Haven't seen or heard anything yet about invasive species permit here in south sound (Pierce county). Probably coming. I frequently travel to N. Idaho to fish Lake Pend Orielle and other bodies of water. Theres a check station on I90 outside of Post Falls that charges $34? for outta state watercraft. Okay, is what it is. Theres also a check station on I90 in Wa. just over the Idaho line. On one of my last return trips home I stopped into this Wa. watercraft check station. The gal that walked around my boat inspecting had a dog with her. I swore up and down I had no drugs or contraband onboard. She got a good chuckle over that. No, the dogs, with their sense of smell many hundreds of times more sensitive than ours, are trained to sniff out invasive tagalongs. No shat!. Actually thought that was pretty cool.

This should not be this way! Sure there are some lame thinkers who would cross pollute and not give it a second thought. But there are that sort in any group. I seriously think it would be a dreamer that would feel this “inspection” would catch all of them. Some might propagate the spread through ignorance also. But the common sportsman would not intentionally do this. Please post this online course, heck I would like to watch it. But it is hard to find it. And for a person who is oblivious to it, it just won’t be obvious. So education is the key. Kind of like a “buy bonds” pitch in WW2. I would think it a great idea for the rest of us to have access to this AIS Awareness Course, whether we are in Whatcom county or King. And it should be posted in conspicuous places. That would be youtube for one thing. And it would come up whenever a person looked at a video about boats of fishing. It would not take much more than a sliver of the cost of current licensing to produce such. Not to mention property taxes of homes built on lakefront. Show the course as I can't easily find it, but there should be a video showing preventative steps with a small note on your fishing license or boat license. Not this bureaucratic fee. One could go the route and have a licensee check a box "I have watched this video". That would be the video for the regular guy to see and learn from. Frankly I put AIS Awareness Course in my search engine and Google comes up with a lot of HIV stuff.
If your responsible, then your responsible. But when the local jurisdiction steps in and applies a fee (and I still say a high one at that) it's just government over reach. You watch, there are many counties who will eventually apply this fee which will make the cost of a good sport become non attainable by many folks.
PS. If anyone knows where the online course is on the net they should announce it on this post. And we as a community of fishermen should use this and any post like it to spread the word and ring the alarm.

Hell, I’m an old broken down disabled Vietnam Veg, I am a frequent flyer at ghe VA hospital in Palo Alto, 4 times cancer survivor, an Amputee, will be 80 in June 2024, I still vote, fish, fall down, I have 3 boats all in good shape and running, not ready to give up yet, enjoying life, I like traveling to Baja Mexico, I scuba dive, use to go spear fishing, but now, I enjoy the underwater sights. Love Mexico and everything to do with it. I’m not ready to go yet. Still a lot of fish to catch, old school, eat what I catch, catch and release a lot. Now how could life be any better than this.