View Full Version : The recreational fishing alliance,Killing all your hopes and progress so far! What a shame this is!!


eelman
09-11-2000, 09:06 AM
So much for the rec's being holyer than thou!! The very orginazation that is supposed to be fighting for your recreational fisheries,is making money from DEAD fish!! Explain that!! Unreal,At least the commercials are honest and dont hide what they do! This is like the president secretly getting campaign money from drug dealers and then in public saying he wants a war on drugs.Slowly , the whole recreational fight will unraval at the seems,especially when people get wind of this! From the leader of the recreatinal "catch and release" group the "two face" RFA.............

IN THE NAME OF CONSERVATION:
BIG, BIG BUCKS FOR RECREATIONAL NON-PROFITS ©
by Anna minicucci©2000
This little fishing tid bit could be termed “kill-and-release” and/or “catch-and-kill” for big money. An e-mail, from a Massachusetts outdoor writer, sent a report written by John Geiser, who is a recreational fishing columnist for Asbury Park Press. Geiser’s fishing report revealed that a 781 lb. blue marlin brought in for a White Marlin Tournament gave great joy (make that great bucks) to the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFAwhen half the $303,000. prize money the fish won lined the RFA treasury.

Adding salt to that “conservation” wound, Geiser’s report continued, that the big blue was caught the same week a memo was circulated which indicated that a 25 percent reduction in the recreational blue marlin landings was not met, as recommended by for conservation purposes by the International Commission for Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICATT, a group charged with managing swordfish, marlin, sailfishing, and tuna). The memo was circulated by the National Marine Fisheries Service Office of Sustainable Fisheries in the name of its acting director, Bruce Morehead. He was soliciting comments on how the recreational fishery could meet the ICCAT reduction. (A-hem, Bruce!)

Rubbing more salt into the open, conservation, wound, a white marlin in the same tourney garnered $580,000 for the crew that brought it in, according to Geiser.(Apparently, launching “dead fish for conservation.”) It gets better, or more bitterly saltier. The angler, Capt. Don Gemmell, who caught the winning blue marlin, was fishing aboard a 61 foot yacht owned by Viking Yacht Corp., and the CEO of Viking is also president of RFA.

Move over commercials and give the recreationals a wide berth, they won’t feed the public with fish, but hell at the same time, they’re having fun and catching bigger bucks and fish than you are. Gads! will there be any governors on recreational fishing, or will it continue to be a kill-and-release, and/or catch-and-kill for big money purses? Or, are we looking at a stunted mentality that thinks, “as long as we conserve them, only we can kill them”?

By the way, it would appear that those illustrious, saltwater fisheries managers from locals to the Fed are in league with the RFA, and other similarily bent “conservation” organizations, because they are the groups with growing lobbying clout and money bags. If the tide has turned against commercial fishing within the public domain, and the new big fellas’ are using the old commercial lobbying tricks, then what chance can the general fishing public have in either case?

John M
09-11-2000, 09:25 AM
Before I pass judgement I want to know why the fish was killed? I fished a tourney 4 years ago and we boated a 705# blue marlin (which won it btw <img src="/Images/Happy_Face.gif"><!--e1-->) we killed the fish because our attemps to revive the fish failed. As a result we took the fihs in to be weighed. We steaked it out afterwards so nothign went to waste. Its a shame but sometimes big fish die as a result fo the fight <img src="/Images/Sad.gif"><!--e2-->

Mike P
09-11-2000, 11:33 AM
Bill, where did you find that article--it sounds like it was originally lifted, verbatim, by someone straight from the pages of the National Fisherman<img src="/Images/Happy_Face.gif"><!--e1--> There's propaganda on both sides in this comm vs rec war, where you read something is as important as what it says. If the New York Times and the New York Post both reported the same thing, you'd think you were reading about two different events.

I don't know much about the RFA. I belong to CCA. We had our own double-cross by the president of the NY chapter, who publishes a free fishing magazine that competes wit The LI Fisherman. The freebie, to stay free, relies heavily on ad $$$ from charter boats, who support both the 28" minimum and a second daily fish for their fares. CCA membership overwhelmingly supported a 36" minimum and a one fish limit across the board, for surfcasters, private boaters and charter boats alike. Well guess what our illustrious CCA President wrote an article in favor of in his magazine?? Did you sday the 28" limit and a secdond fish for charter farwes?? Hey, give that man a see-gar, we have a winner here<img src="/Images/Happy_Face.gif"><!--e1--> The freakin' PRESIDENT of CCA-NY sandbags his membership, destroys the credibility of his own orgainzation, and then when readers of his magazine and website complain about it, he doesn't even have the guts to defend himself, he sends out his butt-boy, the Chairman of CCA-NY to write a tale of how the poor guy had to do it, the charter capts. put a gun to his head and threatened to pull all their ads from his magazine and web site. And, a bunch of people bought this. Like, the guy couldn't see this as a potential conflict of interest BEFORE he accepted the presidency??? Or, knowing the bind he was going to be in, couldn't have resigned as president of CCA-NY BEFORE editorializing against their position?? Well, I'm not as stupid as other people, guess who won't be renewing his CCA membership anytime soon? None of these guys are out for us, they're all thinking of their status in the community that a big title after their name gives them. As far as I know, RFA is basically dominated by the charter and party boat industry, so I can pretty much guess what their position on conservation will be--what's best for them, not best for the guy in a perivate boat, or plugging the surf, or most inmportantly, what's best for the fish. There was also a third recreatrionally targeted "conservation" association called UFA or something like that, it was just a big money-making deal for its president. It wasn't even organized as a not-for-profit organization.

I like some of the things CCA has done on a national basis, but it really alienated me locally in NY. I know it's wrong to indict a whole organization based on the acts of one man, but this whole episode left a bitter taste in my mouth.

JohnR
09-11-2000, 01:15 PM
Whereas the RFA may have stepped on their cr..., uh well, shoes with this one that does not mean that the RFA/Rec sector is now infested with the self righteous, corrupt, mob connected types and that the commercial sector is all honest, underdog, level headed, forward thinking people. It's not like commercial fisherman have never been caught with their hand in the cookie jar either. Remember the Fulton fish market??? What was it, couple hundred thousand pounds of unreported fluke??? All hush hush under the table??? Or the DEP guy from Rhode Island or what about the town enviromental police type fellow from Truro last year, found cleaning the eggs out of female lobsters so he could sell them at his fish market??? You're going to find more corruption in any area that worships the almighty dollar, no matter what side of the fence you fall on. Sure, most people are honest - maybe as much as 70% of the people are honest but you don't have wolves guarding the hen house now do you (or however that old saying goes). Yet you look at most of your advisory commitees and state DEMs that have a much stronger levy of commerical interest types on board then recreational or biologists/scientists and you correctly assume that there doing what is best for the fish for the longterm??? Hell no. They want as much as they can get today, not next week. And look where it gets us. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that if the RFA looks after there own interests first, keeping the tuna and billfish open which in turn keeps their big boat sales going (who will spend a million on a boat to chase bluefish). And the vast majority of commercials on advisory commitees are there to keep the quotas up...

If this goes under the microscope and it turns out that the RFA has screwed up, that will not help their cause, which BTW is to more to keep the pelagic species from extinction (and sell a couple extra Viking Yachts in the process)... Not as much focus comes from the RFA on the striped bass or the codfish does it??? (although the RFA did work towards removing/limiting some of the reduction boats which was a good thing...)

guest
09-11-2000, 05:19 PM
awriter sucks