Back when I was in junior high—or maybe it was high school,
I can’t quite recall—one of the books that we had to read was William Golding’s
Lord of the Flies.
You probably had to read it, too, but if you didn’t, the
plot generally traces the fate of a group of boys in wartime, who end up alone
on a desert island after surviving a plane crash. It describes how, left on their own and
without the strictures imposed by adult society, the boys devolved into an
undisciplined and ultimately destructive state, and eventually began murdering
their own.
About the same time that I first read that tale, my own
testosterone-spawned aversion to discipline and order manifested itself. Friday and Saturday nights were a time for
celebration, and the simple phrase “My parents won’t be home” murmured into the
phone was a clarion signal that, for a while, the rules need not apply.
I look back at those days with some embarrassment now. And I reflect on how, in so many ways, the
fishery management system remains stuck in adolescence, and never found a way
to grow up.
It goes back to the beginning, or at least the beginning of
modern times, when the Fishery
Conservation and Management Act of 1976, the forerunner of today’s Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and
Management Act, first became law.
Much of the impetus for passing such legislation was a
desire to push highly efficient—and thus highly destructive—foreign fishing
fleets away from American shores, and to help U. S. fishermen to thrive. However, as the name suggests, fisheries conservation
and management were part of Congress’ motivation, too.
In those days, as today, the law required that fish stocks
be managed for “optimum” yield. But back
then, the definitions were a bit different.
“Optimum” yield was
prescribed
on the basis of the maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as modified
by any relevant social, economic, or ecological factor… [emphasis
added]
That almost sounds reasonable. But fishermen, like adolescents, don’t really
care for rules, and are habitually testing their limits. And when they pushed up against that word
“modified,” they found out that they really had very few limits at all.
“Maximum sustainable yield” (“MSY”) is the generally-accepted
overfishing threshold; take more than that, and the harvest becomes
unsustainable—the size of the fish stock will decline, and the size of the
harvests will eventually decline as well, although skilled fishermen will often
be able to land a lot of fish right up to the time that the stock collapses,
just because they know how to find whatever scraps remain.
Thus, biologists view MSY as a line that never be crossed. In the real world, prudent managers try to
keep harvests well below that level, simply because there is always some
uncertainty in the science, and landings can’t be predicted with absolute
accuracy.
But back in the early days of federal fisheries management,
the fishermen who peopled the regional fishery management councils viewed
maximum sustainable yield a little differently.
They didn’t want to set quotas below
MSY, because that would just be leaving money on the table. Then fishermen—who might be the council
members’ friends and neighbors, and in any event looked a lot like the folks making
the rules—would come to a council meeting to complain that if the quotas
weren’t increased, their incomes would be slashed, and maybe they’d have to
sell their boats and take a shoreside job.
And that’s where the word “modified” in the definition of
“optimum” yield came in. It gave the
councils carte blanche to raise
quotas well above MSY for “social and economic” reasons, while still
constraining harvest to “optimum” yield.
The fishermen—including those sitting on the councils—grasped,
childlike, for instant gratification, while giving no thought to the future
consequences of doing so. But those
consequences were as inevitable as time and tide: Fish stocks crashed.
Summer flounder bottomed out around 1990; a few years later
New England groundfish stocks dropped so low that their collapse became news
not just in local papers, but on national television and in The New York Times. Plenty of other stocks, from South Atlantic
snapper to Pacific rockfish, followed the same depressing trajectory.
The kids had gone too far, and it was time for the grownups
to regain control.
So Congress passed the Sustainable
Fisheries Act of 1996, which required federal fisheries management plans to
promptly end overfishing and, if biologically feasible, rebuild overfished
stocks within ten years. “Optimum” yield
was redefined in a way that no longer permitted perpetual overfishing; after
1996, it was to be
prescribed
on the basis of the maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as reduced
by any relevant social, economic, or ecological factor… [emphasis
added]
In response, the regional fishery management councils
adopted a truculent attitude, and still pushed to see what they could get away
with. The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management
Council adopted a summer flounder management plan that only had a 17% chance of
successfully meeting the Sustainable Fisheries Act’s mandates, then sat quietly
and watched to see whether they’d get away with it.
As things turned out, they got their knuckles rapped. The Natural Resources Defense Council brought
suit challenging the summer flounder plan, and when the court handed down its
decision (http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/E36DAC79549F797D85256F180065A726/$file/99-5308a.txt),
it was very clear that the Council had failed its test, and had some remedial
work to do. Federal fishery management
plans unlikely to timely recover the stocks would no longer make the grade.
The federal fishery management process was finally coming of
age. Fishermen had to start taking
responsibility for their past excesses, and accept the harvest cuts that they
should have adopted a couple of decades before.
Enforced responsibility is never popular, and the fishermen
responded predictably, crying and complaining that the cuts weren’t fair. They blamed the law and the regulators and
the scientists. They blamed anyone who
wanted to conserve the fish. As they
wailed and thrashed and threatened, they blamed everyone except themselves.
But the law did not yield to intemperate outburst. Fish stocks started to rebuild, at least, in
places where councils had matured into their responsibilities, and proved
willing to cap harvest at sustainable levels.
In places like New England, fishermen still wheedled their way out of
the chore of rebuilding depleted stocks.
And the council encouraged their continued irresponsibility by shunning
the “tough love” of hard caps on harvest, and instead indulged them with
ineffective half-measures such as restrictions on days at sea.
In the end, as before, New England fish stock suffered. So did the fishermen, because they had no one
willing to straighten them out and set them on a sustainable path.
Unfortunately, the folks in New England weren’t alone.
At the same time that the conservation provisions of the
Magnuson Act were proving successful in federal waters, fisheries management in
the states, coordinated by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, stubbornly
refused to mature.
The Magnuson Act’s strictures didn’t apply, and without the
supervision of law or the courts, the fishermen on the Commission, who outnumber
professional managers by a two-to-one ratio, acted without restraint. They frequently ignored the advice of both
their scientists and their advisory panels, in order to kill more fish. They allowed overfishing to continue, and
refused to rebuild overfished stocks.
For depleted fish stocks, it was a Lord of the Flies moment protracted over decades. Stock after stock was figuratively impaled
upon a stick, and their lifeblood allowed to drip freely into the ground. Stocks of formerly abundant tautog, winter
flounder, shad and river herring, among others, all managed irresponsibly, slid
toward depletion at the same time that, in federal waters, formerly depleted
stocks were returning to abundance.
Now, in the U. S. House of Representatives, a bill being
advanced by Rep. “Doc” Hastings of Washington would remove the most important legal
constraints that now bind federal fisheries management. The proposed legislation would insert
abundant language into current law, language that, like the old word
“modified”, will give fishermen more opportunities to overfish once again. There are even provisions that would allow
the councils to avoid rebuilding stocks altogether, if doing so might force a
little unwanted restraint or otherwise prove inconvenient.
Hastings seems poised to announce that the adults will be
taking an around-the-world cruise, and that the kids are going to have to take
care of things while their parents are gone.
That’s probably not a good idea. It would be better to keep the adults in the
room.
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