Do We Need Saltwater Licenses?

The editor of this magazine dropped by for dinner and to talk about an article he wanted on why coastal states need saltwater fishing licenses. Being an avid ocean angler, and having worked for a state fish and game agency, I was eager to get started and knew exactly who I would talk to.

My first source told me, "Anglers will almost certainly lose as the pieces of the marine fisheries pie are cut and distributed. They will come up short because one, they are not counted with undeniable accuracy and precision and, two, their fishing effort and harvest cannot be established with statistical acceptability. . . . Without [licensing] saltwater angling can pretty well expect to be crowded gradually out of the picture over the next decade or two." That source was Dick Stroud of the Sport Fishing Institute. The editor/dinner guest was John Merwin. The year was 1980.

A quarter-century later Stroud's prediction has come to pass, at least in the Northeast. The only coastal states (other than Hawaii) that don't have saltwater licenses are Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Delaware. For the sake of brevity, and because there are other peripheral issues in Hawaii, I'll focus only on the Northeast. Is it just that Yankee salts are tightwads? No, it's also because there are lots of facts about saltwater licensing they don't want to know.

Those facts are getting harder to ignore because in states that have implemented saltwater licensing management successes are increasingly spectacular. Mostly, this is because licensing provides contact information so that anglers looking after their own best interests-including groups of anglers such as the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)-can organize, energize, educate and direct. And legislators pay far more attention to documented lists of resource users than someone's guesstimate of voiceless, nameless absentees.

In North Carolina (which didn't legislate a saltwater license until 2004) the Division of Marine Fisheries estimated that of 29 species pursued by both anglers and commercials in 1999, anglers took 33 percent of the harvest. And yet there were an estimated 1.1 million to 1.5 million anglers compared to 9,232 licensed commercial fishermen. For the past decade the most popular recreational and commercial fish in the state, southern flounder, has been overfished to near collapse, mostly by commercials. A good recovery plan was shouted down by commercials. With the blessing of managers, commercial fishermen have nearly wiped out the state's blueback herring (important forage for all sorts of gamefish). In the 1970's the annual herring harvest was about 20 million pounds; in 2003 (when the fishery should have been closed) the harvest was 100,000 pounds.

States that require saltwater recreational fishing licenses derive about 80 percent of their saltwater management revenue from this source. It's true that managers don't always use license revenue wisely (although they're getting better); it's also true that in most states they are fed and clothed by license revenue and that they cater to the interest groups providing it. This is why, on the inland scene, game and fish departments tend to ignore that 99.999 percent of fish and wildlife they call "nongame." This is why Northeast states let commercial fishermen call the tune; and this is why Alaska and coastal states in the contiguous US from Maryland south around the Atlantic coast, west along the Gulf, and north to Washington have controlled or eliminated most commercial fishing. The phenomenon is called political reality.

As CCA chairman Walter Fondren puts it: "There is strength in numbers, but only if someone is counting. The owner of a seafood company that employs 100 people has historically wielded far more power in the fishery-management arena than a vast, silent, unknown population of recreational anglers. That seafood company's payroll, landings data and bottom line provide a tiny snapshot of the value associated with a particular fishery, but it may be the only snapshot. That monopoly on information translates into political power."

Because Texas has a saltwater license, it knows it has 900,000 anglers who fish in the ocean and who annually contribute $1.3 billion to the economy and provide 20,000 jobs. Armed with this information-and looking after the best interests of fish, anglers and themselves-managers have basically run commercial fishermen out of state waters (in this case, nine miles into the Gulf). Since 1980, when Texas banned gillnets, redfish and spotted sea trout have recovered from near extirpation to natural abundance. "Because of our saltwater license we have over 30 years of continuous monitoring data on all our recreational fisheries," declares Dr. Larry McKinney, coastal fisheries director for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "This allows us to make very sound management decisions and identify problems before they become serious. I can't imagine why your [Northeastern] anglers aren't demanding a license. Until recreational anglers are willing to put money on the table to build programs, they're not going to be able to compete with commercial fishermen. It's just not going to happen."

"In providing saltwater fishermen with political standing, a license could revive Florida's decrepit sport fishery-even if all the revenue were blown on junkets and easy chairs," I reported in 1980. "But when the state hosted a series of public hearings on a saltwater license in 1978 and 1979 the response was loud and angry. Fisheries biologist Ed Joyce, who took a few unofficial polls, figures that 'More than 95 percent of the [recreational] fishermen were opposed.'" Thirty roller-rig gillnetters were basically running the show while 7 million recreational fishermen sat on the sidelines. Said one disenfranchised soul, as he scrawled a $100 check to the license-seeking Florida League of Anglers, "I was in a big school of kings and was getting good action. All at once an airplane started flying around, and shortly after that, four gill-net boats stormed into the area like PT boats. The captain of the boat nearest me ordered me to leave. I raised my hand and made a defiant gesture. He picked up a rifle. I decided to leave after all."

It took 10 years; but, as commercial fishermen steadily wiped out mullet, redfish, ladyfish, snook, jacks, pompano, kingfish and other gamefish, Floridians smartened up. In 1996, six years after implementing a saltwater license, the state banned all commercial netting. This would have been politically impossible had no one known how many saltwater anglers there were in Florida or who they were.