When I read Damien Cave’s article in the paper today, I was shocked to learn that until recently people in Florida haven’t been required to have a fishing license if they fish from the shore. I have lived most of my life in the state of Washington and fishing licenses have been required here since I was little. So just because Florida is different from Washington, why does that make it shocking?
Because in addition to many populations of fish being at risk, fish and wildlife budgets are getting cut, when more money is needed for enforcement and oversight or some of these populations will be unrecoverable.
In Washington, for a long time we have even had to buy catch record cards for key species such as salmon and Dungeness crab and be specific about what we caught, where we were, and the date. Statistics like this are vital to the management of the overall ecosystem and it has to get funded by the people who participate. Sure fishing is a national past time, but too much is at risk to not have licenses and catch records if we have any hope of really knowing what’s going on in ecosystems in the water.
Two years ago there was a front page story on the New York Times about how the Northeastern lobster population was unexpectedly large and the fact that people were celebrating. That’s all well and good if we know why it happened, but we don’t. What that means is that there was a dramatic shift in food supply or threats to the lobster and that’s why it was such a strong year, but not knowing is very scary.
Here’s where it gets nasty.
Enforcement of these laws is really hard because of the sheer amount of places where people can fish. In Washington, for a couple of years you needed to have something pinned to a hat or a shirt so someone could see from far away that you were licensed, but that was ineffective. Clearly people are not going to do this just because it’s the right thing to do, so I would love to hear suggestions of people for how we solve this problem.
-Ric
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