Anglers Want Shoreline Access Clarification Almost as Much as They Want ‘The Big One’
By Rob Smith /
ecoRI News staff
Last week the state Department of Environmental Management issued its final adjustments on harvesting limits for commercial and recreational anglers.
The summer harvesting season for many species of
fish, such as black sea bass, scup, menhaden, summer flounder, and striped
bass, will start sometime in May.
DEM director Terry Gray overruled a
recommendation from the Rhode Island Marine Fisheries Council to increase the
possession limit for commercial menhaden to 50,000 pounds per vessel.
“I do not believe that the changes
approved by the council fully considered potential interactions with the ASMFC
[Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission] management plan,” wrote Gray in
his decision. “And
therefore, careful study of how this change would align with those requirements
is warranted.”
While the limits of what anglers can
pull from state waters this year are now set, anyone looking to pick up a pole
this summer will have to figure out the thorny issue of shoreline access.
Enshrined in the state Constitution
is a right to the shore, and, among other activities, the right to fish from
the shore — as many Rhode Islanders have done since the days of Roger Williams.
But in recent years, private property owners have asserted they own the
property in front of their homes or private clubs, and anyone who tries to walk
on their shoreline is trespassing.
Residents along the state’s southern shore, in Westerly and Charlestown, have complained of new barriers and fences, “No trespassing” signs, and private security guards escorting people off what they say used to be public beaches.
The General Assembly has pledged to
resolve the issue once and for all. Last year a legislative study commission
recommended the legal access boundary be moved from the mean high water line —
a forever-shifting boundary impossible to discern without scientific equipment
on a good day and frequently underwater — to the seaweed, or wrack, line, the
highest point on the beach where seaweed and other maritime detritus is left on
the shore after high tide.
“There are places in Rhode Island
now that no one debates that you can fish there legally,” said Greg Vespe,
director of the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association. “The problem is you
can’t get there from either direction. There’s no way to access it because
private owners have cut off their version of legal access to the spot.”
Residents looking to cast a line
this summer are going to need three things, according to Vespe: the actual
ability to fish from the shoreline; designated right of ways (ROWs) to access
desired coastal spots; and parking.
This year two bills are up for consideration. In the House, Rep. Terri Cortvriend, D-Portsmouth, has introduced legislation (H5174) that fixes the legal area beachgoers can walk along the shore to 6 feet landward of the wrack line.
It’s the second year in a row Cortvriend has introduced the bill, and it
passed the House unanimously both years. Cortvriend also chaired the study
commission on shoreline access last year.
Michael Woods, chair of the New
England Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, told ecoRI News it was
vital to change the boundary to something that sticks, and not something that
shifts over time.
Commenting on the legislation, as an
angler himself, Woods said, “If this state defends that right, I would breathe
a little easier knowing there is a legal and historical precedent.”
Both Vespe and Woods testified in
support of Cortvriend’s bill earlier this year during its committee hearing.
In the Senate, Sen. Michael McCaffrey,
D-Warwick, who also served on the shoreline study commission, has introduced a
more aggressive bill (S0417) that would
allow beachgoers to walk on the shore, without trespassing, up to the
vegetation line. The bill is expected to receive a committee hearing in the
Senate Judiciary later this month.
For an angler like Vespe, the
Newport Cliff Walk is the perfect model for shoreline access, as it fits all
three of his criteria for recreational fishing, even if it doesn’t technically
get its visitors onto the beach.
“The six feet [in Cortvriend’s bill]
would be the absolute minimum,” Vespe said. “Realistically, if someone’s going
fishing, whether they’re bringing a couple bottles of water, or a little
cooler, whether they’re bringing a tackle box, you have to have some spot to
put that stuff down, and it needs to be above where a wave is going to wash it
away every few minutes.
“It’s more than just generally
speaking, especially when you have to walk a bit. It’s more than just a fishing
pole and a guy … whether it’s a bait bucket, or a tackle box, you can’t expect
somebody to Sherpa everything on their back the entire time.”
Recreational fishing from the shore
may have dipped slightly in Rhode Island. Every year, anglers looking to fish
in saltwater for fun have to pay $7 and get a recreational saltwater fishing
license from DEM.
According to a report released
last year by DEM, the number of licenses issued by the agency reached a brief
peak during the pandemic. In 2020 the department issued 57,545 recreational
saltwater fishing licenses to residents, non-residents, and tourists. The
following year, in 2021, that number declined by 10%, for a total of 51,512
licenses issued, but it was still more than the department issued prior to the
pandemic.
But once anglers nab their fishing
license for the year, they still have to choose a fishing spot they can get to,
and that may not align with where they want to fish, even if they’re going to a
ROW designated by the state.
The lead agency for state-designated rights of way is the Coastal Resources Management Council, which works with municipalities to identify rights of way from both property deeds and the historical record to keep them open to the public in perpetuity.
While the
agency has long stressed it does not actually create new ROWs, merely
recognizing existing ones, endowing a ROW with the CRMC designation empowers
the agency and state to enforce its public status in court.
But municipalities are notorious for
finding ways to restrict shoreline access. A 2018 survey performed
by Save The Bay examined 226 ROWs as designated by the state. Of those, 48%, or
109 ROWs, had no parking, making them inaccessible by default to most people,
and 131 lacked signage specifying they were a state-designated ROW.
Thirty-seven percent of ROWs were
found to have obstructions, but only 4% were deemed to have been on purpose.
Most of the ROWs with obstructions were found to be simply overgrown and
unmaintained, according to the report.
Shoring up CRMC with more state
funding and more employees has been a longtime goal of state environmental
groups. Despite a jurisdiction that includes more than 400 miles of state
coastline, plus 3 miles out to sea, CRMC only has around 32 employees, a number
that has remained static for years. Its budget, compared to its land-based
counterpart DEM, is minuscule: about $2.5 million from the state and another
$2.5 given annually by the federal government.
For shoreline advocates like Woods,
empowering the agency to designate and defend ROWs is part and parcel of the
mission. “We can’t even come up with a tenth of a percent for that agency,” he
said.
Vespe worries about what will happen
with tourism and recreational fishing overall in Rhode Island if the shoreline
access boundaries aren’t clarified. Even for people who now fish from a boat,
almost all anglers start out by fishing from the shoreline.
“It’s critical to the fabric of the
state which has got a long history of recreational fishing along the
shoreline,” Vespe said. “We’d really like to see it resolved because I think it
would benefit everyone in the state.”