MARINE FISHERIES: THE ATTACK OF THE GADGETEERS

 

When he published A Sand County Almanac in 1949, pioneering ecologist Aldo Leopold observed,

“Then came the gadgeteer, otherwise known as the sporting-goods dealer.  He has draped the American outdoorsman with an infinity of contraptions, all offered as aids to self-reliance, hardihood, woodcraft, or marksmanship, but too often functioning as substitutes for them.  Gadgets fill the pockets, they dangle from neck and belt.  The overflow fills the auto-trunk and also the trailer…

“I have the impression that the American sportsman is puzzled; he doesn’t understand what is happening to him.  Bigger and better gadgets are good for industry, so why not for outdoor recreation?  It has not dawned on him that outdoor recreations are essentially primitive, atavistic; that their value is a contrast-value; that excessive mechanization destroys contrast by moving the factory to the woods or to the marsh.  The sportsman has no leaders to tell him what is wrong.  The sporting press no longer represents sport; it has turned billboard for the gadgeteer…I do not pretend to know what is moderation, or where the line is between legitimate and illegitimate gadgets.  Yet there must be some limit beyond which money-bought aids to sport destroy the cultural value of sport…our tools for the pursuit of wildlife improve faster than we do, and sportsmanship is the voluntary limitation in the use of these armaments.  It is aimed to augment the role of skill and shrink the role of gadgets in pursuit of wild things.”

When he wrote those words, Leopold lived in Wisconsin, so he viewed outdoor recreation from an inlander’s perspective; I don’t recall that he ever wrote of the ocean.  When he wrote of sportsmanship, he wrote as someone who pursued deer and ducks, and perhaps trout and other freshwater fishes, and his words rang true for what was happening in his native lands during mid-20^th Century.

Here on the coast, things were a little different, at least for a while.  Saltwater angling, as a sporting enterprise, was not as well established as hunting or freshwater fishing back then.  Certainly, a lot of people fished but, with the exception of well-heeled sportsmen who sought tuna and marlin and swordfish out in blue water, and a handful of others who pursued tarpon and bonefish along southern shores, saltwater fishing was largely a food-gathering affair; there was little regulation, and it was perfectly acceptable, and perfectly legal, for the fisherman who caught more fish than he needed to sell his excess catch at a local market.

Catch and release was virtually unknown and, outside of the rarefied world of big-game tournaments and world record catches, concepts of sportsmanship and ethics were rarely a part of the conversation.

Slowly, such attitudes began to change.  While a lot of fish were still being killed and sold by ostensibly “recreational” fishermen, some anglers who pursued inshore species such as striped bass, red drum, and snook started expressing concern for the future of marine gamefish.  Thus, the Connecticut fishing report in the August 6, 1970 edition of The Long Island Fisherman (the publication that eventually spawned today’s local editions of The Fisherman magazine; in 1970, there was only one edition that focused on Long Island, but also provided some Connecticut and New Jersey coverage) ended with a warning:

“Tackle dealers are conservation minded, and it was no surprise to hear most of them had had it with the current bass run.  Too much of a good thing can be dangerous, and if you don’t believe it, just realize that most stripers over 30 lbs. are cows, and that a 40 lb. fish produces 5,000,000 million eggs in a season.  Multiply that by the amount of fish this size or close to it taken this year, or even reported in this column, then add in the nine (so far) reported found floating in the Sound with treble and Z-Nickel or stainless hooks in them, and you seriously damage the future of our fishing,,,”

As the striped bass population began to move toward eventual collapse in the late 1970s, many similar comments appeared in the outdoor press.  Fisheries conservation was viewed as a legitimate concern of both outdoor journals and outdoor journalists.

