Understanding AFFTA’s For Tomorrow’s Fish Campaign

It couldn’t be clearer: the fly fishing industry - no different than any other segment of fishing culture - requires fisheries, and fisheries require fish.

AFFTA is taking unprecedented action to secure a successful and resilient future for our members. 

This is why AFFTA took action; creating the For Tomorrow’s Fish campaign: to raise awareness within, while uniting and activating the fly fishing industry to help define and establish climate-ready fisheries - through policy and management advocacy - in order to secure a more dependable and resilient business future for our members.

Origin

For Tomorrow’s Fish was born of Tomorrow’s Fish, a wide-net fisheries partnership originally organized by the AFFTA Fisheries Fund, to raise knowledge and awareness of the need for fisheries conservation related to climate change, and inspire grassroots anglers to engage in actions that build climate-ready fisheries.

AFFTA’s time as a partner and the Tomorrow’s Fish coalition’s body of work taught us a few important lessons. 

First, a vast number of conservation-minded anglers, businesses, and organizations care deeply about the fate of fish but have yet to be enrolled in the movement to safeguard America’s fisheries. Secondly, anglers, fishing-related businesses, and local, often species-specific or place-based organizations, are concerned about the impacts of climate change on their fisheries. 

For Tomorrow’s Fish was officially launched in March 2024 with the release of the For Tomorrow’s Fish: Anglers Are The Key To Climate Resilient Fisheries report. AFFTA invested in the report’s author as the full time campaign coordinator to organize a campaign uniquely curated through the lens of a trade association. This campaign aims to secure the vital policy and management changes needed to create resilience in our fisheries, in a way that is inclusive of and responsive to the expressed desires of AFFTA members. 

Why Climate Resilient Fisheries?

Our changing climate poses unparalleled threats to the ocean’s ability to regulate itself and, by extension, support healthy and abundant fisheries. Focusing on the unparalleled threats of warming ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, and increased extreme weather events, For Tomorrow’s Fish is laser-focused on the direct impacts our changing climate has on our traditional fishing experience and the resiliency of the businesses that depend on them. 

For Tomorrow’s Fish clearly outlines the role of the fly fishing industry, enabling our trade association-led coalition to be leading advocates for making our fisheries more resilient to climate change by informing and uniting the fly fishing industry to call for a data-driven, science-based, precautionary fishery management and policy that accounts for ecosystem structure and function, abundant fish stocks and support thriving communities. 

The Campaign

Ignoring the necessary resources vital to how AFFTA members do business would simply be irresponsible, and dangerous. By raising awareness on the key economic and brand value issues AFFTA uniquely understands as the priorities of our members, and then activating the industry through advocacy, the For Tomorrow’s Fish campaign is taking our future into our own hands. 

The goal of the For Tomorrow’s Fish campaign is to create a network of informed, empowered and united AFFTA members pushing together for a future that fly fishing businesses can thrive within, and customers can actively and proudly support in perpetuity. 

All because elected officials and policy makers are informed of and acting on behalf of our industry’s priorities. 

To do that, the For Tomorrow’s Fish campaign is built to be complimentary, not duplicative. Our campaign is actively connecting forward-thinking businesses simultaneously looking to build brand value marketing opportunities and more resilient and dependable economic forecasts, with subject matter experts and leading policy and management decision makers. 

The For Tomorrow’s Fish campaign is also intentionally designed to be additive, not extractive, meaning our campaign is here to do more than leverage your brand. For Tomorrow’s Fish will build specialized and customized opportunities for advocacy, and supportive outreach, to the desires and bandwidth of each supportive member’s brand character, in order to not only encourage, but to SUPPORT organic adoption. AFFTA recognizes that each business has different conservation mission values and capabilities – all universally subject to the negative impacts of climate change – and we are here to listen and support businesses to be educated, enabled and active on issues and opportunities for advocacy most important to the fisheries that drive your business’s success, WHILE focusing on the specific economic benefits most important to you.  

For Tomorrow’s Fish is actively reaching out to AFFTA members, in order to make industry partners aware of the unique economic - in addition to the ecological - benefits of advocating for climate resilient fisheries. 

To receive more information about For Tomorrow’s Fish and learn more about becoming a partner, email Campaign Coordinator Daniel Ritz st Daniel.Ritz@affta.org.