MARINE FISHERIES 2026: THE CLOUDS CONTINUE TO GATHER--PART II

 

Last Thursday, I posted the first part of an overview of the 2026 marine fisheries management landscape, and the issues likely to arise over the next year.  That post focused on the highest federal government levels, the administration and Congress, which drive federal fisheries policy, but rely on the regional fishery management councils to turn that policy into practice.

However, with a few exceptions, federal fishery managers lack the authority to manage fish in state waters, so the actions of state managers also can have a significant impact on the health and sustainability of fish stocks.  Along the East Coast, states have joined together to manage fish stocks cooperatively through the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages some species that are not governed by federal fisheries management plans while acting cooperatively with the National Marine Fisheries Service to manage others.

Today’s post will address issues that they will probably confront in 2026.

At the regional fishery management councils

One of the biggest issues that all of the regional fishery management councils will face in 2026 is a lack of timely scientific advice, resulting from the cuts in federal funding for NMFS regional fishery science centers and the resultant layoffs and voluntary departures of many fisheries scientists.  As noted in a press release issued by the New England Fisheries Management Council,

“The Council held an update on recent reductions to federal science and management resources including a total loss of 545 National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) positions, including 50 staff positions within the Northeast Region alone.  These reductions have not only delayed management actions, but directly affected stock assessments, surveys, and data streams.

“In 2025, several planned stock assessments were replaced with ‘data updates,’ which are ‘summaries of new data that have become available since that last management track assessment.  Specifically, they update (1) U.S. catch (landings and discards) by commercial and recreational sector, as appropriate, and (2) aggregated [Northeast Fisheries Science Center] survey indices.’  Data updates are expected for many stocks in 2026 as well…  [emphasis in original]”

Such cuts can only render fisheries management more uncertain and less responsive to changes affecting fish stocks, creating greater risks to long-term sustainability and making it more likely that overfishing may occur, that overfished stocks may not recover, and that already stressed stocks will decline further and possibly become overfished, thus causing long-term harm not only to the stocks themselves, but to the recreational and commercial fisheries that they support.

Given the ongoing debate over federal spending, the January 30 deadline to put an appropriations bill in place, and both parties’ apparent intent to avoid a government shutdown, it appears unlikely that significantly more money will be available for fisheries science in the upcoming year, so the current situation is likely to fester for a while.

With that in mind, these are the issues likely to arise at some of the regional fishery management councils over the course of the year.

Atlantic herring/river herring

After a federal district court vacated Amendment 8 to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan in 2022, deciding that its findings of localized depletion and the need to create nearshore areas that excluded midwater trawlers were not supported by substantial evidence, the New England Fishery Management Council decided to address the issue again in the pending Amendment 10 to the herring management plan.

Amendment 10 was originally intended to

“minimize user conflicts, achieve [optimum yield], and support rebuilding of the herring resource,”

as well as create catch caps and time and area closures intended to protect river herring and shad.

Although Amendment 10 is still considered a “multi-year priority,” it was subordinated to an omnibus amendment intended to address management flexibility measures in 2025.  Now, in view of it being specifically mentioned by stakeholders as a measure contrary to the President’s April 17, 2025 Executive Order, there is a significant possibility that Amendment 10 could be abandoned in 2026, and that the proposed additional protections for shad and river herring will not be put in place.

Private anglers to be subordinated in the Mid-Atlantic

Since 2019, the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, working in conjunction with the ASMFC, has been engaged in what it calls its “Recreational Reform Initiative,” which has essentially been an effort to “increase management flexibility,” which might be interpreted by some (and I’m among them) as an effort to sidestep some of the management provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act in order to allow recreational fishermen to kill more bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass than a strict application of the law would otherwise allow.

Needless to say, the recreational fishing industry has been very supportive of the Initiative, as it views larger annual catch targets as necessary for increased sales and higher profits.  But whether or not the Initiative was in the long-term interest of anglers and the fish they pursue, one thing that could be said was that, up to now, it treated all anglers equitably.

In 2026, that may no longer be the case.

The Council and the ASMFC are now engaged in developing a “Recreational Sector Separation Amendment” that would apply to the bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass fisheries.  As the Council describes it,

“the amendment may consider options for managing for-hire recreational fisheries separately from other recreational fishing modes (referred to as sector separation), as well as options related to for-hire permit and reporting requirements.”

Right now, the Council’s fishery management plans recognize only the commercial and recreational sectors, with anglers fishing from for-hire vessels subject to the recreational rules.  However, along with definitions for “commercial fishing” and “recreational fishing,” Magnuson-Stevens also includes a definition for “charter fishing,” which reads

“The term ‘charter fishing’ means fishing from a vessel carrying a passenger for hire…who is engaged in recreational fishing.”

So, if what the Council and ASMFC were planning to do was to separate the charter fishing sector from the rest of the recreational sector, allocate it its own annual catch limit based on its recent share of recreational landings, and give it regulations different from those governing the recreational sector, which would keep the sector’s landings at or below its ACL, it probably would not present a problem.

But that’s not what’s going on.

The for-hire fleet doesn’t want to be locked into its current landings levels; instead, it is seeking to stay within the recreational annual landings target, but to enjoy more favorable regulations that will allow its share of the landings to expand at the expense of the private-boat and shore based fishermen.  That intent was made clear in various comments made at the November 3, 2025 meeting of the Bluefish and the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass advisory panels.  The report of that meeting noted that Connecticut charter boat captain Michael Pirri

“recalled when he first entered the for-hire fishery, it was widely understood that for-hire vessels harvested more than 10% of the total scup, black sea bass, and summer flounder.  Currently, those estimates have dropped to around 3-4%, depending on the fishery.  He noted that a key goal of the amendment should be to ‘privilege’ the for-hire fleet enough to result in a share of harvest closer to that 10%.  [emphasis added].”

Another way of expressing that is that he wanted to disadvantage the majority of recreational fishermen enough that they surrendered six or seven percent of overall landings to the much smaller group of anglers who fish from the for-hire boats.

So how small is the for-hire fleet’s contribution to the relevant fisheries?  The Council has historically compared the for-hire and private sectors by comparing landings, noting that

“scup and black sea bass have a higher percentage of harvest from the for-hire modes (11% of pounds harvested) compared to summer flounder (5% of pounds harvested).”

But one would expect anglers benefitting from the knowledge and skill of a professional captain and crew to land a disproportionately high share of the catch compared to recreational fishermen, who must depend on their generally more limited skills.  A more accurate gauge of public participation, and indirectly of each sector’s contribution to the social and economic benefits gleaned from each fishery, can be found in the number of trips taken.

There, data from the 2024 season (complete 2025 data is not yet available) shows that in the mid-Atlantic region, the for-hire fleet accounted for 15,485 (0.62%) out of an estimated 2,492,355 trips primarily targeting bluefish, 135,796 (1.60%) of the estimated 8,465,850 trips targeting summer flounder, 52,976 (3.94%) of the estimated 1,346,101 trips targeting scup, and 93,376 (11.83%) of the estimated 789,468 trips targeting black sea bass.