And when it came to the outdoor press, if you were a saltwater fisherman back then, you only had one national magazine that catered to your interests, and that was Salt Water Sportsman.  In the early ‘70s, its original leaders were still in command, with Hal Lyman serving as publisher while Frank Woolner filled the editor’s slot.  They put out a quality product, attracted quality writers, and had one surprising rule:  Products could not be mentioned by name in a story.  It was OK to show the picture of a plug hanging out of a fish’s mouth, or to show an angler fishing with a particular rod or reel, but mentioning the name of a product was strictly forbidden.

There, at least, Aldo Leopold’s observations about the sporting press no longer representing sport, and instead serving as a billboard for the gadgeteers, did not hold true.

Fast forward to today, or at least to the current century, and think about how much has changed.  Not only do Leopold’s observations about the sporting press now apply, in full force, to the marine angling world, but the gadgeteers have gone farther, attempting to control the way saltwater fish are managed, in order to promote the sale of their products.

It’s something that we’re not supposed to talk about, or even acknowledge.  If any writer challenges, or even questions, the industry’s efforts to shape fisheries policy, advertisers will quickly demand that magazines no longer publish such writer’s work.  And magazines will, for the most part, bend to such demands.

That’s something that I know about first-hand. 

About ten years ago, I got a message from someone who, from what I could tell, was associated with a well-known company in the fishing industry.  He questioned my position on a local fisheries issue; after we both spent some time exchanging thoughts, the other guy finally got to his core message:

“So how do you reconcile your stance with the advertisers who support your writing?

“…Your stance is not popular with a lot of folks on the rec side who are also well informed and whose businesses support many.

“You are certainly entitled to your position, but it galls some of us quite a bit that you promote it while being active in a recreational fishing publication.  That’s not opinion, it’s a fact.”

I basically told the guy where he could shove his threats, although in far nicer words, knowing as I did that I’d probably find myself on the pariah list, and findi it a lot harder to get published, in the not-too-distant future.

That turned out to be the case; other conservation-minded writers I know have been subject to the same sort of industry censorship, from manufacturers that view editorial content as nothing more than an extension of their advertising campaigns.  

Such censorship is nothing new. 

Twenty years ago, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission held a public hearing on the then-proposed Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass here in New York, the publisher of a weekly angling newspaper found the cojones to reflect the views of his readers, rather than those of his advertisers, in his testimony.  Although he made it very clear that the comments he made reflected a poll of his readers, and not his own views, he walked into his office the next morning to find his paper the target of an advertising boycott that caused him significant loss. 

He never challenged the industry again.

For one doesn’t challenge the tackle or boating industries, which have no interest in and no desire for a free and informed debate on issues that impact their bottom line, and expect to walk away unscathed.

Nonetheless, from my point of view, it's still far better to be a pariah than a whore…

If the industry—the gadgeteers—spent all of their time and effort on boycotting writers and publications who chose to oppose their political positions, the situation might not be too bad.  In this digital age, there are plenty of ways to reach anglers that don’t require advertisers’ imprimatur.

But what we have seen is that the gadgeteers have now gathered together to assault the foundation of the federal fishery management process, the science- and data-driven management measures mandated by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

That effort began in early 2014, after a report titled “A Vision for Managing America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries,” authored by a bogus “Commission on Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Management,” which just happened to be co-chaired by the owner of one of the nation’s largest fishing tackle retail businesses and the owner of a company that makes fishing boats, was released at the annual meeting of the American Sportfishing Association, the primary trade organization for the fishing tackle industry.

After explaining that anglers pay excise taxes that support conservation, that the number of saltwater anglers has “experienced tremendous advances” (i.e., has increased substantially) in the past 25 years, and that those anglers spent $27 billion on fishing tackle, the report complained that

“in the midst of our success in rebuilding marine fisheries and the growth in saltwater recreational fishing, the federal fisheries management system has not adapted to meet the needs of this economic and conservation powerhouse.”

