To our family and friends,

As we enjoy the holiday season and the final week of 2009, the staff at the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) wanted to take a moment to say thank you for your ongoing support, while offering our best wishes to you and yours at this joyous time of year. While 2009 will surely not be going down in the logbook as a banner year in terms of access to our coastal fisheries, we're all hoping that real change for our coastal communities will be positive in 2010 - and to help make sure that the concerns of American recreational fishermen are truly heard in Washington, the RFA and our friends from all along the coast will be gathering together in Washington DC later this winter.

On February 24, 2010 at noon, RFA members will rally on the steps of our nation's Capitol in an organized demonstration against the unintended negative impacts of the Magnuson Stevens Conservation and Management Act (MSA). Together with our friends from the Conservation Cooperative of Gulf Fishermen, United Boatmen, New York Sportfishing Federation, Maryland Saltwater Sportfishermen's Association, Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund (SSFFF), Marine Trades Association of New Jersey (MTA/NJ) and the Fishing Rights Alliance, we're hoping to see several thousand recreational fishermen like yourself standing together in support of the Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act of 2009. HR 1584 is sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone and supported by 25 additional co-sponsors, while the senate version of the bill, S 1255, has been sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer and has just recently added its first cosponsor (Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand).

With the participation and support of anglers like you, the RFA believes we can encourage more Senators and Congressmen to sign on to this valuable piece of legislation, supporting real science based management and the conservation of our marine resources while also being able to sustain recreational fishing activities along our coasts. Efforts are now being coordinated in coastal states around the country to help get fishermen to DC on February 24.

For those of you who fish in the New York and New Jersey area, the RFA-NJ, SSFF, United Boatmen and MTA-NJ have joined forces to arrange buses to take fishermen to Washington, with departures from the ports of Brielle, NJ and Atlantic Highlands, NJ. Tickets are just $32 per person. Click one of the links below for online ticket purchase and to choose a departure location - hurry, seats are filling up first at these initial locations!

Bogan's Boat Basin - Brielle, NJ
Atlantic Highlands Marina - Atlantic Highlands, NJ

More buses will be added early in 2010 - an effort is currently underway through the United Boatmen of New York in conjunction with the New York Sportfishing Federation to arrange for buses and departure locations in the New York marine district as well. Our new RFA Northern Florida Chapter (RFA-NOFL) chaired by Rick Hale will be helping coordinate efforts in the southeast, while our hardcore members in the RFA-TX chapter are also working on travel arrangements. If your group or RFA chapter is currently planning a bus or caravan effort for February 24, please contact me via email at jhutchinson@joinrfa.org so that we can pass this information along to fellow RFA members around the country.

Active RFA members should keep an eye for an important letter arriving from RFA headquarters - our staff is in the process of switching office locations in an effort to streamline operations, but we'll be back up online on January 4, 2010, and moving at breakneck speed with our friends in DC and along the coast to make sure that February 24 is truly a historic event for America's coastal communities.

If you're able to help support these efforts to protect your right to fish, the RFA could use any and all support - in these tough economic times, whatever amount you could spare will be very much appreciated and will help go to good use.

Should Bluefin Be Listed As Endangered?

There's one last thing you can do online this week to protect your right to fish - it's quick, it's free, it's easy, and it comes to us by way of grassroots effort now being conducted on behalf of a unified coalition of fishermen from both the recreational and commercial sector in America who are concerned with the possibility that the harvest of bluefin tuna could actually banned outright through a CITES listing (which stands for Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species). The RFA has gone on record previously with opposing any such listing, fearful that such action would result in even greater restrictions or an outright ban on recreational fishing for this species particularly in the United States where bluefin is extremely important to recreational anglers.

Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna are in serious trouble from commercial overfishing and noncompliance to International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) conservation measures in that region. For years, the European Union (EU) nations, who pursue bluefin tuna, have thumbed their noses at recommendations for annual harvest quotas set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) Standing Committee on Research and Statistics (SCRS) committee. These recommendations from the SCRS and compliance to them are the heart of the ICCAT treaty and must be followed. For years EU nations have been harvesting bluefin tuna at a rate three times the harvest recommendations set forth by the SCRS. Furthermore, they have failed to enforce minimum size limits necessary to ensure adequate recruitment.

RFA clearly recognizes that the management of Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic bluefin is failing. However, we question if CITES would be an effective tool. The overfishing situation in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic is a regional issue. CITES, which prohibits all international trade including charter boats and tournaments, uses too broad a brush to fix an isolated but identified problem. Arbitrarily shutting down the western Atlantic bluefin access to United States and Canadian fishermen who comply and enforce ICCAT harvest recommendations and carry unused bluefin balances from year to year would accomplish nothing.

As my friend RFA Executive Director Jim Donofrio said last year when this proposal was first requested by a Houston-based conservation group, "A CITES listing is grossly excessive particularly in a quota management system. It is much more likely to achieve Atlantic bluefin tuna rebuilding success if all ICCAT contracting parties are forced to comply with annual harvest quotas that currently exist." While CITES listing for bluefin has been broadly supported by many conservation and environmental organizations in the United States, RFA believes that a CITES listing would only hurt the U.S. fishermen who have been conserving the resource and actually following international harvest rules for nearly 30 years.

Click here to view the online petition to Congress and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Again, our offices are closed this week, with staff returning on January 4 following the holiday weekend. All the best to you, your family and your organization in 2010, and we all hope to see you in person in DC on February 24, 2010 at noon!