Dear Governor Paterson,

 

            Coastal Conservation Association New York (“CCA NY”) is taking this opportunity to provide its thoughts on the proposed recreational salt water fishing license, as such license is described in the 2009-2010 Budget Bill, designated S59 in the Senate and A159 in the Assembly (the “Proposed License”).

            While CCA NY strongly supports the concept of licensing New York’s salt water anglers, it believes that the Proposed License would benefit neither New York’s marine resources nor its salt water anglers, and for that reason, CCA NY does not support the Proposed License in its current form.  However, should the language creating such Proposed License be amended in just a few respects, CCA NY would give it its enthusiastic and wholehearted support.

 

The fatal flaw

 

            As an advocate for the rebuilding, conservation and sustainable management of New York’s marine resources, CCA NY is painfully aware that the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Bureau (the “Marine Bureau”) is badly underfunded.  It lacks both sufficient scientific staff to carry out its mandate to manage and conserve the states marine resources and sufficient enforcement personnel to assure that widespread abuse of such resources does not occur.  CCA NY has long been one of the few voices within New York’s salt water fishing community that has consistently called for the institution of a license, the revenues from which (along with any related federal matching funds) would be deposited in the Marine Resources Account within the Conservation Fund and used as a significant and reliable source of funding for the Marine Bureau.

            Unfortunately, the Proposed License provides no such dedicated funding for the Marine Bureau.  Instead, the Budget Bill assures the diversion of all or part of the revenues from the Proposed License into non-marine-related projects by providing that all revenues which arise pursuant to Title 13 of the Environmental Conservation Law will be deposited in the Marine Resources Account “except moneys belonging to the state received by the department of environmental conservation from the sale of recreational marine fishing licenses pursuant to section 13-0355 of the environmental conservation law.” [emphasis added] [1]  

            That exception assures that neither CCA NY nor, in all likelihood, any other organization representing New York’s recreational anglers will support the Proposed License, and virtually assures that opposition to such Proposed License will be widespread among both anglers and the recreational fishing industry.  There is a strong belief among many of the citizens who fish in the waters of the Marine District that the state government, at its highest levels, neither understands the recreational salt water fishery nor has a great regard for the concerns of the state’s salt water anglers.  The Proposed License, in its current form, will do much to reinforce that belief.

 

Natural populations of native fish vs. the stocking of introduced species

 

            The focus of marine fisheries management differs substantially from that of management of fish in fresh waters.  Marine fisheries management is all about preserving and restoring New York’s natural heritage, by protecting and conserving species that thrived in local waters for thousands of years before the first Europeans laid eyes on what would eventually become the coastline of the State of New York.  It is about creating a management structure in which biologists can create sustainable fishing regimes for naturally-occurring species.  Such management will require a significant expenditure of resources in the short term, as much of the basic biological information needed to properly manage the various species occurring in local waters is yet to be developed.  However, such investment will yield the greatest long-term benefits in the form of recovered, naturally-reproducing stocks that provide food and recreation not only for today’s citizens, but for generations of persons yet to be born, which will ultimately require only a modicum of regulatory “tweaking” to maintain them at sustainable levels.

            Currently, no salt water species sought by anglers in the waters of the state has its population “enhanced” by artificial means.  None are non-native species introduced to local waters in order to provide additional opportunities for anglers.  All are the product of natural reproduction.  In a similar vein, perceived population shortages and occasions of overfishing of marine species are remedied by tightening regulations, and imposing sometimes drastically shortened seasons, higher size limits and lower bag limits on the affected species.  Under such a regime, salt water anglers in New York managed to harvest 17.66 million pounds of fish in 2007, the last year for which complete landings information is available.  The two most popular species, striped bass and bluefish, saw in-state harvests of 5.77 and 5.35 million pounds, respectively. [2]   Again, all of that production is achieved without a single dollar being used for hatchery “enhancement” programs, and harvest figures could probably be substantially increased if the Marine Bureau was given the resources necessary to properly study, rebuild and manage currently depleted populations. [3]

