Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

CCA - 1,688 Miles, 15 States, One Cause
By Ted Venker

The wide reach of Coastal Conservation Association is always driven home to me at this time of year. At the CCA National offices in Houston, the temperature still arcs into the high 90s, the humidity hangs in the air like a soggy blanket, and the threat of hurricanes still lurks in the Gulf of Mexico. The fall season in Texas, all three days of it, is still a solid month or two away.

Then I’ll talk to Pat Keliher in 1,688 miles away in Maine or Sherm Baynard, 1,272 miles away in Maryland. They will seem to be on another planet as they tell me about the cold front that went through last night and the frost on the grass this morning. They will talk about the leaves on the trees changing color, and I will think about the lawn I have to mow again this evening. I will enviously envision CCA members in Maine and Maryland and New York and New Jersey, all enjoying crisp fall days in jeans and sweaters. When the heat gets the better of me, I can’t help but think of ways to pay them back this winter when I’ll be in shorts and sandals on Christmas Day, and they’ll be burning everything but the good furniture to stay warm. Everything balances out, I guess.

Little reminders like this serve to highlight the fact that CCA is a big group – numerically, geographically and in advocacy. We are rapidly approaching 90,000 members through our 15 states. Ninety-thousand grass-roots, card-carrying conservationists. When you consider that we started in 1977 with 14 concerned anglers meeting in a Houston tackle shop, that is a pretty impressive growth curve.

New members are often surprised to learn how CCA operates as a three-tiered organization, affecting issues on the local, state and national levels. At the state level, CCA members might raise funds to establish a system of artificial reefs, like CCA Alabama is doing, or organize mangrove restoration efforts in local estuaries, like CCA Florida. CCA state chapters may also engage in lobbying efforts to tackle tough issues like ensuring adequate freshwater inflow to the bays, as CCA Texas is doing.

CCA is designed to let state members set their agenda and attack issues that are of great importance to the conservation of our coastal resources. Through the local banquet fund-raising process, CCA members fuel their conservation agenda and ultimately improve the condition of local marine resources and expand fishing opportunities in their state. Each CCA state has autonomy and relies on its volunteers to make the process work.

And the process does work. In this issue of TIDE, Chris Christian writes about the return of monster red drum to the northeast coast of Florida, thanks in part to a net ban that CCA Florida fought to establish in 1992. Spanish mackerel are considered a conservation success story, and an article by David Brown introduces anglers to the joys of targeting this scrappy fighter. In the Chesapeake Bay, CCA Virginia has fought a running battle to keep commercial nets away from the Bay Bridge Tunnel. Charlie Coates’ examination of this man-made fishing mecca proves that the fight is well worth the effort.

Many new members are motivated to join CCA to support local causes like these, so why should a CCA member in New Hampshire care about what’s going on in CCA Georgia? Why does CCA Louisiana need CCA Maryland? The answer is simple: Many of the most critical fisheries issues facing CCA today are national, or at least regional, in scope.

The threat of Marine Protected Areas is just one example of an issue that unites all recreational anglers, from Maine to Texas. Responding to this threat of unfair exclusion, CCA and the American Sportfishing Association worked with congressional leaders to draft The Freedom to Fish Act, now pending before Congress. Regardless of size or location, every CCA state will need to work together to prevent regulations that arbitrarily prohibit recreational fishing unless it can be scientifically determined that recreational fishermen are the cause of a specific conservation problem and traditional conservation measures are inadequate to remedy the situation. CCA Texas may have almost 50,000 members, but it still has access to only two Senators. Together, CCA states can take this case to 30 Senators, or more.

Cooperation among CCA states is one of the only reasons the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) was able to work a miracle with the striped bass fishery and turn a management disaster into one of the great conservation stories of all time. More recently, ASMFC also declared the beleaguered and much-debated summer flounder fishery well on the way to recovery. Neither of these significant accomplishments happened overnight, and no one state acting alone would be capable of achieving these results. CCA’s Atlantic States Fisheries Director Dick Brame has a short article further outlining the value of the ASMFC in this issue’s TIDE Bits section.

The reality of fisheries management is that it is an ongoing, complex process. It involves three Cabinet level Departments – Commerce, Interior and Agriculture - as well as the National Marine Fisheries Service, eight regional fishery management councils, the ASMFC and countless state, interstate and federal agencies. The trap that many conservationists and environmentalists fall into is the belief that a silver bullet will fix all the issues in one fell swoop. That bullet doesn’t exist. Bringing together diverse perspectives, merging resources and focusing steady pressure on regulatory agencies at all levels of government ultimately achieves results. That is the CCA way. United in conservation.