For Tomorrow’s Fish: Anglers Are The Key to Climate-Resilient Fisheries
Overview
Written by anglers, for anglers, For Tomorrow’s Fish: Anglers Are The Key to Climate-Resilient Fisheries (FTF) is more than a white-paper report. It is the call to arms for an angler-led revolution where conservation-minded anglers are educated, motivated, and enabled to demand progress toward healthy and abundant marine fisheries in the face of the impacts of our changing climate.
Our Changing Oceans
By explicitly linking the impacts of our changing climate to unprecedented changes to the traditional fishing experience, FTF clearly outlines how our changing climate poses unparalleled threats to the ocean’s ability to regulate itself and, by extension, our fisheries ecosystem. Focusing specifically on the unparalleled threats of warming ocean temperatures, ocean deoxygenation, rising sea levels, and increased extreme weather events, FTF presents anglers from offshore to the furthest inland connected waterways with an ultimatum:
Calling On Today’s Angler
FTF outlines the role of the angler, enabling them to become advocates for making our fisheries more resilient to climate change. This science-based, precautionary fishery management paradigm accounts for ecosystem structure and function and maintains catch at sustainable levels. It challenges anglers to fiercely support fishing industry members and align with advocacy networks prioritizing this need, offering the opportunity for a united front of industry representatives and anglers.
Calling For A Break From Status Quo
FTF calls upon the more than 29 million licensed anglers of the U.S. in clear language, supported by a multi-media content campaign and meaningful personal testimonies to motivate and enable angler advocacy to demand policy that co-stewards fish abundance, habitat, and coastal communities.
A Guide For Action
Throughout history, anglers have been the vanguard of conservation for our fisheries. FTF champions these occasions and identifies crucial opportunities for anglers, whether they are first-time advocates or seasoned veterans, to unlock the latent political and social power of the angler and fishing industry.
F T F Outlines Tangible Opportunities For Anglers :
Individuals: Volunteer, Support, Vote Fish, Spend Fish, Recruit, Advocate
Political: Engaging elected officials, i.e., Congressional representatives, to fund climate-ready fisheries enhancement and support for reauthorizing vital legislation such as the Magnuson-Stevens Act and the Clean Water Act.
Management: Engaging Regional Fisheries Management Councils, the federal management institution best equipped to install climate-ready fisheries.