On Oct. 23, 2002, the California Fish & Game Commission voted to close more than 100 square miles of prime recreational fishing waters in what some of the commissioners see as merely the first of many massive closures they would impose on Golden State anglers. In a perverted attempt to solve fishery management problems, they have relied on the “virgin ocean” rhetoric of several extreme environmental organizations that want to turn back the clock and stop all fishing.

California is currently embroiled in three separate movements to impose total no-take or limited-fishing zones in state waters. The first program calls for the aforementioned network of reserves in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. Next would come the Marine Life Protection Act, which would establish no-take and limited-take areas in designated ocean waters up and down the coast. Finally, in a separate process, the Marine Life Management Act would create “set asides” structured within fishery management plans. Each of these processes restricts anglers from public waters yet demonstrates little potential to enhance fishing or fisheries.   

There are a number of factors responsible for California’s push to close fishing areas. Our governor and elected officials have run their election campaigns on environmental tickets – then followed the extreme conservationists like sheep. With this political support, the corporate “green” community uses its excellent access to the general media to portray fishermen as the problem and massive no-fishing zones the only solutions. The tactic has garnered a shocking amount of public acceptance. This strategy of the anti-fishing movement generated immense financial contributions to bolster budgets that already ran into the millions of dollars.

Angler indifference to the initial threat, the “it will never happen here” syndrome, allowed ample time to clear the field on which to wage this well planned attack on recreational fishing.

Recent publicity about problems for rockfish populations off of the California coast helped set the stage for even more dramatic actions. While the commercial fishing industry is clearly at the heart of depleted fish populations, a poorly informed public reacts to horror stories and cannot make the crucial distinction between sustainable hook-and-line fishing and the devastation of industrial gear. 

Traditional fishery managers have been hesitant to promote the closure hysteria. Their resistance forced the anti-fishing movement to rely on academics and university biologists to substantiate their claims. With millions of dollars in grants at stake, these new gurus gladly took up the cause; now, theory is replacing traditional fisheries management as the preferred way to deal with ocean resources.

In California, we felt that an honest scientific appraisal would quickly absolve anglers of the burden of massive fishery losses, but instead of absolution, we have been accused by these extremists of destroying fisheries by as one put it the “death by the cuts of a thousand knives.”

United Anglers of Southern California has labored hard for responsible fishing practices, including successful campaigns for a nearshore ban of gillnets and most recently, a total prohibition of longlines off our state. Today, we are being denied access to the very fisheries we have worked to protect. What these closure comrades lack in hard, scientific evidence, they make up for with an aggressive, well financed Jihad that paints anglers as the cause of fishery problems and aims at taking all of us off the water. 

In the face of so many threats and so much uncertainty, only one thing is sure: If we let it, if any of us hesitates, “It will happen here.

Editor’s Note: Tom Raftican is executive director of United Anglers of Southern California.