Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) 2025 Conference

Something happens to hunters when they pick up a rod and head offshore. Stepping aboard alone, with friends, on charter vessels, or party/headboats they feel the same anticipation and connection with the natural world, but all too often lose their sense of its finite limits. The sheer expansiveness of the ocean seems to alter their perspective.

But not for everyone. Charter captains and seasoned guides, who depend on healthy fisheries for their livelihoods, have long recognized the disconnect between perception and reality. “I’ve had guys who would spend an hour tracking a wounded duck onshore, but at sea, they toss back fish after fish until they land a trophy,” noted one Gulf captain. “They don’t see the fish dying below, but I do.” These professionals, much like hunting guides on land, have become crucial voices in shifting attitudes—helping clients recognize that conservation shouldn’t and can't stop at the shoreline.

Yet from Florida and Texas to New Jersey and Maine many others have begun to take a new approach. They seek to exercise restraint, engage one another in accountable stewardship, embrace pragmatic digital technology, share data with officials, balance rights with responsibilities, and extend many of the conservation approaches they already practice on fields and in streams to rebuild the mysterious and complex wild offshore.

Call it a genuine "Sea Change." Four hundred years ago, William Shakespeare penned The Tempest, a drama of people transformed by the ocean’s magic. To describe this altered state, he coined the phrase “sea change.” Today, that term has become overused and vague. But this talk embraces the Bard’s original meaning: the profound conversion of confused, divided, and broken coastal communities who discover how to thrive in an alliance that turns chaos into grace.

Audience? Anyone who has ever impaled bait on a barbed hook, cast it into the unknown, and wondered with bated breath what mysteries might be taking place in the dark world beneath the surface. But especially outdoor writers, who try and manage to translate that complex mindset into images, stories, and print.