Given that data, there seems to be little reason to disadvantage the vast majority of recreational fishermen, and relegate them to the status of second-class anglers, in order to provide special advantages to what can only be described as a privileged few.

Yet that may be what we see in 2026.

 A draft of the sector separation amendment is almost certain to be completed in the first half of 2026, and go to public hearings soon after that.  Given that recreational fishermen are virtually unrepresented on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, with just about all of the supposedly “recreational” seats being held by members of the for-hire fleet or others closely tied to the recreational fishing industry, despite that fleet’s relatively tiny contribution to the overall fishery, the disadvantaging of the private-boat and shore-based angler is very likely to occur.

South Atlantic red snapper

The problem besetting the South Atlantic red snapper fishery is very easy to describe but not at all easy to remedy:  Too many red snapper are being caught by recreational fishermen during the closed season, and are subsequently discarded dead.  As a result, recreational and commercial red snapper regulations are extremely restrictive.

On paper, that’s easy to fix.  All NMFS has to do is close an area of the ocean off Georgia and northern Florida for three months or so, to drive down the number of snapper caught as bycatch in other recreational fisheries, which would actually allow the number of red snapper taken home by recreational fishermen to nearly triple.

In the real world, a fix is nearly impossible, as the recreational fishing industry and militant recreational fishing organizations refuse to take responsibility for their own excesses.  Thus, we see the recreational sector continually trying to impeach the federal fisheries management system and transfer red snapper management to the states, where managers are much more vulnerable to political pressure, and have far more authority to ignore overfishing.

Efforts to replace the Marine Recreational Information Program, used to collect recreational data, with unproven state programs are well underway, as are efforts to transfer management authority from NMFS to state fisheries managers.  At the federal level, NMFS seems willing to give in to at least some of the recreational demands; last June, it reneged on an agreement to settle a lawsuit challenging its tolerance for recreational overfishing, backing off a proposed regulation to put the needed area closure in place.

In 2026, with a sympathetic federal administration, a regional management council that is also sympathetic to the recreational sector, and state managers willing to accept responsibility for managing red snapper, along with local congressmen that have already designated a willingness to support recreational demands, we can expect efforts to undermine federal red snapper management not only continue, but accelerate.

A transfer of some or all of the management authority to the states could very well take place.

And the South Atlantic red snapper stock could easily decline again.

Gulf of Mexico Amberjack

Greater amberjack in the Gulf of Mexico have suffered from severe overfishing.  In 2024, recreational fishermen caught more than twice their allocated quota, which meant that, pursuant to the accountability measures contained in the management plan, the 2025 recreational amberjack season should not have opened at all.

However, NMFS failed to prevent the season from opening, and allowed it to run for an entire month before shutting it down on September 27.  Most Gulf states followed NMFS lead, and also shut their seasons down in late September.  The one exception was Louisiana, which allowed fishermen to continue to land amberjack supposedly caught in state waters through October 31, the originally-scheduled close of the federal season.

As part of the announcement that Louisiana would not close its season in concert with the federal closure, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said,

“Governor Jeff Landry and Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) Secretary Tyler Bosworth sent a letter to NOAA Fisheries earlier this month, requesting that management of Greater Amberjack be transferred to the state level.”

Not surprisingly, on its Facebook page, the Louisiana chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association, an “angler’s rights” organization that is very closely affiliated with the fishing tackle and boating industries, stated that it

“applauds the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and Governor Jeff Landry for their actions and stance on Greater Amberjack.”

Given that the Coastal Conservation Association is one of the organizations most aggressively supporting state management of South Atlantic red snapper, and given that it had taken a similar position with red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, it is highly likely that, in the event that the 2026 Gulf amberjack season is either curtailed or completely cancelled, we will see another effort to undercut federal fisheries managers and the federal management system, by a group of people who know that state management provides the easiest route to evading science-based management measures, and avoiding the consequences of their own overfishing.

And in the current political environment, they could well succeed.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission

Although striped bass will never be a low-profile species at the ASMFC, it will probably not be the most controversial topic at the management table in 2026, as members of the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board look toward the benchmark stock assessment scheduled for release in the first half of 2027.

Atlantic menhaden

Instead, Atlantic menhaden will probably take the spotlight.  Last October, faced with data that suggested that total allowable catch would have to be cut by well over 50% in order to keep landings at or below the fishing mortality target, the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board only set the total allowable catch for a single year, 2026, rather than for the full three-year period, as was originally planned.  While the 2026 TAC is 20% lower than the total allowable catch in 2025, it did not reduce landings, as menhaden landings have been about 80% of the TAC in recent years.

So, in 2026, the menhaden management board will have to decide whether to further reduce the total allowable catch and, if their answer is yes, whether to reduce it all the way down to the point that would probably keep fishing mortality below the target level. 

There will undoubtedly be substantial public comment, driven by the conservation and angling communities, to make the full cut; if this year’s debate is any guide, the same interests will call for a complete prohibition on the so-called “reduction fishery,” the fleet of large purse seine vessels that dominate the commercial menhaden fishery, catching fish that will be “reduced” into fish meal, oil, and other industrial products.

That fleet is based in Virginia, where it provides employment for hundreds of individuals in an area where good-paying jobs can be hard to find.  It is certain that the reduction industry will strenuously resist a significant cut in the menhaden TAC, and it would obviously do all it can to oppose a complete closure of the reduction fishery.  Whether the other members of the Management Board will insist that landings reductions are taken, or whether the majority will accede to Virginia’s demands, cannot yet be predicted.

But the overall menhaden quota is not the only issue that will be on the table in 2026.  The Atlantic Menhaden Management Board has also agreed to initiate a new addendum to the management plan, which might reduce the cap on reduction fishery landings within the Chesapeake Bay by as much as 50%.

The current Bay cap of 51,000 metric tons was adopted in order to avoid the possibility of localized menhaden depletion in the Chesapeake Bay.  That has been a hot issue over the past couple of years, with some arguing that a shortage of menhaden in the Bay, allegedly due to reduction fleet landings, has led to a host of ills, ranging from a decline in striped bass abundance to nesting failure impacting the Bay’s osprey population.

The problem is that, while a lot of people talk about localized depletion, no one has ever been able to demonstrate that it exists.  So, while it is likely that the debate over a reduced Bay cap will be long on emotion, it is not clear whether a reduced cap will be supported by any hard data.  And it is unclear whether, should hard data be lacking, emotion will be enough to put a Bay cap in place when the Management Board meets to decide the issue in October 2026.

