Time for PACK and TKF kayakers to make thier voice heard on getting a seat at the table!!

At the end of the first week of January, I participated in a two-day workshop in Corpus Christi, Texas, that sought to generate solutions to the “Challenges in Sharing and Conserving our Bays.” The workshop was sponsored by the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, the Coastal Bend Bays Foundation and Texas Wade Paddle & Pole, among others.

Texas Wade Paddle & Pole has, over the past year, advocated the establishment of Low-Impact Fishing Areas (also called managed fishing areas or no-motor zones).

That idea has been extremely contentious, generating thousands of sometimes very heated posts on a variety of fishing message boards in Texas. And in fact, it failed to garner the requisite 75 percent approval from the approximately 100 workshop participants, who represented a broad cross-section of conservation organizations, anglers who fish from power boats, air boat operators, paddlers, and more.

As it turned out, workshop debate was much more civil than many had feared it would be, and that there were some interesting and potentially helpful ideas floated at the meeting. I was one of the participants who suggested kayak registration.

As someone pointed out in the comments to a previous editorial on this subject, this notion has been raised several times by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (our state fish & game conservation agency, and also the agency that runs state parks) over the past decade and it was shot down -- by paddlers -- each time.

This is, in my view, short-sighted.

There is a pervasive (and I think mistaken) perception among the resource managers and among non-paddlers that kayak anglers aren't "pulling their weight" when it comes to contributing to the resource conservation here in Texas. I don't completely buy that, as we're purchasing fishing licenses like everyone else who fishes and we paid a state sporting goods sales tax on much of our angling and outdoor equipment and federal sporting goods excise taxes on fishing equipment. Some of those dollars come back to Texas in the form of Wallop-Breaux funds (though very little of that benefits paddlers).

But, as Larry McKinney, PhD, (former director of Coastal Fisheries Division for TPWD and current director of the Harte Research Institute) said at the meeting: the sad truth is, you have to "buy a seat at the table."

There is ample precedent in Texas for a user fee to be sequestered to benefit those users. One example is the freshwater fishing stamp that has long been required of anglers fishing for rainbow trout (monies went to hatchery construction and stocking), etc. It would be a simple matter -- and I believe TPWD would be receptive -- to make that part of any "deal" on paddle craft registration. For instance, the money could be used to increase legal access to public waters.

Currently TPWD runs the Texas Paddling Trails program with no dedicated funding -- kayak and canoe registration could fund that and other access initiatives. The department at this time does not interpret federal guidelines as allowing them to use pass-through federal funds (Wallop-Breaux funds) to construct non-motorized ramps or launch sites. So that's one way the money could be used.

I don't believe it's accurate to suggest that the fee for non-motorized craft necessarily would be the same as for powerboats, and I imagine that whether proof of registration takes the form of a wallet card (like the “certificate of number” currently required to be carried by operators of registered vessels), a tag, a stamp or actual stick-on numbers is open to negotiation.

The advantages to the paddling community could be significant: our numbers would be counted accurately, for the first time ever in Texas; we would pay proportionately the same user fees as everyone else and thus have increased credibility in these discussions; and, if the monies were set-aside, we could reap huge benefits in access, education, etc.

The final recommendations from the January workshop are not – as of this writing -- available, but there seemed to be broad (in fact nearly unanimous) consensus among participants that mandatory boater education for all vessel operators is needed. Something like registration also is probably necessary if mandatory boater education is enacted for all vessel operators on public waters.

There's absolutely no reason a paddler shouldn't know the rules of the road, understand weather, and more. If everyone -- whether in a motorized or non-motorized vessel -- understood the rules of the road and some basic on-the-water courtesy, that alone could go far to reduce user conflicts. Consider what would happen if only half of the people on the highway know that a red octagon means stop or that in the United States we drive on the right. The other half -- those who did know those things -- would still be in big trouble.

A happens in every state legislative session in recent history, a mandatory boater education bill will be introduced in the current Texas legislature in the next month or two. This came as a recommendation by an advisory panel on boating safety created by legislation two years ago.

Notably, this advisory panel included four leading Texas boat retailers -- all of whom signed-off on the mandatory boater education recommendation. This is significant because it has been largely boat dealers who have stymied efforts in the past to get such a bill passed. Whether it will apply to paddlers is an open question. But, in my opinion, it should.

Mandatory education does not necessarily have to mean everyone gets the same one-size-fits-all class, so long as elements common to the safety of all (such as Inland Rules of Navigation) are included.

There is an excellent precedent for this in the accommodation recently made by the TPW Commission in allowing kayak guides an alternative route to Coast Guard licensing (i.e., completion of an appropriate ACA or British Canoe Union course) to receive a guide’s license.

Finally, I would say that I don't think kayak registration was proposed -- at least not by me -- as a quid pro quo for the establishment of LIFAs, and I certainly did not propose it as some sort of punitive measure. There are a great many kayak anglers and fly fishermen in Texas who are adamantly opposed to the creation of so-called LIFAs, managed fishing areas (MFAs) or no-motor zones (NMZs) without evidence that they are necessary to protect our natural resources.

The presentations by the managers of those resources at the workshop indicated just the opposite -- that current efforts to protect sea grasses, for instance, have been successful (and moreover, they have been successful by changing boater behavior -- no mean feat, and an accomplishment that bodes well for building a constituency for these ecosystems). Spotted sea trout numbers, which were down due to poor recruitment in some bay systems -- not because of angling pressure -- are on the way back up.

Our reasons for fishing from little plastic boats are legion, but, for many of us, surely include the low costs associated with the sport and the freedom it affords us. We find it challenging to contemplate the implementation of an ongoing tax on our sport and we probably don’t have much faith we’ll see any benefit from the dollars the state might demand from us.

I admit to a libertarian bent, and I am mildly surprised to find at this late date that I favor mandatory education and vessel registration for paddlers. I have faith that – especially if kayak anglers take the lead in proposing a reasonable and equitable approach to these issues – ultimately we’ll reap great benefits from both.