industry voices won by taking his often passionate voice out of the debate.

That’s what shaping the fisheries battlefield looks like.  One of its primary goals is to silence anyone who opposes the industry position.  The industry will ruthlessly cull anyone who tries to provide anglers with the other side to the story.  I know a number of writers who privately support conservation, but rarely if ever take an overtly pro-conservation stand in anything they write, because if they do, their writing career will be over.

But the Internet is a wonderful thing, and allows the conservation message to get out even when the angling press does its best to suppress it.

At that point, those who would shape the battlefield turn to personal attacks, with industry representatives, and industry shills in editorial slots, leveling attacks on people’s motivations, character and commitment.  

One of the most common approaches is to label conservation-minded anglers and writers “environmentalists,” as if that was a bad thing. Personally, I share the view of outdoor columnist Rich Landers, of the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review, who said that

“Now, more than ever, a sportsman who is not an environmentalist is a fool.”

But there are still plenty of fools out there.  One of their favorite tactics is to initiate an early attack on a person, organization or idea (“I’m about to really tick you off”) in an all-too-often-successful effort to throw their victim off their stride, and force them to reply to the attacks, insults and innuendo, rather than to execute their own strategy for successfully addressing the management issue.

I’ve seen that approach work many times, particularly back in the day when I was associated with a large angler-based organization that was effectively paralyzed, and feared taking controversial positions because of attacks that might come in the press, and convince some anglers not to renew their memberships.

Thus, the attacks are too often effective.  They too often cause people, and organizations, to lose their focus on the ultimate goal, and their strategies for getting there, and instead concentrate on rebutting what they perceive to be damaging claims.  

Yet there’s truth in the adage that “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”  The trick to frustrating efforts to shape the battlefield is not to get sucked into the response the attackers are trying to provoke, but instead to stay above pointless fights.

Now, as the ASMFC poises itself to deal with overfishing in the striped bass fishery (and hopefully, soon, to rebuild the overfished stock as well), as a recent stock assessment update is likely to show that bluefish, too, are overfished, and as the annual follies with summer flounder, striped bass and scup are about to kick off, we should expect to see industry and their shills in the press begin to shape the battlefield again.

We’ll see editorials attacking the science, attacking people, and attacking the management system.  We’ll see hyperbole, we’ll see feigned outrage, and we’ll see comments that are, at best, only loosely connected to truth, all intended to mislead some portion of the angling community, and convincing them to shut their ears before hard data and rational thought can creep in.

.

We won't see those editorials containing many facts, because the whole point of the battlefield shaping is to get anglers reacting emotionally rather than rationally, and to have them calling for management measures based on that emotion rather than on data.

Which is just what the anti-regulation folks want.

Because they know that when data arrives on the scene, the battle is over, and the only thing that they can do is lose.