            Fresh water fisheries management in the State of New York has a quite different emphasis. [4]   Instead of emphasizing the need to maintain adequate spawning stock biomass of native species and the need to constrain harvest of such species within sustainable levels, fresh water fisheries managers expend much of their resources on the “farming” of fish that will then be used to support “put-and-take” recreational fisheries.  Such activities might take the form of introducing non-native species (e.g., various Pacific salmon, including “steelhead” strains of rainbow trout), the stocking of non-native brown and rainbow trout in waters that reach temperatures too high to permit the species to survive over the summer and establish naturally-reproducing populations, the stocking of hybrids such as “tiger muskellunge” which are incapable of natural reproduction and thus will require perpetual hatchery support in order to maintain their presence in New York waters, the introduction of native New York species such as muskellunge and walleye to waters where they did not naturally exist and the maintenance of other native species (e.g. walleye, muskellunge, lake trout) at artificially high levels of abundance in order to avoid restricting harvest to sustainable levels based on the natural reproductive capability of the species.  However, despite all of the emphasis on the artificial creation of angling opportunities in New York’s fresh waters, such hatcheries only produce about 925,000 pounds of fish each year, [5] not all of which are landed, a figure nearly twenty times smaller than the 17.66 million pounds of naturally-occurring fish actually harvested in New York’s Marine District.

            While the end result of successful marine fisheries management is the maintenance of healthy populations of native fish species, it can easily be argued that fresh water fisheries efforts have had the effects of diminishing New York’s natural heritage, particularly with respect to native salmonids.  Few will deny that introduced brown and rainbow trout will outcompete native brook trout, particularly in waters which no longer offer optimum conditions for brook trout survival.  In addition, when stocking programs include brook trout, the fish used are most often a hybrid strain that survives and produces well in the hatchery environment, and not the heritage strains unique to the waters in which the fish are stocked.  Although there are recent efforts to reverse such trend, the unfortunate effect to date is the dilution of the genetic material in many heritage strains, and the ultimate destruction of many of the strains that once swam in New York’s waters.  It can be assumed that the use of landlocked Atlantic salmon raised at a single hatchery to stock waters throughout the Adirondacks [6] has had a similar effect to any unique genetic strains of such salmon that might once have existed in the waters of the state.

            CCA NY does not have any objection to the stocking programs maintained by the State of New York, if such programs are desired by fresh water anglers and deemed acceptable by the Department of Environmental Conservation.  However, it strongly objects to the use of revenues from a recreational salt water fishing license to fund programs emphasizing non-native species and the artificial maintenance of fish populations, at the expense of badly needed funding for the Marine Bureau to aid in its mission of conserving and managing self-sustaining populations of native marine fish species.  CCA NY believes that investing salt water fishing license revenues in programs that benefit native, self-supporting marine populations rather than in those designed to perpetually support artificial, put-and-take fisheries for introduced species (or which encourage the harvest of native species at naturally unsupportable levels) is the biologically, economically and, if we are to adopt the environmental ethic envisioned by conservationists such as Aldo Leopold, ethically preferred course of action.  Those who insist that New York maintain put-and-take or artificially “enhanced” fisheries in the fresh waters of the state should be prepared to shoulder the full expense of such unnatural fisheries, and should not expect the marine anglers of the state to accept a share of the fiscal burden.

 

Maintaining a consistent approach to licensing

 

            Fresh water anglers aren’t the only sportsmen who would benefit if revenues from a recreational salt water fishing license were deposited in the general Conservation Fund rather than in the Marine Resources Account.  The state’s hunters would benefit as well.

