3 threats to fishing
Bass Times
Thu, 07/01/2010
By Robert Montgomery
Public access to fisheries is under assault, but that’s not the only threat to sportfishing. Here’s how you can help
WASHINGTON — Threats to fishing change and evolve over time.
Through the 1980s, anglers mostly worried about and worked to stop pollution. Although occasionally slow moving and ineffective, the federal government proved a valuable ally, providing an arsenal of weapons that included the Clean Water Act and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Oh, how times have changed.
Today, as America’s fisheries become cleaner, the right to access those waters becomes increasingly more elusive.
And the same government that helped improve the environment now is considering recommendations that could declare broad sections of public waters off-limits to recreational fishing.
“We had no idea this was coming,” said Chris Horton, BASS national conservation director. “Every angler needs to be aware of what’s going on because it’s coming to his backyard, if not tomorrow, then eventually.”
Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano, added, “What we’re seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife management model that has served us so well. If some of these groups have their way, the public is going to be pushed out of being able to recreate in order to satisfy a fundraising agenda.”
In a word, access is threatened, and the threat is embodied in the federal Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force (IOPTF) created by President Barack Obama.
But it is not the only danger to fishing in the early 21st century.
“Pollution is still out there and still a problem,” Horton said. “Conditions have improved, but pollution still is an issue.”
Also, as federal agencies have failed to act decisively to contain the invasion, exotic species have rocketed to prominence as a catalyst for catastrophe.
“We like to slap a Band-Aid on and try to contain their spread,” said the conservation director. “And we have failed miserably. So far, it has been a fruitless effort.”
What follows is a brief look at each of these threats to the future of fishing.
Access
The threat to public access took on substance during the 1990s, as lakefront property owners began to insist — often mistakenly — that they owned the water in front of their land and thus anglers who fished there were trespassing. Then some marina owners joined in on Corps-managed impoundments, trying to deny fishermen access to marina basins. Lake associations piled on, citing the danger posed by invasive species as the reason to close public ramps.
But all this pales in comparison to Obama’s creation last June of the IOPTF, staffed with “high-level” government officials. In the months since, it has created two documents and recommended an immense bureaucracy for the zoning of uses in our oceans, coastal waters and Great Lakes.
Angling activists agree that our waters should be better protected from pollution, habitat destruction and commercial overfishing. But they are fearful that preservationists within the environmental community, along with their allies in the administration, will use this strategy as a means to close recreational fisheries for philosophical rather than scientific reasons, ignoring the fact that sport anglers are among the nation’s most ardent conservationists.
At the state level, this is already happening in California with implementation of the Marine Life Protection Act.
And bass anglers should take special note that their fisheries also are at risk, despite what appears to be a focus on salt water. A “framework document” from the task force states:
“The geographic scope would include inland bays and estuaries in both coastal and Great Lakes settings. Inclusion of inland bays and estuaries is essential because of the significant ecological, social and economic linkages between these areas with offshore areas.”
Then it added: “Additional inland areas may be included in the planning area as the regional planning bodies ... deem appropriate. Regardless, consideration of inland activities would be necessary to account for the significant interaction between upstream activities and ocean, coastal and Great Lakes uses and ecosystem health. ...”
Environmental groups have been pressuring Obama to bypass Congressional oversight and issue an executive order that would legitimize the task force’s recommendations and create a National Oceans Council to zone how our waters will be used — or not used.
While no one in this constituency has said anything, at least publicly, about banning recreational fishing in U.S. waters, members are at best indifferent to its importance socially and economically, as well as its contributions to conservation. Instead, many view people as trespassers in nature, instead of part of nature. They want pristine preservation instead of conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.
In April, a report on ESPNOutdoors.com outlining the potential closure of recreational fishing waters went “viral,” prompting task force members to deny they had any intention of banning recreational fishing. The group’s final report — then only a week or two away from publication — still had not been issued as of this writing.
Harmful algae
As the access issue has coalesced into a threat of national scale, our failure to fully contain pollution has led to the virulent growth of a danger that few could have predicted in the 1980s and ’90s. Feeding on nitrogen and phosphorus from that pollution, Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are strengthening, spreading and killing fish along the way.
Last fall, thousands of fish died in Dunkard Creek, a waterway that meanders along the Pennsylvania/West Virginia border. Officials say they believe that golden alga was to blame, and they have warned that at least 18 other streams in West Virginia are at risk.
Until the Dunkard Creek incident, this lethal alga posed a threat mostly in the Southwest, thriving in waters with high salinity. Some say that pollution from coalbed-methane drilling contributed to the lethal bloom, but why did golden alga suddenly appear on the East Coast?
And why is lyngbya, previously a problem in the Southeast, now thriving in Lake Erie, where it smothers the bottom and piles up along the shore in stinking masses?
Why is didymo carpeting more and more streams, and why are blue-green blooms on the increase in the Great Lakes and other waters of the Upper Midwest?
“These blooms are occurring for longer times and in more places,” said Dr. Ken Hudnell, one of the nation’s foremost experts on HABs and a research professor in the Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina. “It could reach a point where the trend will be difficult to reverse.
“We could lose entire ecosystems, and all that will be left are cesspools of cyanobacteria. We could lose species and have water that can’t be used for recreation or drinking.”
Exotic species
Likewise, when zebra mussels first were confirmed in the Great Lakes two decades ago, we had little idea what threats to fisheries would be posed by exotic species in 2010.
Now, zebras and their cousins, quagga mussels, have crossed the Continental Divide, with state and federal agencies battling determinedly to contain them in a few infested waters.
Based on past experience, that effort likely will fail.
Of just as great concern, bighead and silver carp are about to enter Lake Michigan — if they haven’t already. Researchers have found DNA evidence suggesting that they have moved past the million-dollar electric barrier intended to keep them out.
“It’s a disaster,” said Dan Thomas, president of the Great Lakes Sport Fishing Council. “Heads should roll for this.”
That’s because resource managers fear the large-growing and prolific carp will decimate the billion-dollar sportfishery in the Great Lakes. Already the invaders dominate many of the nation’s rivers.
And as anglers wait for the other shoe to drop in Lake Michigan, they also wait to see how invasive snakeheads will impact sport-fisheries in the Potomac and Delaware rivers, as well as eastern Arkansas.
At the latter, resource managers used 16,000 pounds of powdered Rotenone and 3,000 gallons of liquid Rotenone across 50,000 acres and 400 miles and ditches and creeks in an attempt to eliminate the invader. They picked up at least 700 bodies afterward. Several snakeheads have been caught since, indicating that the population might have been knocked back, but it was not eliminated.
Mussels, carp and snakeheads are only the most obvious invaders that threaten our fisheries. Gobies, spiny water fleas and many more now swim in our waters.
What next?
Although not as pressing as those three, other threats to fishing exist and must be monitored.
A long-term decline in fishing participation, if it continues unabated, could lead to the marginalization of anglers and radical restrictions on access and fishing rights.
That would embolden a resilient antifishing movement that has become very influential in parts of Europe.
User conflicts are much more prevalent in saltwater than freshwater these days, but their divisiveness remains a threat to the sport overall.
Despite these threats, plenty of evidence exists that bass fishing is actually getting better in many freshwater fisheries. Many see that as proof that, while aquatic resources can be extremely fragile, nature can be powerfully resilient as well. Wise, science-based resource management, along with an engaged public, helps too.