Cleveland is leading Chicago three games to one in the World
Series, and this year’s victor might well be decided before you had a chance to
read this blog. Thus, if I wanted to use
a timely baseball analogy as I write it, today gives me my last opportunity of this year.
Fortunately, the Center for Coastal Conservation hung a
curveball right over the middle of the plate, setting things up for a perfect
swing.
The curve came, as so many things do, in the Center’s report,
A
Vision for Marine Fisheries Management in the 21st Century;
Priorities for a New Administration.
For a number of years, the Center has been attempting to
weaken federal fishing laws, so that anglers may kill more fish each
season, regardless of whether such harvest is sustainable or scientifically
justified. While a
report issued early in 2014 emphasized anglers’ role in marine
conservation, the Center’s newest “vision” states that
“We look forward to collaborating with policymakers to find
21st Century solutions that ensure the right balance between
recreational fishing access [i.e, harvesting more fish], economic growth and
conservation of America’s coastal waters.”
That vision is in direct conflict with federal fisheries
law, which makes the rebuilding and conservation of America’s fish stocks the
top priority, regardless of how needed conservation measures may impact recreational
landings or short-term economic goals.
Since federal fisheries laws emphasize the long term health
and sustainability of fish populations, the Center needed another model to hold
up as an example of the correct way to manage fisheries. Their choice defaulted to the state
management of inshore species, with the latest “vision” report claiming that
“States are the experts at managing—very successfully—numerous
fish species such as red drum, spotted sea trout, and striped bass.”
Of course, claiming that something is true doesn’t make it
undisputed fact, and any real look at the facts quickly shows that state
management of inshore species is often very far from successful.
We can look at a host of species to make that
point, including tautog (a/k/a “blackfish”), weakfish, southern flounder and
others. But for now, let’s just take a
look at those that the Center uses as examples of good state management—striped bass, red drum and spotted sea trout.
I’ve written about how the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries
Commission mismanages striped bass many times before, providing the latest
example of poor state stewardship of that resource just last Thursday. The story is so well known that I’m not going
to go over it in too much detail again today.
Instead, I’ll go back more than two decades, and remind
everyone how ASMFC managed to nurse a very severely overfished striped bass
stock back to health by 1995, the one and only time in its 74-year
history that ASMFC ever managed to rebuild a depleted fish population.
To summarize before getting into the details, ASMFC most certainly
didn’t restore striped bass by finding a “balance between recreational fishing
access, economic growth and conservation.”
They brought the bass back by putting the health of the stock front and
center, and not worrying about what immediate impact the needed
conservation measures would have on anglers’ landings or anyone’s short-term
income.
That’s the kind of “fish-first” thinking that actually leads
to success in rebuilding fish stocks. Amendment 3
to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which was
responsible for the striped bass stock’s recovery, had two very explicit and
complementary objectives.
The first objective was
“That the states prevent directed
fishing mortality on at least 95% of the 1992 year class females, and females
of all subsequent year classes of Chesapeake Bay stocks until 95% of the
females in these year classes have an opportunity to reproduce at least
once. This objective is intended to
apply to the fishery until the 3-year running average of Maryland’s
young-of-the-year index attains 8.0.
Management measures which will accomplish this objective include combinations
of the following which insure that no fishing mortality occurs on the target
year classes.
a) Total closures of striped bass
fisheries. Where a state whose waters
border on or are tributary to those which are closed should take complimentary
action.
b) Establishment of minimum size limits below
which 95% of females have spawned at least once.
c) Establishment of minimum size limits in
combination with seasonal closures which insure that sub-adult females are not
taken in open fisheries.
d)
Elimination of any allowable bycatch below minimum lengths.”
You’ll note that nowhere in that objective was there any
mention of allowing certain levels of harvest activity or business activity to “balance”
against the conservation effort. You’ll
also note that the objective contained clear standards that could be used to
measure progress toward rebuilding the stock.
The second objective of Amendment 3 was far shorter, but
followed along the same lines.