            Many of CCA NY’s members are also hunters, and CCA NY does not, for a moment, doubt that the hunting-related programs maintained by the Department of Environmental Conservation are worthwhile.  In fact, unlike many of the state’s fresh water fishing programs, the hunting-related programs generally do emphasize the conservation and sustainable harvest of native species, rather than put-and-take programs. [7]  However, it was not long ago that New York eliminated separate small game and big game licenses for residents, in favor of a single, unified hunting license, [8] consciously foregoing the additional revenues that might be received from continuing the sale of separate licenses in the interests of encouraging participation in hunting, particularly for small game,.     It is impossible to note that the opposite approach was taken with respect to the Proposed License, which emphasizes increasing revenues regardless of whether the imposition of a license will have the effect of discouraging some individuals from fishing in the coastal waters of the state. 

            The dichotomy goes further.  The intentional reduction in fees received from the sale of hunting licenses could only result in an increased deficit in the Conservation Fund, which fund is used to pay for programs directly benefiting hunters (as well as fresh water anglers.)  However, the fees received as a result of the Proposed License would not be deposited in the Marine Resources Account, and so dedicated to programs directly benefiting salt water anglers.  Instead, it would be deposited in the Conservation Fund, where it would, in part, offset the funds lost by the consolidation of big game and small game hunting licenses and so be lost to anglers in the Marine District.  Such uneven treatment of recreational sectors is both manifestly illogical and manifestly unfair to the already underserved constituents of the Marine Bureau, who ask nothing more than to have any license revenues generated from salt water anglers to be spent on programs that benefit the Marine District or diadromous species that leave the Marine District to ascend the rivers and streams of the State of New York.  So long as revenues from the Proposed License are not so employed, such license will not be supported by CCA NY.

 

Effects on the for-hire fleet

 

            Although the Proposed License’s greatest flaw lies in the fact that any resulting revenues will not necessarily be used to benefit the anglers and natural resources of the Marine District, it contains other provisions which CCA NY deems objectionable and which are likely to generate substantial opposition from the salt water angling community.  Perhaps paramount among such issues is the requirement that anglers purchase a fishing licenses (including, where appropriate, a one-day license) even when fishing from a for-hire vessel, rather than being covered by a blanket license purchased by the vessel and covering all of the passengers thereon.  Such a blanket license for for-hire passengers is acceptable to the National Marine Fisheries Service, for purposes of mandated angler registration, [9] and should be adopted by the State of New York, both to support its downstate tourism industry and to meet the needs of for-hire anglers.

            In taking this position, CCA NY’s primary concern is not the traditional “six-pack” charter fishery, [10] since it can probably be assumed that any person chartering a boat for hundreds of dollars, and sometimes a few thousand dollars, per trip will not be concerned with a five-dollar daily license fee.  However, the larger “head boats” or “party boats,” as well as larger charter boats that cater to a corporate or other institutional clientele, [11] are likely to be adversely affected by requiring an individual license.  That is due simply to the nature of their customer base.

            The larger for-hire vessels cater largely to two types of clients, either the tourist or “occasional” angler, or the “regular” who, often because of a lower level of financial resources, either does not or can not afford to own a private vessel.  In the case of tourists, who may have the option of going fishing or engaging in other recreational activity, the additional cost of a license may well be enough to tip the balance and make them (particularly when a family with older children would have to make multiple license purchases) choose a different form of recreation.  Similarly, the need to purchase a license may dissuade first-time or once-per-season anglers from engaging in angling activities. [12]   Ultimately, it is not the minimal cost of the one-day license that would affect the decision, but the psychological impact of a mandatory “add-on” charge in addition to the boat’s fare.

