Publisher's Logbook: In Defense of JCAA

The April 3, 2008 issue of the New Jersey Edition of The Fisherman Magazine, contains an editorial by Executive Editor Jim Hutchinson attacking the Jersey Coast Anglers Association (JCAA) for their membership in the Marine Fish Conservation Network (MFCN), one of the Pew-sponsored organizations that has been a major thorn in anglers’ sides with respect to the fluke problems we’ve written about so much over the past few months.

In the article, Hutchinson is openly critical of JCAA for their continuing membership in the MFCN, stating that, “…without fishing groups, the Network is just another radical environmental business organization partially funded by Pew, lobbying in support of marine protected areas and represented purely by its founding members like the Ocean Conservancy, a group which openly opposes the creation of artificial reefs for fishing and tourism.”

Hutchinson goes on to say, “Because forged alliances such as these [JCAA, MFCN] only help strengthen the credibility of radical environmental organizations in both the public perception and at the state and federal legislative level … we have made the difficult decision not to renew our JCAA fiscal sponsorship in 2008.”

In a nutshell, The Fisherman Magazine has publicly discontinued its fiscal support of JCAA because they disagree with the decisions made on this particular issue.

Since then, we’ve gotten quite a bit of correspondence from our own readership about JCAA and their involvement with MFCN. Some folks wanted clarification, but most were simply curious as to our take on it. Thus, I thought it might be appropriate to use this space to address it publicly.

JCAA’s membership in MFCN is something that I became aware of last year, when the fluke issue was just beginning to take center stage, and it certainly piqued my curiosity. The MFCN is essentially a coalition of about 190 organizations - both environmental and fishing groups operating at the international, national and regional levels - the collective goal of which is to protect our oceans and the creatures that live in them. On the surface, their mission is an admirable one, but as is often the case with issues of an environmental nature, their implementation has proven to be disgraceful. Rather than working as a productive environmental watchdog group, MFCN has instead acquiesced to a Pew-driven, exclusionary agenda that seems to consist of little more than an attempt to keep anglers off the water.

So, as anglers, what should we make of JCAA’s membership in this organization? That’s exactly the question that I posed to several JCAA Board Members and to Legislative Representative, Tom Fote, in particular. Their response to me echoed their position that is described in detail in their January 2008 newsletter, which can be accessed on their website www.jcaa.org. I’d encourage all interested parties to go to their website and read this article in its entirety.

Essentially, the JCAA Board was asked by the American Sportfishing Association (ASA) to occupy their seat on MFCN in order to steer the organization away from Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and to represent the sentiment of the sportfishing industry from “within” the network, something that I believe JCAA has done. JCAA feels that their presence within MFCN is of great value for the sportfishing industry. They feel that, as part of the network, they have a greater chance of affecting change than they would as an “outsider”. One doesn’t have to look too hard to see the potential benefit to having JCAA as a member organization.

But there is a downside to JCAA membership within MFCN, and it concerns both credibility and influence. MFCN’s effectiveness is likely to be greater, and possibly substantially so, with a number of sportfishing groups on its membership roll. Without these sportfishing groups, MFCN might be reduced to “just another radical environmental business organization” as Hutchinson suggests.

So, is JCAA’s membership in the network helping us or hurting us? The Fisherman Magazine feels so strongly in the latter that they’ve decided to issue a public statement withdrawing all support for JCAA, presumably in an attempt to muscle them toward pulling out.

But as is often the case with anything of a political nature, things may not be exactly as they seem. JCAA has written a formal response to the Fisherman editorial, published in the JCAA May 2008 newsletter and available online at www.jcaa.org. Again, I strongly encourage our readers to go to the JCAA website and read this response in its entirety.

In it, the JCAA Board of Directors discusses a “strained” relationship with The Fisherman Magazine dating back to 2002. According to the JCAA response, “The Fisherman demanded that they be given exclusive media sponsorship to the annual JCAA Fluke Tournament.” The New Jersey Angler was a sponsor of the tournament at the time, just as we are now, and JCAA morally refused to drop our sponsorship in order to grant exclusivity to The Fisherman. According to the JCAA response, this pressure continued for years before coming to a head recently when The Fisherman decided to stop supporting JCAA financially. The JCAA Board addresses this sequence of events in more detail in their response, as a means of illustrating, and these are their words, “perhaps why The Fisherman wrote the editorial article in question.”

I have watched this “exclusivity saga” unfold since I took over the reigns of this publication in 2002. At that time, as a naďve new publisher, my only motivation for sponsoring the fluke tournament was to support JCAA in my own way. I didn’t have much to offer, but I did what I could, and I certainly had no problem with other “media entities” being involved. The exclusivity concept was both foreign and shocking to me, and to this day I still don’t understand how it could ever apply to a non-profit organization’s primary fundraiser.

Keep in mind, in 2002 The New Jersey Angler was just starting to experience the growth we’ve now come to expect and our influence was probably an order of magnitude smaller than it is today. I watched the JCAA Board in general, and Tom Fote in particular, put their collective neck on the line to do what they believed to be the moral thing, and I knew immediately that JCAA was an organization of principle. This is not to say that I don’t disagree with JCAA on certain issues. Heck, I’ve had some real knock-down-drag-out battles with them over the years, but I would never question their desire to do the right thing, and I will argue vehemently with those who suggest otherwise.

So, back to the question at hand; what should anglers across the region make of JCAA’s involvement in MFCN? Nobody knows for sure whether the positives outweigh the negatives. Personally, having JCAA involved with MFCN makes me uncomfortable, and I have expressed these sentiments to Tom Fote and the JCAA Board. Truthfully, this is the reason RFA and SSFFF have gotten more coverage on the pages of this magazine with respect to all the goings-on with respect to fluke. But, I do believe JCAA is doing what they believe to be the right thing, and I really can’t fault them for that.

Regardless of what decision JCAA eventually makes with respect to their involvement with MFCN, I trust that they will continue doing exactly what they’ve done since 1981, which is fighting for the rights of recreational anglers. Every person and every media entity has the right to question their approach to a particular issue, or even to try to steer them in a particular direction, but I believe we need to continue to support them in the grand scheme of things. There are too many threats out there, and there will be more every year. We need effective organizations out there fighting for our rights, and JCAA continues to be one such organization.

Of course, there are those within the angling community who have had their differences with Fote and JCAA over the years, and I’m sure some of those folks will resent my perspective. They will say in print and on internet message boards that I don’t truly understand the issue, and they will talk amongst themselves that I am doing more harm than good. To these folks I say this - with respect to those issues that seriously threaten our industry, I have more to lose than anybody. The New Jersey Angler is not just my pastime, it is not just my job, and it is not just my career; it is my life. It is something for which I have sacrificed everything. As such, I believe a strong JCAA goes a long way toward ensuring the future of our industry, and I believe they deserve our continued support, regardless of whether or not they take the “mainstream” route toward achieving it.

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