One of the major changes that I’ve seen in the Gulf of Mexico over the last 20 years has been the rise of recreational fishery activist.
Not so long ago, I’m thinking about the 50’s, a recreational angler would go out and fish, come back and that was that. He wouldn’t think much about what commercial fishermen were doing and frankly he didn’t care. After all, there were plenty of fish to go around and didn’t people need fish in the stores for supper?
Then we got into the 60’s.
The environmental movement started. Little things like Lake Erie on fire, Chesapeake Bay covered in dead fish and companies using the land, water and air as their own private dumping ground for toxins got it going.
The recreational anglers, who had grown in numbers by then, didn’t like what was going on. It was a threat to their sport. Businesses didn’t like it either. It was a threat to their income and their future. The environmentalists didn’t like – it was a threat to the planet. All these groups were saying the same thing. Pollution was bad and something had to be done about it. This got the attention of congress and changes were made at multiple levels in government and business. In schools programs were started that taught students about their environment.
The long-term effect of this was to empower groups. it empowered them with the knowledge that they could effect a change if they linked their goals to what people wanted done. When the groups were working in the same direction this was a very positive and powerful force.
The recreational fishing sector in the United States began to feel it could make a difference. It started to take one a life of its own. The receational sector began to look to politics as a way to keep and enlarge its stake in the fishing resource. Organizations were formed like the Gulf Coast Conservation Association (GCCA) and others, nationwide. Recreational anglers were rallied around the ˜cause” of protecting the resource, their resource, from anyone one who would threaten it – whether real or imaginary.
The commercial fishing sector was held up as a new threat to the resource and something had to be done about it. The excesses and environmental damage caused by commercial fishing were seen as the norm and something that could not be corrected and therefore had to be eliminated.
Recreational fishing adds billions of dollars to the U.S. economy every year. With purchases to include boats, bait, fishing poles and lures. Anglers stay in hotels, eat in restaurants and buy tee shirts. Some like the area so much they move there and buy property.
There lays the reason – money. The angler’s desire to preserve his sport has been used by those who want power through politics and the money that it brings. In politics you need to have a threat to rally the people to your way of thinking – ˜Tell them what to be afraid of and who is to blame”, if there is a grain of truth in it – then so much the better. It may sound harsh but that’s what’s been happening in the 30+ years I been involved in biology.
The new global economy and changes in our planet’s environment are putting a new twist on things. People are now thinking twice about buying a boat and motor to go fishing. Gas prices are way up from where they used to be, along with insurance costs. Not many people are wiling to pay $1,500 for two individuals to charter a boat to go reef fishing – if, they are only allowed to catch two red snapper each and a few other reef fish. ‘The times they are a changing’.
Think Global – Act Local!