The federal threat

Regardless of the species that it is attempting to manage, the ASMFC has no inherent authority to require its member jurisdictions to comply with its fisheries management plans.  Instead, it must rely on a provision of the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act that reads,

“Within 30 days after receiving a notification from the Commission [that a state has failed to comply with an ASMFC management plan] and after review of the Commission’s determination of noncompliance, the Secretary [of Commerce] shall make a finding on (1) whether the State in question has failed to carry out its responsibilities [to comply with a management plan], and (2) if so, whether the measures that the State has failed to implement and enforce are necessary for the conservation of the fishery in question…

“Upon making a finding…that a State has failed to carry out its responsibilities [to comply with a management plan] and that the measures it failed to implement and enforce are necessary for conservation, the Secretary shall declare a moratorium on fishing in the fishery in question within the waters of the noncomplying State.  [formatting omitted]”

And that may turn out to be a problem when it comes to enforcing its fisheries management decisions this year, as the current administration is more concerned with deregulating fisheries than in conserving fish stocks.

Consider the two menhaden issues discussed above.

Say that the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, at its October meeting, decides to phase in a reduction in menhaden landings over the next few years, dropping landings from somewhere around 186,840 metric tons in 2026 to 108,450 metric tons in 2029.  And say that Virginia, which is allocated about three-quarters of all commercial menhaden landings, decides that such cuts would do too much harm to its menhaden fishermen, refuses to put the new, lower landings levels in place, and goes out of compliance, arguing to the Secretary of Commerce that the 186,840 metric ton annual catch limit does not lead to overfishing, and thus further reduction are not “necessary for the conservation of the fishery.”

And say that, in considering Virginia’s noncompliance, the Secretary looks to the Executive Order that President Trump signed on April 17, 2025, notes its intent to “unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulations” and to “promote…sale and export of United States fishery and aquaculture products,” recognizes that most of the menhaden  caught by Virginia fishermen are sold to a Canadian buyer, and decides that such considerations override the Management Board’s preference to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, because even a 186,840 metric ton harvest will not lead to overfishing, so the reduction is not necessary for the conservation of the Atlantic menhaden fishery.

Under such hypothetical conditions, the Secretary of Commerce could easily excuse Virginia’s noncompliance.

Or, instead of a Virginia refusing to comply with a reduced annual catch limit, consider what would happen if it refused to comply with a reduction in the cap for reduction fishery harvest within the Chesapeake Bay, particularly if no one can provide statistically valid data supporting the claim that the reduction fishery is causing localized depletion in the Chesapeake Bay.

Under such conditions, it would almost be expected that the Secretary would find that a reduced Bay cap is not necessary to conserve the menhaden resource.

And menhaden are only one example.  Given the last April’s Executive Order, and given the current administration’s propensity to monetize natural resources for the highest possible short-term gain, it is very possible that the Secretary will tend to support states that go out of compliance with ASMFC fishery management plans.

That possibility is likely to have a chilling effect on ASMFC management actions, and make the ASMFC less willing to adopt even modestly precautionary management measures in 2026, regardless of the species in question.

An increasingly aggressive recreational fishing industry

One of the things that we have seen over the past decade is a recreational fishing industry that is becoming more and more aggressive in its opposition to conservation-oriented fishery management measures, and in its promotion of new approaches to fisheries management that will lead to increased recreational landings and, at least in theory, to higher industry profits.

The industry and industry-affiliated organizations such as the Coastal Conservation Association and the Theordore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership first targeted the red snapper fisheries in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, seeking to weaken  the federal fisheries management system in favor of state managers who are more susceptible to political pressure and more likely to tolerate overfishing if that’s what local stakeholders want.

However, in recent years the industry and its fellow travelers have become more and more aggressive.  If Social Security has been deemed the “third rail” of the political process—that is, the program that no one can contest if they want their political career to survive—then striped bass could reasonably be called the third rail of fisheries politics on the upper East Coast; no organization who wanted to have a viable presence among salt water anglers could take a stand against striped bass conservation.

But that changed in 2025, when industry and industry-affiliated organizations such as the American Sportfishing Association, the Center for Sportfishing Policy, Marine Retailers Association of the Americas, National Marine Manufacturers Association and others opposed a 12% reduction in striped bass fishing mortality needed to better ensure that the stock would be fully rebuilt by 2029.

We can expect the sportfishing industry to take advantage of the current administration’s hostility toward conservation measures, and its support for corporate profits, and become ever more aggressive in weakening federal fisheries management while trying harder to warp state and regional fisheries management toward greater exploitation and greater short-term economic benefits for the fishing industry, regardless of the long-term impacts on fish stocks.

The bottom line

The current political environment is extremely hostile to fisheries conservation efforts and to precautionary management approaches that are most likely to benefit fisheries in the long term.

Conservation advocates are being forced to take a defensive stance, with emphasis on limiting their losses rather than making any meaningful gains.  This situation existed throughout 2025, and even under the best circumstances is likely to extend into the first few weeks of 2029.  Depending on who ends up in the White House and in Congress, it could last far longer.

The one ray of hope on the horizon is the 2026 mid-term elections.  If control of at least one house of Congress can pass to persons who aren’t actively trying to tear apart the federal fishery management system, and who might actually care about the long-term health of fish stocks, we might not see any progress on important conservation issues, but we are at least likely to enjoy a deadlock where, at the legislative level at least, no more harm is being done.

It's sad that such is the best we can hope for, but that is the current reality for everyone who cares about the long-term health of the nation’s fish stocks.

 

MARINE FISHERIES 2006: THE CLOUDS CONTINUE TO GATHER

 

As One Angler’s Voyage enters 2026, it is time to once again survey the fisheries management landscape, and make some predictions as to what problems and what solutions may arise in the upcoming year. 

Last year, as I set out on that task, I noted, with respect to 2025, that

“I don’t think that I have seen a year with so much potential for things to go wrong in the past quarter-century.”

And as I noted in last Thursday’s post, a lot did go wrong in 2025. 

Unfortunately, all of the forces that combined to make last year a bad one from a fisheries conservation perspective—a federal administration intent on weakening environmental laws and Hell-bent on monetizing the nation’s natural resources as quickly as possible, without regard for long-term sustainability; a Congress equally dedicated to undoing a half-century of progress on conservation issues in order to serve the short-term interests of the corporate donors that keep them in office; an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission that seems unable and/or unwilling to make hard but needed decisions; and an increasingly aggressive recreational fishing and boating industry that, along with allied “anglers’ rights” organizations, is rapidly expanding its efforts to block fisheries conservation efforts and weaken the federal fishery management system in the name of “angler access” (that is, more dead fish in anglers’ coolers, regardless of how that might impact the stock) and the supposed “economic benefits” that such dead fish generate for the angling industry—remain in place.

What also remains in place are the seeds that those forces planted in 2025, initiatives that might have had relatively little or even no impact last year, but which laid the groundwork for a potentially devastating assault on the current fisheries management system, beginning in 2026.

