Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

Walking the Walk
By Ted Venker
Communications Director

Coastal Conservation Association specializes in improving, enhancing and restoring our marine resources, and it’s not rocket science.

It’s more elaborate than that.

Fisheries management is part science, part statistics, part social engineering, part biology, and part economics, with just a touch of politics thrown in for good measure.

The fishery management agencies, councils and commissions at the state, regional and federal levels are loaded with scientists, marine biologists, bureaucrats and statisticians who practically speak their own language. Consider that when the average fisherman realizes he can’t catch stripers or redfish or wahoo like he used to, someone has to figure out what went wrong. This is the first step in a journey of a thousand miles.

To find a solution, managers have to figure out a few things, like: how large the population of fish is now; how big it needs to be; how big it was historically; what the annual mortality is for that species; what the biomass is; what’s the fecundity; what’s the maximum sustainable yield (Msy); what’s the optimal yield (Oy); what’s the spawning stock biomass (SSB); what’s the spawning percentage ratio (SPR); who’s catching which fish and what gear are they using; where do the fish spawn; what time of year do they spawn; how old do they have to be to spawn; etc., etc., etc.

It’s tough to even get your mind around a problem like that.

When enough of the data is finally in hand, fishery managers then develop a management plan that will hopefully restore the stock over a reasonable period of time. That’s when issues like allocation, bag limits, size limits, seasons and gear restrictions all come into play. Management plans are made to be amended, so the process continues for years as the stock improves or if additional measures are necessary.

If that wasn’t complicated enough (and it is greatly simplified here), then you have to take into account the fact that fish swim. States, and even whole coastlines, often have to work together to have the desired effect. If my state has a bag limit of one fish, but my neighboring state has a bag limit of 15, the process breaks down.

It gets even more interesting with an international fishery. Imagine trying to figure out a management plan for depressed marlin stocks when more than 60 countries are actively involved in the fishery.

It is a process that requires countless hours and considerable expertise. Now more than at any time in its history, CCA is committed to being the specialist for the resource and for recreational fishermen.

At a CCA national board meeting in October, the Executive Committee furthered unified the CCA advocacy program by expanding its presence in the management process and sharing the associated costs among all state chapters.

CCA now has specialists dedicated to monitoring and participating in every activity and decision of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC), and the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (GMFMC).

Using the expertise provided by these full-time professionals, CCA’s volunteer committees will have greater insight into the inner workings of the fishery management process, resulting in better decisions and recommendations.

The decision to consolidate our advocacy program was a critical move for CCA at a time when fishery management issues are increasingly regional or national in scope. For example, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) recently agreed to conduct an environmental impact study at CCA’s request to determine the effects of opening the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to striped bass fishing. The federal government has jurisdiction over the EEZ, which includes all waters from the seaward boundary of coastal states to 200 nautical miles.

Why should CCA members in Texas or Louisiana care what happens 20 or 50 or 100 miles off Massachusetts? The legal principle that has kept the EEZ closed to striped bass fishing is the same one that CCA employed to close the EEZ to commercial fishing for red drum and allow those stocks to recover off the coasts of Gulf states.

Open one, and you might have to open the other. CCA wants to make sure that any effort to open the EEZ won’t have adverse consequences on either the resource or on the management plans administered by the states.

CCA works by bringing together diverse perspectives, merging resources and focusing steady pressure on regulatory agencies at all levels of government. To function as effectively as possible in fisheries management, CCA has merged its resources to retain full-time professionals who can speak the language, navigate the maze, manage the politics and promote our message of conservation where it will have the most impact.

To be effective, a marine conservation group must be able to affect management policies at the state, national and international levels. One dimension is just that…one. Fortunately for the resource, CCA is 3-D.

The fishery management process is where the rubber meets the road. We are all in this conservation business together, and this is the job that CCA is meant to do. We are now prepared to do it even better.