[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2007, Book II)]
[October 20, 2007]
[Pages 1360-1364]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Signing the Executive Order on Protection of Striped Bass and 
Red Drum Fish Populations in St. Michaels, Maryland
October 20, 2007

    Thank you all. Stuart, thanks for the 
introduction. Thanks for the invitation here to the Maritime Museum. 
It's a beautiful site you got here. I can see why people want to live in 
St. Michaels, and I do want to thank the good citizens of this community 
for coming out and greeting me and Laura. By the 
way, Laura is not here. She's headed over to the Vice President's house. 
They've kindly invited us for lunch. I guess you could say she's the 
taster. [Laughter]
    The Vice President tells me there's a lot of 
fine fishing here, and I'm looking forward to going out and trying to 
catch some. I love to fish. And the good news is--there's a lot of good 
fishing here--is because the Secret Service won't let me go hunting with 
him. [Laughter]
    I'm going to sign an Executive order today to protect our striped 
bass and red drum fish populations; that's what I'm here to do. The 
Executive order is part of our commitment to end overfishing in America 
and to replenish our Nation's fish stocks and to advance cooperative 
conservation and responsible stewardship. And this is a good place to 
come and sign the Executive order. And I thank you all for coming up and 
letting me say hello to you and witness this Presidential act.
    I want to thank the Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, for joining us today. He cares about 
our waters and our fish stocks, just like I do. And I appreciate 
Carlos Gutierrez--he's the Secretary of 
Commerce--for joining us as well. He's in charge of NOAA, as is 
Conrad

[[Page 1361]]

Lautenbacher--run NOAA--you've got a fancy title: Under Secretary of 
Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere. That means he runs NOAA. [Laughter] 
And I appreciate your concern about our waters, Conrad, and I want to 
thank you for your service to the country.
    I appreciate Wayne Gilchrest; he's 
the Congressman from this district. Mr. Congressman, I'm honored you're 
here. Thank you for taking time; appreciate you welcoming us.
    I want to thank all the State and local folks who've joined us. 
Particularly, I want to thank people who care about fishing, and thank 
you for being here. I want to thank the different groups represented 
here.
    I want to say one--there's a fellow up here named Walter 
Fondren. He's a fellow Texan. He had 
a lot to do with making sure conservation efforts on the Texas gulf 
coast worked. He proved, as have others here, that if you get together 
with responsible officials, you can help get these fishing stocks back 
to robust. We were losing our red fish in Texas, and he along with other 
concerned citizens came together and said, ``Let's do something about 
it.'' And as a result, red fishing is good again. But we want to make it 
as good as possible all throughout the country because fishing is 
important to the country.
    Listen, it's important to be a commercial fisherman; I understand 
that. But the commercial fishermen and the sport fishermen don't have to 
be antagonistic. It's not a zero-sum game. Good policy will help our 
commercial fishermen, and good policy will help our sports fishermen. 
And that's what we're here to talk about. And it's important to 
recognize here in America that sport fishing is a important industry; a 
lot of people make a living because of sport fishing. I don't know if 
people know this, but millions of Americans are spending about $40 
billion a year on sport fishing. I know in our State, Walter, there's a lot of people, a lot of 
entrepreneurs making a good living; they're fishing guides. A lot of 
bait shops and small-business owners are doing well as a result of good 
sport fishing policy.
    And so we're here today to talk about sport fishing. As a matter of 
fact, I'm fixing to go do some sport fishing. I can't guarantee I'm 
going to catch anything. I hope that frogman out there does his job. 
[Laughter]
    I want to talk about a little bit of the comprehensive strategy 
we've put in place. In 2004, our administration released an Ocean Action 
Plan, the whole purpose of which was to make the oceans and the Great 
Lakes and the coast cleaner, healthier, and more productive. The plan is 
producing some positive results.
    On--one of the results of the plan was the Marine National Monument 
in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands that I declared. The action created 
the largest single conservation area in the history of the Nation. It is 
the largest protected marine area in the world. It is a visible sign 
that we care about conservation and good water policy.
    I also signed the bipartisan Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation 
and Management Reauthorization Act. It's a good piece of legislation. 
Many here worked on it, and I want to thank you for working the Halls of 
Congress to get this bill to my desk. The legislation closes loopholes 
in the law by setting a firm deadline to end overfishing in America by 
2011. The law puts in place market-based incentives to help replenish 
our fish stocks by granting fisherman the right to catch a designated 
amount of fish during a specified season. The law increases enforcement 
and raises penalties for those who break our fishing laws. And this law 
improves data collection to help ensure our decisions are based on sound 
science. It was an important piece of legislation, and I want to thank 
the authors of the bill for getting it done. I think it's going to help 
a lot when it comes to managing our fish stocks in a constructive, smart 
way.

