News out of the Bahamas has thrown the salt-loving fly fishing world into a tizzy the past couple of weeks; the protectionist, punitive draft plan was a swing and a miss in just about every area.
In response, last week the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust published a most interesting document (link below) they’d worked on with a bevy of folks heavily invested in the health and sustainability of tropical salt water fisheries.
A document the Bahamian government should have crafted from the get go when they began their clumsy endeavor to revamp the regs from top to bottom.
The team of scientists, fishery managers and recreational fly fishing industry types even went so far as to state their overarching objective in the first, albeit incredibly simple, sentence of the doc (an objective that had been sorely missed in the draft Bahamian legislation) –
The long term health of a fishery requires a comprehensive management plan.
BTT’s Points of Consideration for Bahamas Bonefish Fishery Management proposed regulations “FISHERIES RESOURCES (JURISDICTION AND CONSERVATION)(FLATS FISHING) REGULATIONS, 2015 goes on to lay out why the fishery should be optimally managed, the conservation anchors to root the fishery for long term, sustainable success, the critical importance of education, and even goes on to propose meaningful, practical regulations with some enforcement muscle.
So That’s What Happens When the Big Kids Pay Attention to Science and Economics
If you have any interest at all in fly fishing the Bahamas in the future, please go read BTT’s suggestions and sign on if you agree it’s a reasonable plan; rest assured that BBT will communicate the range of support to the Bahamian leadership in a meaningful way.
And kudos to BTT for rounding up a diverse leadership group and corralling rational scientific and economic data to drive home critical conservation points. A great example of what happens when the big kids come to the table, lay out the facts (science) and present a thoughtful, compelling argument.
Will it sway things to a rationale end in the Bahamas? We sure as hell hope so – the Bahamian fat lady hasn’t sung just yet.
