Last week NOAA Fisheries submitted their proposed rule for the federal recreational saltwater registry program. As we have been advising you for the past 6 months or so, the federal government will be instituting a recreational saltwater registry starting in 2009. This registry will be free for two years but in 2011, there will be an annual fee. There is language in the proposed rule that allows for state anglers to be exempt from the registry requirement if their state has a similar registry-type system and the angler subscribes to that system. There will be much more detailed information on this development in an article that will be run in the magazine in a few weeks.

Governor Patrick recently signed into Massachusetts law the nation's first comprehensive state waters ocean management plan. This Ocean's Act is a by-product of the ocean legislation that was attempted by a partnership of environmental groups about two years ago. The Recreational Fishing Alliance spearheaded an effort to modify that original bill to protect recreational fishermen from probable no-fishing zones being created and to also protect the powers and jurisdiction of the Mass Division of Marine Fisheries. Their exhaustive efforts stopped that ill-fated bill from getting out of committee. This new Ocean's Act is head and shoulders above the original language of two years ago and should provide the recreational sector the protection it deserves. A big thank you goes out to all those individuals, organizations and businesses that supported t he RFA's efforts over the past two years regarding this issue. It looks like the efforts really paid off. The only disappointing aspect of the Act is that there will be no recreational fishing representative on the steering committee that will help design the details of the ocean management plan. Given the entirety of the Act, however, we still made out very well.