At the same time, we also saw some modest conservation initiatives launched in 2025, which may or may not bear fruit in the upcoming year.  Without exception, such initiatives occurred at the state/ASMFC level which, while historically a place where conservation efforts have gone to die, currently offers the best hope of properly managing at least some of our coastal fish stocks.

With that introduction out of the way, let’s take a look at what the new year might bring, beginning right at the top.

Executive Order 14276 and the National Marine Fisheries Service

On April 17, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Order 14276, “Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness.”

When an executive order laments that

“Federal overregulation has restricted fishermen from productively harvesting American seafood including through restrictive catch limits, selling our fishing grounds to foreign offshore wind companies, inaccurate and outdated fisheries data, and delayed adoption of modern technology,”

and establishes, as policy, the intent to

“unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulation,”

it’s clear that the administration has fisheries managers and the fishery management system in its crosshairs.

But Executive Order 14276 goes further than merely setting a policy of deregulation.  It instructs the Secretary of Commerce to

“consider suspending, revising, or rescinding regulations that overly burden America’s commercial fishing, [and]…identify the most heavily overregulated fisheries requiring action and take appropriate action to reduce the regulatory burden on them,”

and to

“request that each Regional Fishery Management Council…provide…updates to their recommendations…to reduce burdens on domestic fishing and to increase production.  Building upon the earlier goals, identified actions should stabilize markets, improve access, enhance economic profitability, and prevent closures.”

It is probably significant that nothing in the Executive Order requires the Secretary to ensure the continued health and long-term stability of the fisheries subject to the intended deregulation.

Executive Order 14276 didn’t have too much impact on fisheries management in 2025, although it undoubtedly colored at least some NMFS decisions.  Rather than immediately engaging in a deregulation process, the agency spent most of 2025 seeking input from the regional fishery management councils and the public on what fisheries should be addressed first and what regulations should be revised or rescinded.  The final comment period on such matters didn’t close until December 15.

However, with the comment period closed, we can expect the deregulation process to begin in earnest in 2026.  While we can’t know exactly what form such deregulation might take, we can probably take some guidance from stakeholder comments submitted to NMFS and to some of the regional fishery management councils.        

The comments addressing conservation, as opposed to purely economic and trade issues (e.g., providing emergency relief to fishermen or restricting competition from foreign seafood imports) generally fell into a few general categories. 

Many of the comments sent to both NMFS and to the Mid-Atlantic and New England fishery management councils sought commercial access to protected areas such as the New England Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument and the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off northwestern Hawaii.  In a similar vein, various commercial fishermen and commercial fishing organizations sought access to areas off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts that are currently closed to pelagic longlining, while scallop fishermen and organizations representing the ocean quohog and surf clam fisheries asked to be able to dredge in habitat areas of particular concern intended to protect Atlantic cod spawning and nursery areas, and also in what is currently designated the Georges Bank Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning Closed Area.

Another significant portion of the comments asked that NMFS provide relief from Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammals Act requirements, whether those requirements are intended to protect Atlantic right whales from entanglement in lobster trap lines or Pacific humpback whales from entanglement in fixed fishing gear, protect endangered runs of Pacific salmon from accidental harvest, or protect sea turtles and various marine mammals from being hooked and drowned in pelagic longline gear.

Other efforts at reducing bycatch, such as time and area closures to prevent the incidental catch of river herring, also had their opponents.  But it was notable that, by and large, the comments made by commercial fishermen and commercial fishing organizations did not generally seek to set aside science-based catch limits or similar regulations.

Perhaps for that reason—that commercial fishermen did not generally complain about the “restrictive catch limits” or similar management measures cited in the Executive Order—NMFS reopened the public comment period for an additional 15 days in December, presumably seeking more evidence of “regulations that overburden America’s commercial fishing” industry.

Yet, although the Executive Order repeatedly referenced commercial fishing, and didn’t mention recreational fishing at all, recreational fishing organizations also provided comments on what they considered “burdensome” regulations, and their comments were much more focused on catch limits and other specific management measures. 

For example, a few party/charter boat associations asked that the recreational Atlantic bluefin tuna quota be increased, while in the South Atlantic, a large recreational industry group, the Center for Sportfishing Policy, characterized NMFS’ proposal for a seasonal closure of the snapper/grouper fishery off Georgia and northern Florida

“a federal bureaucracy run amok,”

and

“a convoluted response to a paper crisis,”

even though the proposed Secretarial amendment underlying such closure was drafted as part of a settlement agreement in a lawsuit brought by commercial fishermen fed up with NMFS’ failure to rein in chronic recreational overfishing, and high levels of dead discards,  in the South Atlantic red snapper fishery.

The Jersey Coast Anglers Association provided a more varied list of regulatory complaints, seeking more relaxed regulation of the recreational black sea bass fishery in the mid-Atlantic and complaining that

“The overpopulation of Smooth Dogfish in areas such as Sandy Hook and Raritan Bay is disrupting ecological balance by outcompeting other species for forage.  Current management appears insufficient to address this issue.”

The Association also complained that summer flounder and bluefish populations remained low and did not seem to be responding to current management initiatives, although it was not clear how those comments related to the Executive Order’s theme of overregulated fisheries.

Thus, what we have seen so far have been commercial fishing interests primarily addressing regulations that might be best characterized as presenting structural issues—areas closed to fishing, restrictions arising out of the Marine Mammal Act and Endangered Species Act, requirements for paid observers, etc.—while recreational interests have been more focused on what appears to be the primary concern of the Executive Order, regulations that restrict the ability to harvest fish.

While it’s not clear how NMFS will ultimately implement the Executive Order, it isn’t hard to predict that the agency will not be striking a precautionary stance, but rather will set annual catch limits at the highest levels permitted by law and the most liberal interpretations of the available data and scientific advice. 

We will probably see the agency seek inventive ways to circumvent the requirements imposed by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, perhaps adopting new regulations that resemble the “Percent Change Approach” adopted by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which might comply with the strict letter of the law but flaunt the statute’s intent of constraining the commercial and recreational landings to an annual catch limit established by the biologists who staff each regional fishery management council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee.

Thus, while we can’t be certain of precisely how the Executive Order will be implemented, we can be pretty sure that any implementation will weaken the federal fisheries management process and threaten the long-term sustainability of the nation’s fish stocks.

A conservation-averse Congress

While the current administration is clearly opposed to fisheries conservation efforts and the regulations needed to maintain healthy fish stocks, the current Congress presents a greater long-term threat to the health of marine fish stocks, as it has the ability to make changes to federal law that might take years, if not decades, to undo.

Such legislation is likely to take one of three forms:  It will either override a regulation issued by NMFS that is unpopular with the recreational and/or commercial fishing industry (although it is doubtful that NMFS will issue such a rule, given Executive Order 14276 and the administration’s views of fisheries regulation), make significant changes to Magnuson-Stevens and/or the Marine Recreational Information Program that is used to collect and analyze recreational effort, catch, and landings data, or it will amend another federal statute that impacts the health of fish stocks (e.g., the Endangered Species Act).