[[Page 1362]]

    In addition to the Magnuson-Stevenson Act, over the last couple of 
years, we've made a strong commitment to improve, restore, and replace 
our wetlands. I set out the goal that during my Presidency, we would 
restore--improve, restore, and replace 3 million acres of wetlands. The 
reason I did that is because wetlands act as what we call nature's 
nurseries by helping small fish survive before they head into deeper 
waters. We're going to make that goal. We will have replaced, improved, 
and restored over 3 million acres of wetlands during my Presidency.
    Another significant problem is marine debris. And I was talking to 
Dirk Kempthorne, and he's going to host a 
symposium on the gulf coast to call our Nation's attention to this 
issue. Our strategy is going to be to work with the private sector to 
help clean up the debris. I don't know if you understand, it is a 
significant problem. Out there in the Hawaiian Island area that I set 
aside--Laura went out there, and a lot of birds 
are eating this stuff that gets washed up as a result of people just 
dumping whatever they want to in the ocean. It's like a--people kind of 
view it as, I guess, a giant garbage heap. And part of making sure that 
doesn't happen is to make it clear to our public the consequences of 
people just getting on our waters and just dumping whatever they feel 
like dumping out there.
    And we're also going to work with the international community. A lot 
of the nets we're picking up out of that beautiful sanctuary in the--or 
the monument in Hawaii of--wash ashore because some trawler decides they 
don't want to mend the net or store the net or take care of the net. 
They just cut it and let her go, and the currents wash all that stuff 
ashore. We literally pulled out tons of material off these islands. And 
so we're going to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with this, 
and call people to account, and ask them to join in protecting our 
oceans and waterways.
    We're also talking about today to make sure that not only we protect 
the waters, we're going to protect the marine life in the waters. And so 
I want to talk today about two of the most popular recreational fish, 
the striped bass and the red drum.
    The striped bass--I don't know if our citizens follow the striped 
bass, but it's a good fish to catch. It's a lot of fun. It's also a good 
fish to eat. We've got to make sure we've got enough to catch as well as 
enough to eat, and we can do both in a smart way.
    Striped bass range from the St. Lawrence River in Canada to the St. 
John's River in Florida. They inhabit parts of the Pacific and the Gulf 
of Mexico. Some people call them stripers or rockfish. I guess we're 
going to call them rockfish today. [Laughter] They can live up to be 30 
years old. In the old days, you could catch them up to 55 to 70 pounds 
pretty easily. And what we're trying to do is to make sure that the old 
days come back, that the striper is plentiful, and that you can catch 
some good-sized ones too--nothing like catching a big striper.
    They were once so plentiful back in 1614 that Captain John Smith 
wrote this: He said, a man could cross over the water ``dry-shod'' by 
walking on the backs of all the fish. What's interesting is, the striped 
bass was also one of the first species to be protected by the American 
people. In 1639, Massachusetts forbade the use of striped bass as 
fertilizer. By the early 1980s, striped bass were significantly depleted 
by poor water quality and overfishing.
    Over the years since that time, there's been some progress made to 
protect the striped bass, but not enough has been made. And so today 
we're going to try to make some more progress.
    Red drum is another popular fish that has experienced overfishing. 
These fish are called reds or redfish or channel bass or spottail. What 
happened to this particular fish was that it became popular to eat. The 
restaurants found it to be good food, and

