By Dronelife Features Editor Jim Magill

A group of Texas surf fishermen are lobbying for the revision of a federal law which prohibits the use of drones to drop bait to attract fish in the deep waters off the nation’s beaches too far from the shore to cast a line. 

As of Monday, December 15, a MoveOn.org petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department seeking the change has gathered 1,906 or 2,000 required signatures. 

“Our only goal is to simply get our bait out to where we cannot cast. It’s a TOOL, not a cheat code, just as watercraft is a TOOL,” the petition states.

The controversy arose just recently, although onshore fisherman have for years used drones to catch the big fish that swim some distance from the beach. Several drone producers, such as China-based SwellPro and U.S. manufacturer XPeece, supply waterproof UAVs specially designed for the sport.

However the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) recently began interpreting Title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) § 19.11, also known as the Federal Airborne Hunting Act (AHA), as prohibiting the practice. In a December 8 statement the TPWD said the federal law, which was enacted in 1956, “prohibits the use of aircraft, which includes UAS or drones, to take or attempt to take wildlife, or aid in the act of fishing.”

The TPWD went on to say that the AHA prohibits the state from “issuing a permit authorizing the use of UAS or drones by recreational, surf or bank fishermen for deploying bait.”

James Elliott, the Henderson, Texas resident who launched the petition, said the outdated federal law should be updated to keep up with modern drone technology.

“I’ve always been in love with fishing, and for the past six years I’ve been shark fishing by kayaking my bait out,” the 33-year-old welder said.

“I actually just got my drone, my XPeece 1, probably about a month ago and only got to use it twice before this came about,” he said. “I’ll do both kayak and drone. But obviously the drone is much more efficient and safer, especially on more windy days with higher surf.”

Elliott said he first learned of the controversy over the new interpretation of the old federal law through postings on Facebook. 

“There was a bunch of rumors, lots of misinformation spreading, and so I dug into it myself and found that a lot of people were talking about the Federal Airborne Hunting Act,” he said. “That was written in 1956, which is a quite a while ago. Drones weren’t even a thing back then.”

He enlisted a friend, fellow surf-fishing enthusiast Wes Shippey, and the two men decided that something needed to be done to protect their beloved sport. Elliott and Shippey launched their petition and began contacting state and federal officials to get the rules changed.

Shippey said drone use shouldn’t be prohibited under the law, because the UAVs are not directly employed in catching the fish.

“The only thing we use the drone for is actually deploying the bait. So, in other words, actually clipping onto the bait, flying the drone out — however far we’re targeting — and dropping the bait and then returning the drone home,” he said.

Shippey said surf fishermen in Texas only recently began to learn that the way they were pursuing their sport was running afoul of federal law.

“It stemmed from a case down in the Corpus (Christi) area where a couple of state game wardens actually wrote a couple of citations and told the fisherman down there that it was illegal,” he said. 

In an email statement, the TFWD seemed to want to distance the state agency from the controversy, shifting the blame to the feds.

“There has not been a new regulation enacted or any changes made at the state level. Our intent with publicizing this information and updating the Texas Outdoor Annual was to inform the public of the federal statute,” the statement reads. 

“If someone chooses to use Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), also known as drones, to deploy bait while bank or surf fishing, it is a federal, not state level violation, and no state charges would be incurred. However, we do not condone or authorize violating federal law.”

Shippey said prohibiting the use of drones for bait dropping could exclude elderly and disabled fishermen from being able to enjoy their favorite sport. Many older sports fishmen are unable to paddle a kayak in open waters the 400 or 500 meters distance necessary to drop their bait, he said.

“We would just like for the federal law to be looked at and maybe rewritten or updated,” he said. “We don’t want to break a federal law, right? Nobody wants to break a federal law, nobody’s out trying to break any laws whatsoever.” 

Elliott agreed that the petitioners were not asking for a major change, only a tweak, to the federal law to allow the fishermen to enjoy their sport the way they want to. “We’ve been trying to fight to get something changed. I would even be happy with a $50 per year permit in order to do it.”

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

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