This is a tax,   https://www.countmyfish.noaa.gov/index.html  and it’s coming because  NOAA, and state fishery agencies can’t get the job done with the revenue they already get from us, and now, we recreational saltwater fisherman will be burdened unnecessarily as a result. I would love to know where the numbers thrown up by NOAA relating the impact recreational fisherman have on the oceans fisheries come from. It’s obviously a concoction by various legal, and PR entities enlisted to help justify the budgetary inefficiencies of federal ocean fishery management agencies. The cause is good, the focus ridiculous. The numbers are dismissible in my mind. 

Recreational fisherman, by and large, drop a few lines in the water on occasion, throw back most of what they catch, and some days catch nothing. We all know this. I expect these parameters were absent from any calculation. There is no way any rational person could conclude that recreational fishing serves as a statistically viable measure when it comes to ocean stock levels compared to data already gathered from commercial fishing landing counts. Sure, some fish are taken recreationally, but as a tool, it’s just statistically insignificant compared too commercial fishing whose takes are large, and highly measurable. This is not about lakes, rivers, and streams here that are more significantly impacted by recreational fishing, but about the ocean, and the fishing methods that significantly impact it and are already easily measured. 

The NOAA spin is laughable but understandable. The implications sad. New revenue streams are a quick fix for budgetary inefficiency. Too bad the recreational saltwater fisherman will have to pay in beyond what they already do, for the surveys that are already funded and could work properly. Shame on NOAA for their poorly veiled excuse. No one is going to give a phone survey (most will give their office phone number), and most will throw any mail survey in the recycle bin without opening it. And it’s only because we recreational saltwater fisherman are smart enough to know that we offer no new significant data. But NOAA knows this. The whole exercise is a PR effort that looks ridiculous to the intelligent fisherman—and anyone else thinking rationally. I registered, and will pay my $15 dollars a years in years to come….unless I can bludgeon some sense into my US and state legislators soon… to keep this boondoggle from going through, or at least to make my state exempt…which is possible.., and something we all should strive for. Lets protect and nurture the ocean’s fisheries, and lets do it by making the existing systems we have work properly. 

Just one MOF member’s opinion only, and not reflective (necessarily) of MOF as a whole.