The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service wants to require many salt-water fishermen to register starting next year and to pay an annual fee (probably $25) for fishing starting in 2011. This means people fishing off docks and boats and casting from the beaches and so on.

This will discomfit many people in the Northeast, where, unlike in all other coastal states except Hawaii, folks don’t have to pay state recreational salt-water-fishing fees. All states, however, have licensing programs for fresh-water fishing, programs that (like those covering terrestrial hunting) may also limit the fishing to certain seasons.

Waters within three miles of the coast aren’t usually covered by federal fishing rules, but this proposal would extend the regulations to such waters for fishing of species that spawn in fresh water but mostly live in the sea, such as striped bass, shad and salmon. Striped bass, of course, are a very popular game fish in New England. The sight of people casting from beaches for them is an iconic one.

This could be a very good program, albeit probably unpopular to start. Most importantly, it would assist the government in obtaining better data on fishing stocks and the relative role of recreational and commercial fishing in the depletion of those stocks.

There are an estimated 15 million recreational salt-water fishermen in America, with 2.5 million in New England. While they take only a small fraction of the fish caught by commercial fishermen, they may well catch more than we think, given the difficulty of collecting data in some places. Commercial fishermen, who are closely (if still incompletely) monitored, have long complained that recreational fishermen take too many fish. The registration system would identify fishers who can be interviewed for fishing-stock research.

The data obtained could be used to restrict fishing in some areas and open it up in others.

As for the fees, fishermen would swallow them better if the money went directly into fish-stock-protection programs. But the money would go to pay for the system that would let federal officials identify people to interview about their fishing.

Of course, Northeast states could impose a salt-water-fishing license requirement and devote the money to fisheries management — the way it’s done in many states.

Might all this cut into tourism and other New England fishing-related fields? Maybe a little for a while, but it’s probably well worth it if better data are collected and thus fishing stocks protected for the long term.

NOAA will seek comments on the proposal until Aug. 11. We suspect some will be as hot as the weather.