How the Organized Recreational Fishing Community Views Aquatic Protected Areas

摘要

The focus of this paper is saltwater angling in U.S. waters, and the term marine protected areas (MPAs) is used throughout the paper because of its common acceptance among most fishing and nonfishing stakeholders. The organized recreational fishing community— composed of angler groups, for-hire fishing providers, and the tackle industry—views MPAs with great skepticism at best and outright opposition and hostility at the extreme. That is because this stakeholder community equates the term "MPA" with "no-fishing zone." Executive Order 13158 defines the term "marine protected area" only in broad terms as "any area of the marine environment that has been reserved by [law] or regulations to provide lasting protection for part or all of the natural orcultural resources therein." Yet public discourse in marine resource management, public policy, and nonfishing stakeholder circles defines, or at least implies, the very discrete (and to anglers, very inflexible and threatening) definition of "no-fishing" or "no-take" zone. A review of the official positions on MPAs as voiced by organizations within the organized recreational fishing community is presented. Much of the information is derived from a meeting of U.S. recreational fishing leaders convened in February 2003 to examine a variety of issues related to marine fish management, particularly at the federal level, and angler participation in the process. Marine protected areas were identified as a major topic for discussion among representatives tothe Sportfishing Leadership Conference, which had federal fishery managers in attendance. The author's contention that no single issue has so galvanized the U.S. sportfishing community is supported using excerpts from position papers, newsletters, Internet web sites, and the sportfishing consumer and industry press.