I really believe in the NANFA mission statement. It shows a natural progression that people go through. Many people come to NANFA for only the first thing “appreciation… of the continent’s native fishes.” Appreciation can mean angling, it can mean aquarium husbandry, it can even mean, “hey, look at that pretty little fish my three year old just caught.” That’s how I got into natives. I had aquariums and my daughter wanted one of her own. And ‘Fishes of Alabama and the Mobile Basin’ had just come out. And living in Alabama I bought it out of curiosity. Soon I was in a local stream with a couple of little kids seining up “bait”. After the initial exposure and appreciation, I moved on to the “study… of the continent’s native fishes.” This didn’t mean a formal education. But it does mean an intellectual curiosity that’s been acted upon, invested in, and never fully sated. And I think there are more people out there, willing to act on that curiosity if we show them how to see first-hand the “continent’s native fishes” in their native habitat. And that’s when people begin to value the fish, and the habitat enough to be interested in the “conservation of the continent’s native fishes.”