Reading a little further makes it clear that the gadgeteers were concerned that the existing federal fishery management system, which was based on hard quotas intended to prevent overfishing, wasn’t providing the burgeoning numbers of recreational anglers will enough opportunity to kill fish (such ability to catch and kill fish being euphemized as “access” to fishery resources), and so wasn't maximizing the gadgeteers’ opportunity to sell their wares.

They thus wanted to replace hard quotas with the sort of “soft” harvest targets that allowed the striped bass stock, which had been fully rebuilt after it collapsed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to become overfished once again, to allocate a larger percentage of fish to the recreational sector, and to delay rebuilding overfished stocks in order to reduce “socioeconomic impacts” (meaning reduced profits for the gadgeteers), arising out of such rebuilding.

The initial upshot of the report was the introduction of the Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act in 2017.  Such bill, as originally written, would have allowed the recreational fishing sector to escape much of the conservation burden associated with fishery management.  It was heavily promoted by the Center for Sportfishing Policy, a sort of Gadgeteers’ Alliance that includes the American Sportfishing Association, National Marine Manufacturers Association, and a number of other industry-affiliated and anglers’ rights organizations.  The Center described the legislation, which they called the “Modern Fish Act,” as a bill that

“addresses many of the recreational fishing community’s priorities including allowing alternative management for recreational fishing, reexamining fisheries allocations, smartly rebuilding fishery stocks, establishing exemptions where annual catch limits don’t fit and improving recreational data collection.”

To put that into straightforward, uneuphemised English, the original bill would have allowed anglers to escape the discipline imposed by annual catch limits, given them larger allocations of fish at the expense of the commercial fishing sector, delayed the rebuilding of overfished stocks, and allowed anglers to exceed science-based catch limits in order to generate higher short-term profits for the boating and tackle industries.

Fortunately, Congress—or, more particularly, the U.S. Senate—didn’t buy the gadgeteers’ story, so the bill that finally passed was a very watered-down version that preserved Magnuson-Stevens’ core principles.  Still, the fact of its passage emboldened the gadgeteers to continue their efforts to undercut effective fisheries management.

In the Gulf of Mexico, the gadgeteers continue to challenge science-based red snapper management, with the American Sportfishing Association complaining that

“Gulf anglers have experienced the benefits of state management for red snapper over the last three years.  [Author’s note:  The foregoing statement is based on a false premise, as the National Marine Fisheries Service continues to manage Gulf of Mexico red snapper in federal waters, although states are permitted to set the seasons and, within closely set parameters, the size and bag limits required to keep their anglers’ catch within federally established catch limits.]  Now, a recent decision by the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council’s Science and Statistical Committee (SSC) could put the future of state management in jeopardy.

“…the lack of a quota increase jeopardizes the highly successful state management system that was begun three years ago for private anglers and has resulted in substantially improved fishing access…”

The problem is that such “substantially improved fishing access” meant that anglers were killing a lot more red snapper, and a number of states were overfishing their allocations, triggering mandatory paybacks of the overages.  Paybacks, even if justified by the federal data, meant fewer fishing days, which meant less opportunity to sell gadgets to anglers, so…

In the mid-Atlantic, the gadgeteers' latest ploy was to suggest managing bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass with something called a “harvest control rule” instead of hard-poundage harvest limits.  Once again, the goal was to allow anglers to increase their harvest beyond what would be deemed scientifically prudent.  

For a while, the control rule seemed to have developed real legs, and the smart money was on it passing at the June meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

However, such control rule was heavily criticized by the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, and even the Council staff most closely associated with its development now recommends against its adoption.  While it’s not clear what the Council and ASMFC will do, the gadgeteers may end up losing on this issue, too.

But even if they do, that won’t stop them from trying again.  Gadgeteers, after all, aren’t in the business of maintaining healthy fish stocks.  They’re not being paid to be conservation advocates. 

They are in the business of making and selling as many gadgets as they can, and we’d be foolish to believe that they’ll stop their attacks on any law or regulation that gets in the way of that very profitable goal.

 

 

 

 

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