There are currently at least three bills pending in the House of Representatives that exemplify such legislation.

One, the Red Snapper Act, H.R. 470, would prevent NMFS from closing any portion of the ocean off the South Atlantic coast to fishing for snapper or grouper (or other species included in the snapper-grouper fishery management plan, until a study known as the “Great South Atlantic Red Snapper Count” is completed and its results incorporated into a red snapper stock assessment. 

As a practical matter, H.R. 470 isn’t going anywhere, as NMFS’ decision not to institute such a bottom closure off Georgia and northern Florida has rendered it moot.  However, to the extent that other regulations, perhaps including those already in place, displease the fishing industry, other bills seeking to override such regulations are likely to be introduced.

Another bill, H.R. 5699, the “Fisheries Data Modernization and Accuracy Act,” remains a threat to the viability of the Marine Recreational Information Program and to federal fisheries science.  It would encourage states to develop their own recreational data collection programs, require the data from those programs to be used in fisheries management decisions in place of data developed by MRIP, and also require NMFS to contract out at least some of its research projects, while mandating that the results of those projects be included in stock assessments regardless of the views of NMFS’ scientists.  The latter provision would reduce the amount of funding available for NMFS’ regional science centers and scientific staff, as well as the influence of NMFS’ science on the management process.

H.R. 5699 remains very much in play, and constitutes an ongoing threat to the federal fisheries management system.  We can probably expect to see additional legislation, which also seeks to reduce the role of the Marine Recreational Information Program, weaken the conservation provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, and/or shift the management of some species from federal to more politically vulnerable state fisheries managers, in the course of the upcoming year.

The third bill, H.R. 181, is untitled.  It was introduced by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), and would primarily impact Pacific salmon, although in theory, any anadromous fish stock, and perhaps some purely coastal species, could be affected.  A bill description reads

“This bill requires naturally propagated animals (e.g., wild animals) and artificially propagated animals to be treated the same under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA).

“Specifically, distinctions between naturally propagated animals and artificially propagated animals may not be made when the federal government makes determinations under the ESA, such as determinations to designate endangered species, threatened species, or critical habitats.

“In addition, the bill requires the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to authorize the use of artificial propagation of animals of a species when mitigation is required under the ESA.

“This bill applies to all endangered or threatened species regardless of when they were listed as endangered or threatened.”

In other words, the bill would allow a natural run of salmon, steelhead, or any other species—the various sturgeon come to mind—to be extirpated, so long as there was a hatchery that was ready, willing, and able to keep the species, or fish from a particular run, from being wiped out.  The fact that the fish were incapable of maintaining themselves naturally, did not interact with their ecosystem in a natural manner, and were more suited to artificial propagation than to natural spawning would be irrelevant.

Thus, mining, timber, shipping, agricultural, hydropower, ranching, or other interests would be able to degrade or destroy habitat essential to an animal’s life cycle—say, critical spawning or nursery areas—and instead of those doing the damage being required to mitigate it and/or discontinue the harmful activity, NMFS and/or the Fish and Wildlife Service would be required to substitute artificial propagation for natural reproduction while the destruction is allowed to continue.

While such bills are a sort of niche legislation that won’t impact most marine fish stocks, similar legislation that relieves industry of responsibility for harming marine ecosystems and/or critical habitat is likely to emerge in the upcoming year should industry deem them necessary.

The only bright spot is that we’re in an election year, and given the controversies already raging over funding the federal government, various political scandals, and intraparty quarrels, legislators may find little time left to pursue fisheries legislation, particularly since, during the second half of the year, they will be more concerned with raising money and getting reelected than in anything that might resemble legislation.

As for Part II

Congress and the administration aren’t the only entities impacting marine fish stocks.  The regional fishery management councils, the ASMFC, the states, and various private entities all have their role to play.

But this post has already run long enough.  I’ll deal with those other entities when Part II comes out on Sunday.

FISHERIES 2025: IT WAS ABOUT AS BAD AS WE HAD FEARED

 

It’s that time of the year when I look back at the past year, and try to describe what went right and what went wrong with the fisheries management process over the preceding 12 months.  I know that I tend to get a little long-winded in these blog posts, so I’ll provide this bit of reassurance at the beginning:  It won’t take you very long to read about the things that went right.

On the other hand, the list of what went wrong will go on for a while.  This might be the first time that just about all of my predictions for the upcoming year came true, at least to some degree, and most of those predictions were dire.  So, without more delay, let’s take them one at a time.

THE EXPECTED BAD NEWS          

Striped bass:  Addendum III and beyond

My prediction with respect to Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass read, in pertinent part,

“At best, the addendum may contain some modest measures intended to make it more likely that the spawning stock biomass will be fully rebuilt by 2029.  Based on the votes at the December 16 [2024] meeting [of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board], any such measures will probably focused on the recreational fishery, while leaving the commercial fishery largely untouched, although in all honesty, I’d be surprised in Addendum III [included] any landings reductions at all.”

And that’s just how things turned out.  The final version of Addendum III contained specific instructions for how to measure as striped bass (with the ruler on a flat surface, and not over the curve of the fish, from the tip of the snout, with the mouth closed, to the farthest extent of a pinched together caudal fin), required that commercially-caught striped bass to be tagged before being brought ashore (something already the rule in all but three states), and allowed Maryland to reorder its recreational striped bass season in accordance with agreed-upon changes (but didn’t require it to do so).

There were no harvest reductions at all.

And, of course, striped bass recruitment remained painfully low for the seventh consecutive year, establishing a new seven-year average low for the Maryland juvenile abundance index, which over the past five decades or so has been the most reliable gauge of future striped bass abundance.

An administration that weakened the National Marine Fisheries Service and federal fisheries management

In addressing the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2025, it’s difficult to draw a clear line between what NMFS has done and what the current administration has done to NMFS.  A year ago, I had warned that

“we can only fear what [NMFS] will choose to do under an administration that, its first time around, overturned an ASMFC finding that New Jersey was out of compliance with summer flounder regulations, reopened the Gulf of Mexico’s recreational red snapper fishery even though such action would lead to overfishing, overturned the ban on commercial fishing in the New England Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, abolished time and area closures intended to protect giant bluefin tuna from longline bycatch and discard mortality, and issued an executive order intended to “identify and remove unnecessary regulatory barriers restricting American fishermen.”

Nearly a year has passed since that administration returned, and so far, its regulatory actions impacting marine fisheries have been neither as frequent nor as severe as they were the first time around, although it is very clear that NMFS’ conservation mission has already been largely abandoned in favor of strategies that imperil the future in order to increase short-term landings. 

