For decades NJ stood apart from other states because its hunters and fishermen kept a close eye on the management of wildlife. To ensure good management they taxed themselves, they imposed license fees, and over the years religiously approved increases in those fees because they stood for a long tradition of scientific wildlife management and were willing to pay for it. I began my career as a game biologist with the men who created this system just as they were starting to retire. The group prided themselves on their professionalism and they had a profound respect for their clients — hunters and fishermen. They were proud of creating a system of good management based on the best science and free of political interference. Today they would look sadly at NJ sport fishermen.
Two weeks ago NJ sport fishermen successfully defeated a salt water fishing license, costing $15 per year, choosing instead a meaningless registry that minimally meets the federal requirement for matching funds. NJ is one of three remaining states without a saltwater license. The money raised from the $15 license fee would have helped restore the badly demoralized and depleted marine fisheries agency back to its once high professional level. Compared to other states, NJ Bureau of Marine Fisheries has been starved of funds for years. NJ fishermen spend less than $7 per angler for research and survey, a shameful amount compared to states like Virginia where sportsmen pay over $40 per angler. I have no doubt that NJ’s over-harvested fish populations will suffer from the selfishness of NJ sportsmen, but is anyone looking at who gains?
State Senator Jeff Van Drew, who makes no mention of the impact on fish, points out how free fishing will be good for the business men of Cape May County. He also failed to point out that Cape May is the 4th most profitable commercial fishing port in the country. He does mention the many tackle shops going out of business but fails to connect that commercial exploitation is limiting recreational fishing opportunities; (remember when you could catch big crabs or doormat-size flounder?)
How does the defeat of a salt water license benefit commercial interests? To understand you have to fully recognize the importance of the historic transformation created by the brave sportsmen of NJ’s past. Just after hunters stopped the market hunting of ducks and other species in the 1930’s they creating a new system of establishing harvests that required agencies to prove, with scientific data, a species could be safely harvested. This insured against harvests that damaged populations while biologist scurried to figure out the status of a hunted animal. In their new system (that is still in effect) you could hunt a population only when the data supported the sustainability of the harvest.
Unfortunately marine fish are still mired in the dysfunctional management of the market hunting days. Harvests start, sometimes with no regulations, and it’s the biologists job to figure out if it is sustainable. This is what happened to horseshoe crabs, sturgeon and many other marine fish species. Figuring out the status of a fish population is much harder than ducks (they are underwater after all), and let’s face it, status becomes clearer only when the population get close to decimation. This is why marine fish management is riddled with boom-and-bust harvests.
Marine species are essentially market hunted, and under these conditions, money talks in a variety of ways. First, commercial interests dominate the marine fish management system. The people going to all the meetings that decide harvest numbers are not the working stiffs you see celebrated on TV but men in suits representing the commercial interests of the docks and processing facilities. There are sportsmen reps. but how many sport fishermen can spend weeks at a time on endless fishery management meetings? Second, politicians, who receive generous contributions from commercial fish interests, can have great influence on the management of fish. If a biologist says something that impacts a commercial interest’s bottom line, then local politicians can take a swipe at the agency. This is especially true when the politician is starving the agency for funds. So, if you tie up the professionals the agency resorts to the default position, harvests without restriction. Commercial interests are just happy with the default position, but why are sportsmen?
You have to wonder about the political leadership of recreational fishermen. Did they ask themselves what would happen if a state with one of the richest fisheries in the country, but one of the poorest fishery management agencies, suddenly had sufficient funds to do its job? Who would fishery management staff feel most responsive to, the commercial interests that pay virtually nothing but rake in millions or the sportsmen who are footing most of the bill?
Now that the sportsmen refused to pay $15 (odd given that most spend five times that amount in one day fishing) for scientific management of their beloved species, what will happen? Sadly, the fish of Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Coast will stay under the influence of commercial interests. The battle that was fought for scientific management of fish and wildlife for over a hundred years has suffered a serious, if not fatal, blow because sportsmen cared more for money than wildlife.
