Here is an excerpt from a Zach Harvey article about forward thinking Charter Captain Al Anderson. Full article linked afterwards.
{While I’ve long understood some of the bad blood between other captains and Anderson, I’ve more recently come to see and understand Anderson’s perspective. Where sportfishing communities in other parts of the country seem to have been much more receptive to key aspects of conservation, the overwhelming majority of ports in the Northeast have long been meat-fishing legacies — few places more so than Anderson’s home port of Point Judith, R.I. Charter fishing there has long been understood as an investment in filleted freezer ballast as much as an exciting day on the water.
Anderson, whose charter rates are more than double what many of his competitors charge, has for years refused to trophy-hunt except on occasions when he knows big fish will be tagged and released, and actively discourages clients from keeping as much as regulations permit. These are policies that have cost him clientele and led many of his competitors to dismiss him as arrogant.
What I think has been widely misunderstood about the man is that his singular, Ahab-grade commitment to fish tagging and conservation is not a gimmick or publicity stunt. Again, Anderson is a man who has made policy of principles, even when many of those principles run against the main current of the community around him. The world rarely embraces such men in their own time, but it surely needs them and seldom forgets them.}
Zach Harvey is fishing editor for Soundings.
April 2014 issue
http://mobile.soundingsonline.com/ho...columns/291904
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