The most egregious action taken by NMFS so far may have been its refusal to honor its commitment, made to settle a lawsuit brought by commercial red snapper fishermen, to end the recreational fishery’s chronic overfishing of the red snapper stock in the South Atlantic.  Last January 14, NMFS issued a rule that would have honored its obligation to end such overfishing, by closing an expanse of water off Georgia and northern Florida to bottom fishing for three months, which closure would have not only significantly lowered recreational discard mortality, but also allowed the agency to roughly triple commercial and recreational red snapper landings.  However, the recreational fishing and boatbuilding industries, adamantly opposed to risking a decline in short-term income, joined by militant “anglers’ rights” organizations such as the Coastal Conservation Association, convinced the agency to renege on its word and issue watered-down regulations that avoided both the area closure and any meaningful reduction in recreational red snapper discards.  Thus, the commercial red snapper fishermen have again brought suit, and this time around, they will probably be far less willing to enter into settlements with an agency which, under the current administration, has proven to be less than trustworthy.

The administration’s failure to honor the government’s obligations under the settlement of the red snapper lawsuit was not the only time it reneged on a fisheries-related settlement agreement this year. 

In 2023, the federal government was party to an agreement, filed in the Federal District Court for the District of Oregon, in which it agreed, in an effort to end decades-long litigation between the United States and the states of Washington and Oregon, four native tribes, and various environmental organizations, to provide funding that

“when combined with other funding that the Administration is anticipated to deliver to the region, will bring more than $1 billion in new Federal investments to wild fish restoration over the next decade and enable an unprecedented 10-year break from decades-long litigation against the Federal government’s operation of its dams in the Pacific Northwest.”

Dam removal would have almost certainly been a part of the remediation program.

However, hopefully to no one’s surprise, the current administration dishonored that promise as well, issuing a “fact sheet” which blared,

“STOPPING RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM:  Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum revoking an executive action issued by the prior administration that called for ‘equitable treatment for fish.’”

The news hit recreational fishermen, the affected tribes, and those concerned with the health of the salmon and the rivers extremely hard.  An article in Outdoor Life magazine quoted a letter written by 68 leading fisheries scientists, who said

“The survival problems of various [Endangered Species Act]-listed salmon and steelhead species in the Columbia Basin cannot be solved without removing four dams on the Lower Snake River…

“These four dams must be removed to not only avoid extinction, but also to restore abundant salmon runs.”

Jeremy Takala, chair of the Yakima Fish and Wildlife Committee (the Yakima being one of the tribes involved in the continuing litigation), summed the matter up in a single sentence:

“We reserved the right to actually catch fish, not merely the right to dip our nets into barren waters.”

So, with the administration abandoning this agreement as well, another long and expensive course of litigation will continue to its eventual and uncertain end; in the meantime, another United States fishery will remain in peril.

Given the propensities of this administration, there is little reason to believe that additional fisheries won’t be placed in jeopardy.  Not happy with his Executive Order of May 7, 2020, which among other things sought to

“identify and remove unnecessary regulatory barriers restricting American fishermen,”

and instructed the regional fishery management councils to produce a

“prioritized list of recommended actions to reduce burdens on domestic fishing and increase production within sustainable fisheries,”

President Trump issued a follow-up Executive Order on April 17,2025, in which he claimed that

“Federal overregulation has restricted fishermen from productively harvesting American seafood including through restrictive catch limits, selling our fishing grounds to foreign offshore wind companies, inaccurate and outdated fisheries data, and delayed adoption of modern technology,”

declared his intent to

“unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulation,”

and called upon the Secretary of Commerce to

“consider suspending, revising, or rescinding overly burden America’s commercial fishing…identify the most heavily overregulated fisheries requiring action and take appropriate action to reduce the regulatory burden on them…[and]

“request that each Regional Fishery Management Council…provide…updates to their recommendations submitted pursuant to Executive Order 13921 [issued on May 7,2020] to reduce burdens on domestic fishing and to increase production…[I]dentified actions should stabilize markets, improve access, enhance economic profitability, and prevent closures.”

While such directives are not very different from those contained in his earlier Executive Order, the previous Executive Order was issued in the last year of his term, and with an election only six months away, did not have much time to degrade the federal fishery management system.  The April 2025 Executive Order will have another three years to undermine what has been at least three decades (counting from the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996) of progress in rebuilding and conserving United States fisheries.

It is clear that the current administration wants to fully implement the 2025 Executive Order.  The regional fishery management councils have all submitted suggestions for regulatory change, and NMFS opened a public comment period to obtain input on what changes might be implemented.  Apparently not receiving enough input the first time around, on December 1, NMFS announced that it was reopening the comment period, seeking more suggestions on industry-favored changes, thus signaling its intent to weaken the current regulatory framework. 

And while NMFS follows the administration’s instructions to weaken the federal fisheries management effort, the administration has successfully weakened NMFS itself, cutting its funding and its scientific staff, thus making the agency less able to collect data, perform stock assessments, and otherwise execute its fisheries management responsibilities.  A number of long-awaited stock assessments have already been either delayed or indefinitely postponed, an fact that can only harm the long-term sustainability of the affected fish stocks.

It's virtually certain that the administration’s ill-conceived fisheries actions in 2025 will have negative impacts on the nation’s marine resources that will extend for years into the future.

Congress predictably disappoints

Again, my predictions of a year ago did, unfortunately, prove accurate.  I wrote,

“there is no reason to believe that the incoming Congress will be any more protective of marine fish stocks than the incoming administration.  Instead, we can expect to see an activist, conservation-averse Congress shutting down important conservation initiatives, interfering in the work of professional fisheries managers, and perhaps even threatening the core provisions of Magnuson-Stevens…

”Federal fisheries in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico will probably suffer the greatest level of Congressional interference, but we should also expect damage on a far wider scale, including efforts to cripple the Marine Recreational Information Program, turn responsibility for some federally-managed species over to more politically-influenced state agencies, and very possibly weaken key provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

While Magnuson-Stevens remains intact, the fisheries-related bills introduced in Congress so far were in line with what was expected. 

I opened the previous section by explaining how the federal government had agreed to settle a lawsuit challenging NMFS failure to rein in recreational overfishing of red snapper in the South Atlantic, and how the current administration reneged on that earlier agreement.  But just in case that didn’t happen, Congress was preparing to intervene, with Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL) and 26 cosponsors (19 from Florida, two each from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and one from Mississippi) introducing H.R. 470, the so-called “Red Snapper Act of 2025,” just two days after NMFS issued proposed regulations intended to effectuate the settlement.

A bill summary for H.R. 470 stated that

“This bill prohibits the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from restricting certain fishing activities in the South Atlantic until data from the South Atlantic Great Red Snapper Count study is integrated into the next South Atlantic red snapper Southeast Data, Assessment, and Review (SEDAR) stock assessment.

“The bill provides that NOAA may not issue an interim rule, final rule, or Secretarial Amendment establishing an area closure or a bottom fishing closure for specified species until (1) the study is complete, and (2) the study data is integrated into the first South Atlantic red snapper SEDAR stock assessment that is carried out after the bill’s enactment.  The limitation applies to fishing for species managed under the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region, including red snapper, grouper, and porgy.

