Your attention Please!

Members, have you been down the marina lately? If you, have you will appreciate this message. Simply stated the place “stinks”. There are a number of floating fish carcasses - both from cleaned fish and entire fish discarded and thrown in the marina to rot. THIS IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE! As a Fishing Club we take pride in our marina and appreciate the benefits of having a beautiful surrounding in which we can enjoy our favorite sport.  Rotting fish kind of kills that!
 
You may recall that we created and posted a video last year on the proper fish cleaning etiquette … that can be viewed on our Clubs website as a reminder. We also did a number of communications on the proper method to be followed to anyone we could reach out to.
 
Without hard visual observations of who the culprits are, it’s hard to specifically address the offenders. As your Club President, I would like to think it’s not our members, but I’m realistic enough to know it could be. New members may be unaware, existing members may have forgotten or been in a rush to get home, or folks simply get careless. 
 
We as members need to ensure we uphold the proper procedures. Also, if we, as members, observe others improperly cleaning, we should call out the offenders. I can tell you just the other day we had a visiting boat in the marina (docked in the commercial area) and the guys were cleaning their fish and just tossing the carcass without drilling out the eyes or voiding the organs / guts. I called them out on it and asked them to follow procedures…. They agreed! But that was the not cause of the recent issue. 
 
The summer months are especially bad as the warm water accelerates the decomposition process, so we should be especially attentive.
 
We really need to take this seriously because, if we do not, we run the risk of having the fish cleaning station getting challenged by non-club members and others who own boats in the marina. We want to avoid that ! If each of our members do their part, then we (myself and Hiroki) as MOA Board Members can try and tackle the outside / nonmember factors.
 
While we are looking to isolate where the offenses are coming from, e.g., non-Club Members, anything each of you can do will be helpful.
 
A few other things to consider: 
 
  • Going forward we are looking at the possibility of monitoring the marina cameras for violators. 
 
  • Don’t bring back fish you do not intend to keep or eat …. Recently we have seen (just yesterday) entire Barracuda and Amberjacks (and other smaller fish) floating in the Marina. Clearly these were not intending to be eaten and should not have been brought back. If folks want pictures, take them while out in the water – not back at the marina then tossing the fish.
 
  • All boat owning club members should make sure their guests, who might be cleaning fish on return to the dock, should understand our fish cleaning procedures.  Sometimes boat owners bring their boats back to their slips to be cleaned and leave their guests behind to clean and fillet their catch.
 
I would hate to get to the point where we are required to bring the carcasses back out to the ICW after we cleaned our fish (although I know a few folks do that to avoid issues in the Marina). The water flow in the ICW is better and can handle it.

I appreciate any support each of you can provide and if any members have any added ideas or suggestions, please let me know. 

Regards,
Craig