It would be foolish to ask a single question of 10,000 people and expect that each of them would give the same answer. On a personal level, individuals can be expected to act, well, individually. At the organizational level, however, success hinges occasionally upon members' abilities to set personal feelings aside and present a powerful, united front.

When a handful of men gathered two dozen years ago to address unsettling trends in Texas redfish management, they could not possibly have imagined that their energies and efforts eventually would become the 15-state Coastal Conservation Association. Nonetheless, the organization's growth has been real and steady - not because any one of those men was exceptionally wise or influential, but because each of them committed publicly to the same long-term goals and was willing to set aside any short-term differences they might have had.

Few other organizations of similar size to CCA provide their members with so many opportunities to participate in the process, so many chances to leave their fingerprints on critical projects and programs. Elsewhere, typically, a small handful of employees and officers is entrusted with absolute authority while members are asked to provide little more than financial support.

CCA is a grassroots organization. Nobody ever accused CCA of having too few committees and boards on which interested and involved members could serve the organization.

The concept has worked brilliantly. By the time CCA's patient, studious wheels grind out a decision, a tremendous amount of information has been considered and digested by a large number of people who all are focused on achieving the same result. Rest assured that more than a few conflicting opinions were bounced off meeting-room walls during the process, but in the end, once a consensus was reached, dissention and bitterness were left behind.

Associations that represented fine causes in the past have come and gone because their members, often their own founders, could not separate singular desires from the collective mission. CCA has weathered its share of storms, some potentially threatening to the organization, through persistence, diligence and union.

The "divide and conquer" strategy has been used throughout history to defeat entire nations and, more recently, to dismantle powerful groups. Only a few years ago, anti-hunters sought to turn hunters who used rifles against those who used bows and vice versa. Information was passed through bow hunters' circles that rifle hunters thought archery to be inhumane, and rifle hunters were told that bow hunters considered them elitist and unskilled. Ultimately, the opponents' hope was that both sides would turn on each other. That conflict would provide anti-hunters the support they needed to gain passage of one seemingly insignificant restriction after another until hunting of all sorts was stopped. The plan ultimately backfired, of course, because hunters saw through the attempt and rallied around each other.

Fishermen, too, must be aware of how simply they could be turned against one another. Surf casters are slobs. Fly fishermen are snobs. Boat owners are disrespectful of shore fishermen. Lure fishing takes more skill than bait fishing. Those and other accusations are dropped into conversations every day, usually by people who know nothing of fishing or of marine resources, and all of those jabs are centered in the premise that one group of fishermen is somehow better than the rest.

Should that sort of inflammatory language be allowed to spread, it could tear deep into the fabric of the sport and present a long-term threat to coastal resources. We know better than to allow such a thing to happen. Or do we?

For the long haul, all of us in CCA are on the same side. But in the case of individual management issues - bag and size limits, season lengths and closures, gear restrictions - we sometimes let our personal preferences stand in the way of collective logic and science.

To maintain CCA's proud history as a leader in conservation, it is vital that each of us accepts three simple responsibilities to the resource and the organization.

First, we must participate in the decision-making process. Every member who speaks will be heard, but to my knowledge, there are no mind readers in the association.

Second, we must listen. In any CCA meeting, present membership represents centuries of experience and observation. Everyone in the room has something to share, something to add.

Finally, we must reach a consensus based on all that wisdom and, if necessary, agree to disagree. Outside, the public has trouble distinguishing between board members and committee members and plain-vanilla members. We are all CCA. And we must all stand together.