            Such a psychological impact may play an even greater role in dissuading a party boat “regular” from fishing if a license requirement was imposed.  Party boats have traditionally been the lower-income anglers’ gateway to New York’s marine resources.  In exchange for a relatively modest fare, [13] the passenger historically had the opportunity, if skill and luck prevailed, to bring home a substantial quantity of edible fish.  Thus, particularly in urban ports such as Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, party boat fishing provided one of the few outdoor experiences that justified its expense in a tangible way.  Today, the notion of catching enough fish to justify the cost of trip is just about dead, due to necessary restrictions that have been placed on the harvest of most species.  Such regulations have caused considerable hard feelings among many party boat customers, and a substantial number of them have stopped fishing as a result.  It is likely that the imposition of a license would further deplete the ranks of party boat regulars not because of its cost, since $19 amortized over the course of a long season is meaningless, but because many anglers already disgruntled by current regulations will resent “Paying more to catch less,” and will leave the sport, further eroding the economic base of an industry already badly hurt by rising fuel prices and customer defections. [14]

 

Reciprocity

 

            The proposed license would include reciprocity provisions for residents of neighboring states, but the drafting of such provisions was done in a manner that appears more appropriate to inland waters, and demonstrates a lack of familiarity with the realities of the coastal fishery, or the manner in which vessels from New York and neighboring states share common bodies of water..  There is also a notable inconsistency with respect to how anglers from different neighboring states would be treated.

            For example, the license would provide reciprocity only to those Connecticut residents fishing in “those parts of Long Island Sound lying between New York and Connecticut.” [15]   Taken on its face, limiting the reciprocal provision to “Long Island Sound” would require Connecticut anglers to have a license while fishing on the New York edge of Fishers Island Sound (which is much closer to Connecticut than is, for example, Mattituck, where reciprocity would apply) or in New York’s portion of Block Island Sound, while the qualification “lying between New York and Connecticut” would presumably require a license of western Connecticut anglers fishing, as they often do, in Long Island Sound between Westchester and Nassau counties.

            Yet New Jersey anglers, far from being so restrictive, are permitted to fish in all shared rivers, estuaries and bays, as well as those parts of the “Atlantic Ocean lying between New York and New Jersey,” [16] a provision that could arguably be applied to all state waters north and west of a line drawn between Montauk Point and Cape May. 

            We can probably expect neighboring states, when adopting licenses, to model reciprocity provisions applicable to New York anglers on those provided to their anglers by New York.  Given that probability, and given that many New York boats fish in Rhode Island and Connecticut waters, it would probably be in the best interests of the anglers of both states if the reciprocity provisions were applicable to anglers of Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey without reference to any specific body of water.  It is the custom of vessels from all three states (particularly in the waters off eastern Long Island, where the boundaries between New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island converge) to fish wherever the fish happen to be, and to expect the passengers of a party boat out of eastern Connecticut, for example, to all have New York licenses merely because the vessel ventured a bit too close to Fishers Island or into New York waters east of Plum Gut (and thus left Long Island Sound) would create an enforcement nightmare that could easily hurt New York (and its for hire vessels) to a degree greatly disproportionate to any benefit that it might provide.

 

Conclusion

 

            The provision of the Proposed License which bars deposit of revenues from such license into the Marine Resources Account is completely unacceptable to CCA NY.  Amendment of that single provision to one which assures that revenues would be credited to the Marine Resources Account would remove CCA NY’s primary objection to the licensing proposal.

            However, even with that proposal removed, CCA NY suggests that the license should be further amended, both to create a blanket for-hire license and remove the requirement that passengers on for-hire vessels purchase an individual fishing license, and to broaden the reciprocity requirement to include the citizens of the three specified states, wherever they happened to be fishing.

            If those provisions were included, the Proposed License would receive CCA NY’s full and enthusiastic support.

            Thank you for considering CCA NY’s views on this matter,

 

Yours in Conservation

 

 

Scott Emslie

Chairman

 

Cc:       Commissioner Grannis, Department of Environmental Conservation

            Judith Enck, Deputy Secretary for the Environment

            Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver

            Senate Majority Leader Malcolm A. Smith

            Assemblyman Robert Sweeney, Chairman, Assembly Encon Committee

            Senator Antoine Thompson, Chairman, Senate Encon Committee