President Obama, with a two-gun quick draw, appears eager to beat the gunslinger reputation of a recent Texan president.
And he is aiming at boating.
Gun One: President Obama has issued a directive to his Interagency Oceans Policy Task Force to develop comprehensive zoning for all coastal, ocean, and Great Lakes waters by December 9. The task force was appointed only last summer. The purpose of the zoning is to “protect” those areas. For “protection” read “permanent closure of vast areas of fishing waters” as California has been attempting to do, but worse. (See: Save us from the recklessness of the righteous, 5/18/2009)
In the first phase, recommendations to the task force were presented by the recreational fishing community and by environmental groups. According to Dave Pfeiffer, President of Shimano American Corp, the Task Force incorporated submissions of the environmental groups verbatim while ignoring completely the fishing folks.
As Norman Schultz, executive director of the Boating Associations of Ohio, put it, “This is California on steroids.”
Gun Two: Some notion of the threat to recreational fishing that we can expect from the Task Force is the closure on Oct. 5 of the recreational black sea bass fishery for the next six months from Maine to North Carolina by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The closure was based on survey data described by the National Academy of Sciences as “fatally flawed.”
According to the Academy, black sea bass is a healthy stock. The bass are not overfished, and the most recent assessment places the spawning stock at 103 percent of their target.
Boaters strongly support sustainable fisheries, for it is in our best interests. But as Norman Schultz points out, what now appears to be at stake is the very future of recreational fishing, threatened by misguided policies based on the two guns of haste and ignorance, with no Congressional overight, and bypassing State jusrisdiction and management. It’s not even a fair fight!
Accordingly, Keep America Fishing has set up a special Web site to generate e-mail to the Administration and members of Congress.
Log on and post, boaters! Get your guns out.
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