29 Tight Lines Bulletin - Spring 2016 Watching the West Palm Beach Fishing Club’s 80th anniversary video on the club website brought back a lot of memories and in- spired a few thoughts that I wanted to share with the new generation of club members. The WPBFC was one of the pioneers of the marine Conservation movement during the 20th century.  That the club was a pioneer in conservation is discussed throughout the video but few people ap- preciate the Conservation Movement itself and how important it has been. Many of the founding members of the WPBFC had been a part of the movement from earlier in the century. The Conserva- tion Movement is the most successful environmental movement in history.  The modern environmental movement, which didn’t begin until the 1960s pales in comparison to the accomplishments of the Conservation Movement. The Office of Fisheries Management and Assistance Services, the bureau I ran when I first came to Tallahassee, used many of the WPBFC’s ideas and tried to bring them to the entire state.  The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Kid Fishing Clinics were a child of the club’s annual Kid's Fishing Day program.   The first legislation I ever wrote was the bill to make sailfish the state marine fish.  The Marine Resources Division Office was taking much longer than the Legislature’s substantive committees wanted so they called the field lab, then housed inside the WPBFC club- house.  Committee staff sent me the bill format, bill analysis outline Appreciating the WPBFC’s Conservation Legacy by Ed Irby, Former Florida Assistant Director of Marine Resources and the other documents necessary to get a bill filed.  We turned it around that day to the amazement of the committee staff.  When I came to Tallahassee a decade and half later Senate Natural Resources Commit- tee staff that were still there actually remembered. While not as important as sailfish, without the WPBFC and the active participation from its members, the snook research program DNR/ WPB-Tequesta Lab, started in the 1980s, would never have gotten off the ground and certainly wouldn’t have been the success it was.  That cooperation also led to advancing conservation.  Prior to the emer- gency rules most snook of legal size, within the bag limit, came in the boat and went home to the freezer.  Even before our tagging research was complete, and before tighter bag and size limits were implemented, many people were releasing most of their snook. From sailfish to snook, the WPBFC’s role in advancing the conservation ethic cannot be underestimated. Ed Irby, tagging snook above, was stationed at the WPB field Laboratory inside the WPBFC (working alongside John Jolley) and later the Tequesta Lab for a period of 16 years.