“(Closures generally restrict recreational and commercial fishing to prevent overfishing and for other conservation purposes.)”

So yes, as soon as January 16, 2025, members of Congress were already taking action to “[shut] down important conservation initiatives” and “[interfere] in the work of professional fisheries managers.”

And Rep. Rutherford wasn’t finished.

On October 8, he introduced H.R. 5699, which he titled the “Fisheries Data Modernization and Accuracy Act of 2025,” and is described in the Congressional Record as

“A bill, to require the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to reform the Marine Recreational Information Program of the National Marine Fisheries Service, and for other purposes.”

But H.R. 5699 doesn’t merely seek to “reform” the Marine Recreational Information Program, but rather to replace it with a patchwork of state data collection programs, which would almost certainly not produce mutually comparable data, but would be legally barred from calibrating their output with MRIP’s, interspersed with other states that chose not to invest in their own programs and continued to use MRIP as their primary recreational data source.  H.R. 5699 would also require NMFS to employ and base its decisions upon state data, when available, instead of its own MRIP data, regardless of the relative quality of the data produced.

So saying that the bill would “cripple the Marine Recreational Information Program” is, if anything, an understatement. 

H.R. 5699 would probably also severely damage NMFS’ regional science centers, as it would require the agency to enter into contracts with so-called “independent” entities to develop fisheries data and the resultant science, which would have to be included in stock assessments, provided that the data passed peer review, regardless of NMFS’ scientists’ views of its merits.  Given that Congress only allocates so much money for NMFS’ scientific efforts, the expense of contracting with such outside entities would constitute money no longer available to hire and support the agency’s scientific staff.

The bill is very much alive, and could easily become law before the 119^th Congress ends.

Still, although I predicted some of the unfortunate things that happened this year, I didn’t predict them all.

UNEXPECTED BAD NEWS—THE ASMFC BACKSLIDES

I have long been a critic of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, primarily because, in the absence of clear and legally-enforceable standards for fishery management plans, managers facing a controversial issue often take the easy way out and fail to take action to end overfishing and/or rebuild an overfished stock.  Even when action is taken, it is often too little and too late to fully address the problem.

For a while, I thought that the ASMFC might be changing its ways.  Its approach to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which saw it shore up the conservation provisions of the management plan; its adoption of emergency striped bass management measures in 2023 to help protect the relatively strong 2015 year class; and its adoption of Amendment II to Amendment 7, which made the emergency measures permanent and enhanced them with further restrictions on the commercial fishery and the recreational fishery in the Chesapeake Bay gave me reason to hope that the ASMFC was finally focusing on the long-term health of fish stocks, rather than the short-term economic interests of the recreational and commercial fishing industries.

But multiple events in 2025 more or less dashed those hopes.

American lobster

The first step backward occurred on February 4, 2025.  

After a decline in lobster recruitment tripped a management trigger included in a recent addendum to the American lobster management plan, the ASMFC’s American Lobster Management Board voted to increase the minimum size for the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank lobster stock, but then delayed implementation of that reduction for over a year due to extremely strong opposition from the fishing industry.

New Hampshire’s governor, Kelly Ayotte, ended up refusing to comply with the increased size limit, should it be implemented, while in Maine, it was clear that any increase in the minimum size would not survive the state’s rulemaking process, which requires some level of fishing industry cooperation.

As a result, at the Management Board’s Winter 2005 meeting, the Board approved a motion

“to initiate an addendum to repeal all gauge and [lobster trap escape] vent changes in Addendum XXVII,”

thus admitting that industry’s concerns about short-term profit declines took precedence over the long-term health of the lobster stock.

To be completely fair, there were extrinsic factors impacting the Management Board’s decision, that had nothing to do with lobster and everything to do with the overall political climate, but the vote represented a step backward, all the same.

Atlantic menhaden

The ASMFC’s spring and summer meetings generally saw the Commission conduct business as usual; nothing notably negative occurred.  However, when the Annual Meeting rolled around in October, a veritable backsliding Olympics occurred.  The failure to include any meaningful conservation measures in Addendum III to the striped bass management plan has already been mentioned, and caused considerable ire among the hard-core striped bass angling community.

But the failure that was probably the most publicized, largely because it involved a heavily politicized fish and got a lot of coverage in the popular press, was the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board’s failure to reduce menhaden landings in response to an updated stock assessment.

Up until this year, scientists believed that the Atlantic menhaden stock was very healthy, with fecundity well above the target and fishing mortality well below.  Unfortunately, a stock assessment update released ahead of the October meeting revealed an error in the previous assessments.  As a result, menhaden abundance over the past few years was 37% lower than previously believed, fishing mortality hovered between its target and the threshold that defined overfishing, and fecundity was just 5% above the threshold that defines an overfished stock.

If the Management Board left the total allowable catch unchanged at 233,440 metric tons, and that full amount was landed, there was a 100% chance that the fishing mortality target would be exceeded, and a 4% chance that overfishing would occur.

The total allowable catch clearly needed to be reduced.

In order to have at least a 50% chance of keeping landings below the fishing mortality target, the total allowable catch would have to be reduced to 108,450 metric tons—about a 54.5% reduction.  That was a very big cut in landings to take in a single year, but it could be hoped that the Management Board might have initiated a phase-in process that used a series of annual cuts to eventually get landings down to where they belonged.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, the Management Board entertained a series of motions that began with one to achieve the entire 54.5% reduction in a single year.  Not unsurprisingly, that motion failed.  So did a motion to adopt three years of phased-in reductions.

The Management Board finally adopted a motion to reduce the total allowable catch by 20% in 2026, and revisit future years’ TACs at some point next year.  

While that sounds like progress, the 20% reduction to 186,840 metric tons didn’t do much of anything to reduce landings, since the menhaden fishing industry only landed about 80% of its quota in recent years; thus, the supposed “reduction” only maintained the status quo, and took no pressure off the stock at all.

The stock might not be subject to overfishing, but there was also no legitimate effort to reduce fishing mortality at all.  The fishing mortality target became a hypothetical number, completely disconnected from the actions of the Management Board.

Red drum

Typically, when managers establish biological reference points for a stock of fish, they set both a target and a threshold level for both fishing mortality and the biomass (or another value, such as fecundity, which serves as a biomass proxy).  When adopting management measures, managers will try to keep fishing mortality at its target level, and maintain biomass close to its target level as well. 

Things don’t always work out that neatly—neither fish nor fishermen always act according to the managers’ script—but so long as the values stay somewhere between target and threshold, the stock usually remains in reasonably good health.  It’s only when fishing mortality rises above the threshold, or biomass falls below, that the stock is deemed to be experiencing overfishing or to be overfished, and real problems occur.

So managers normally won’t try to manage to the threshold level, as the slightest miscalculation could result in the stock becoming overfished or experiencing overfishing.