[[Page 1363]]

it became a popular dish, and they got overfished.
    Now, we put protections in place both at State and Federal level to 
protect the red drum. Unfortunately, the red drum species is still 
trying to recover. That's why I'm going to take this additional step 
today, because the recovery is not complete. In the waters of--from 
North Carolina to the tip of Florida, the numbers are still too low. And 
in parts of our gulf, we're not sure of their status. So if you're not 
sure of the status, we ought to be taking special precaution. It's 
important that our fish stocks be full and robust and healthy.
    And so I'm about to sign an Executive order, all aimed to help the 
Federal Government conserve striped bass and red drum in three key ways. 
First, the Executive order directs the Commerce and Interior 
Departments--that's why the two 
Secretaries are standing here--to work 
with our fishery management councils and commissions to protect--to 
prohibit the sale of striped bass and red drum caught in Federal waters.
    Second, this Executive order encourages the periodic review of the 
status of the striped bass and red drum populations. This will ensure we 
have the most up to date information for determining whether breeding 
stocks are attaining healthy numbers and size in Federal waters.
    Data is important when it comes to managing the fishing stocks. To 
improve the quality of our data, we're building a recreational saltwater 
registry that will collect information from sportsmen about local fish 
stocks, which will help us better protect striped bass, red drum, and 
all our fisheries. We're going to count on the people who really care 
about the fish stocks for--to get good, solid, sound information so we 
can do a better job not only today but tomorrow in making sure our 
fisheries are strong.
    And finally, the Executive order encourages States to take a look at 
their own management of the fish stocks. See, we believe in cooperative 
conservation. That means cooperation at the Federal, State, and local 
levels. We believe in a collaborative approach, that the Federal 
Government ought to work with all stakeholders to achieve common 
consensus. And I respect the States' role in the management of the 
natural resources under their care. So I'm directing Federal agencies to 
work with State officials to find innovative ways to help conserve 
striped bass and red drum.
    And one such way is to use the State designation of game fish where 
appropriate. I hope the State officials take a serious look at game fish 
designation; it is an effective tool to protect endangered or dwindling 
species. See, it prohibits commercial sales, which removes the incentive 
to catch the fish for anything other than recreational purposes. State 
designations of game fish have helped the recovery of species such as 
trout and large-mouth bass and tarpon and snook. People need to take a 
look at this tool to make sure that the fisheries are robust. Strong 
fisheries mean local sales. Local sales means better local economy.
    And so the Executive order shows our commitment to conserving our 
Nation's resources. Our hope, everybody--the hope of everyone here is 
that decades from now, our children and grandchildren will see oceans, 
lakes, and rivers teeming with fish and sea life. I can't guarantee 
they're going to be able to walk across their backs--[laughter]--like 
John Smith observed, but I can guarantee that we're committed to taking 
care of that which we have been given. My hope is people look back at 
our oceans' policies and our record of conservation and say, ``We're 
grateful that concerned citizens came together to protect our 
heritage.''
    And so I want to thank you all for coming and giving me a chance to 
visit with you about a vision that is a hopeful vision and an important 
vision. And I thank you for witnessing the signing of the Executive

[[Page 1364]]

order to protect the striped bass and red drum fish populations.
    God bless.

Note: The President spoke at 10:12 a.m. at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime 
Museum. In his remarks, he referred to Stuart Parnes, president, 
Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum; and Walter W. Fondren III, chairman, 
Coastal Conservation Association. The President also referred to 
Executive Order 13449. The Executive order is listed in Appendix D at 
the end of this volume.