Somehow, members of the ASMFC’s Sciaenids Management Board, which manages the species, seem to have missed that message.

Atlantic coast red drum are managed as separate northern and southern stocks, and the problems began after the 2024 benchmark red drum stock assessment reported that, for the southern stock,

“Terminal Age-2 [fishing mortality] (0.509) was above the [fishing mortality] threshold (0.396) and [fishing mortality] target (0.301), while [spawning potential ratio] (0.207) was below SPR threshold (0.300) and SPR target (0.400).  In addition, the stock is below the [spawning stock biomass] target (13,250 mt) and SSB threshold (9,917 mt) with a terminal SSB 0f 8,737 mt.  The southern stock of red drum status is overfished and experiencing overfishing.  [emphasis added]”

Under such circumstances, one would expect managers to do their best to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, or perhaps even to some level below target, in order to rebuild the stock to the spawning stock biomass target within a reasonable timeframe.  Given the degree to which red drum fishing mortality and spawning stock biomass exceeded their respective thresholds, not to mention their targets, it would be reasonable to also expect managers to adopt fairly restrictive regulations to achieve those goals.

But what we see in Addendum II to Amendment 2 to the Red Drum Fishery Management Plan, adopted last October, is not a suite of regulations calculated to achieve the fishing mortality and biomass targets.  Instead, the plan merely requires that

“Southern stock state measures are to achieve the threshold and end overfishing (i.e., F<F_30% or 30% SPR under terminal year fishing selectivity patterns), with a target of decreasing fishing mortality such that it is less than the fishing mortality associated with 40% SPR under terminal year fishing selectivity patterns.  [emphasis added]”

Thus, the Addendum abandons the objective of achieving target fishing mortality and fully rebuilding the stock, relegating such concepts to mere aspirational goals, while requiring the states to accomplish only the bare minimum—ending overfishing—and nothing more.

The man behind the curtain

While the above-described ASMFC actions all describe occasions when the Commission failed to take decisive action to correct an existing problem in a fishery, it is impossible to ignore the role that the federal government plays in Commission decisions.

Representatives of NMFS and, in some cases, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service sit on ASMFC’s species management boards.  In the case of striped bass, both agencies voted against adopting management measures to reduce striped bass fishing mortality in 2026.  I was told by a member of the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board that the federal representative on that panel made it clear that the administration would not support a reduction in the total allowable greater than 20%.

The administration’s position plays an important role in the ASMFC’s actions, because only the Secretary of Commerce can compel a state to comply with an ASMFC fishery management plan, by imposing a moratorium on the relevant fishery in noncompliant jurisdictions.  In the first Trump administration, we saw Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross refuse to support the ASMFC’s finding that New Jersey was out of compliance with the ASMFC’s summer flounder management plan, the first time that any Secretary of Commerce refused to stand behind a Commission determination.  Had the ASMFC gone ahead with an increase in the lobster size limit, or imposed a meaningful reduction in menhaden language, earlier this year, and had a state gone out of compliance with either action, it is very likely that the current Secretary would have again undercut the ASMFC’s management authority.  It is very conceivable that the same thing would have happened if a state demurred from a more restrictive addendum to the striped bass or red drum management plans.

Thus, as easy as it may be to blame the ASMFC for everything that goes wrong with coastal fisheries, when we look at the bigger picture, we often find that there are others who might not be named in a press release, but whose influence contributed to some of the worst management decisions of the year.

SOME POTENTIALLY POSITIVE ACTIONS—ALSO AT THE ASMFC

It would be wrong not to point out that some good things happened at the ASMFC this year, too.

All of them happened in October, and all remain incomplete, but they show at least some movement in the right direction.

In the case of striped bass, the same motion that ended any chance for landings reductions in 2026 also created a Working Group to examine a host of issues impacting striped bass management, and inform future management actions, which are more likely than not to occur after the 2027 benchmark stock assessment is released.  The one problem may be that, while the motion seeks to people the Working Group with a wide variety of stakeholder representatives, including recreational fishermen, the ASMFC’s rules require such working groups to be made up of management board members, and there are very few recreational fishermen who sit on the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, particularly outside of the New England states.  That creates a real risk that the supposedly “recreational” slots will be filled by representatives from the recreational fishing industry, or from industry-affiliated groups such as the Coastal Conservation Association, and not by those who will reflect the thoughts and concerns of dedicated striped bass anglers.

In the case of menhaden, the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board has initiated a new addendum which will consider reducing the cap on reduction fishery landings in the Chesapeake Bay by as much as 50%.  The question of whether the reduction fishery causes “localized depletion” of menhaden within the Bay has been debated for close to two decades, and while no one has ever been able to demonstrate that such depletion occurs, it is also true that no one has ever been able to prove that it is not an issue.  The proposed addendum will provide an opportunity to gather all of the science on both sides of the debate, and perhaps cast some light on what has long been a contentious subject.

Finally, an update to the tautog stock assessment has shown substantial improvement in the health of three of the four recognized stocks, with the New Jersey/New York Bight stock still experiencing overfishing, but no longer overfished.  Unfortunately, the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia stock, which had been experiencing relatively good health, was found to be both overfished and experiencing overfishing.  However, the Tautog Management Board has initiated a new addendum intended to address the remaining problems with the latter two stocks. 

THE GOOD NEWS

What might be the one bit of unqualified good news comes from California, where the removal of four dams on the Klamath River has led to an unexpectedly quick return of Chinook salmon to their former spawning grounds.

Just over a year after the last dam was removed, and access to traditional spawning areas was restored, Michael Harris, the Environmental Program Manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Klamath Watershed Program, said that

“The speed at which salmon are repopulating every nook and cranny of suitable habitat upstream of the dams in the Klamath Basin is both remarkable and thrilling.  There are salmon everywhere on the landscape right now, and it’s invigorating our work.”

Salmon have ascended the Klamath River all the way into Oregon, and have been seen spawning in tributaries that had been closed to the fish for over one hundred years.  Last summer, juvenile salmon and steelhead trout occupied nearly all of the newly accessible tributaries; in one, biologists counted over 65,000 juvenile Chinook salmon.

Thus, hope remains.

And that may be a lesson that all of us involved in the fishery management process should take to heart.

For over a century, ill-considered government policies denied Chinook salmon access to their upstream spawning grounds on the Klamath River.  But because people were willing to do the hard work, regardless of the obstacles placed in their path, the way was opened for the salmon to return, and once given the opportunity, they are spawning in the river again.

Today, an administration interested only in monetizing our living marine resources is trying to turn back the clock, and return to an age where exploitation and short-term gains were the only objectives, and conservation concerns had no place in the conversation.  Over the next few years, it will probably succeed.

But with time, and work, changes can be made, and the damage done can be overcome.

It will not be easy.  It will not be without costs, and some of those costs will be substantial.

Nonetheless, it can be done.