“That the Striped Bass Board support restoration efforts in
the Delaware River System including the Delaware Bay and that a moratorium on
striped bass fishing in the Delaware Bay system be implemented upon the onset
of restoration efforts.”
Again, a clear, no-nonsense objective that was all about
conservation, which would completely shut off what the Center calls “access” and
the rest of us think of as “dead fish,” and doesn’t give an inch to short-term
economic concerns.
Because the objectives were so clear and uncompromising,
Amendment 3 actually worked, and fully rebuilt the striped bass stock.
When people talk about ASMFC successfully
managing striped bass, this is the success that they’re talking about, a time
when ASMFC was willing to impose management measures much tougher than anything
that the feds are imposing on summer flounder or black sea bass or Gulf red
snapper today.
But ASMFC’s success at conserving striped bass has nosedived
since then…
In late 2008, ASMFC began to hear the first concerns that
the striped bass population was declining, when Matt Boutet, a Maine angler, made
a statement at the November Management Board meeting, saying, in part,
“I actually flew down for the meeting today because we’ve
seen a multi-year declining trend in striped bass abundance up north. We don’t really feel that we’re being well
served by the current management regime.
Every year the fishing gets a little bit worse. Last year the fishing was bad. This year it was abysmal. ..”
Because Maine is near the northern extreme of the striped
bass’ normal range, a decline in the abundance of fish there is an early
warning that the stock as a whole is beginning to shrink.
However, after hearing Mr. Boutet’s comments, the Management Board did
not further consider the issue. In fact,
it voted to give Delaware and Pennsylvania the right to adopt regulations allowing the harvest of what would otherwise be considered “undersized” fish in portions of the
Delaware River system, even though New Hampshire Rep. Dennis Abbott objected to
the idea, arguing that it, and other measures like it, subject the striped bass stock to “death by a
thousand cuts.”
The stock continued to decline, and a 2011
update to the stock assessment predicted that biomass would drop near, if
not below, the threshold denoting an overfished stock by 2017. Even so, at the November
2011 Management Board meeting, state fisheries managers decided to take no
action, because the stock was not yet overfished. Apparently, they felt that they had no need
to avert a crisis, but rather could wait until the crisis occurred before
taking any action.
Finally, after a benchmark
stock assessment in 2013 showed that the stock had been repeatedly subject
to overfishing, and was nearly overfished, ASMFC reluctantly
took action to reduce fishing mortality to the target level. Even then, it completely ignored language in Amendment 6 to the
Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass that required them
to adopt a plan to restore the biomass to the target level within ten years.
The
ink wasn’t even dry on that final action when Maryland, supported by other
Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions, began agitating to increase the harvest again. Although the initial effort failed, after a 2016
stock assessment update showed that fishing mortality was 0.16, slightly
under the target of 0.18, Maryland
convinced the Management Board to ask the Striped Bass Technical Committee how
much harvest could be increased in order raise fishing mortality to the target
level.
The Management Board passed that motion knowing that the
female spawning stock biomass remained just 1,200 metric tons above the "overfished" threshold, and was fully 13,000 metric tons below the biomass target.
Chesapeake Bay anglers have already increased their harvest by more than 50%, when they were supposed to reduce it by 20.5%. Yet no additional action was taken to restrict their landings.
Thus, the Center clearly whiffed when it claimed that
striped bass are being “very successfully” managed.
STRIKE ONE!
Red drum are a very important recreational species in both
the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic region. Many years ago, in response to a drop in spawning
stock abundance, federal fisheries managers prohibited all fishing for red drum
in federal waters. However, that has
recently started to change.
About eighteen months ago, the State of Mississippi asked
NMFS to issue it an exempted fishing permit, which would allow Mississippi
charter boats to harvest about 30,000 adult, spawning-age red drum over a
two-year period.
Supposedly, the request was made as part of a scientific
sampling effort, but anglers in the region saw it as the first step in opening
up federal waters to red drum harvest, and placing the red drum spawning stock
at risk.
The application for an exempted fishing permit put the
Coastal Conservation Association, an anglers’ rights group that is one of the
leading supporters of the Center, into an awkward place. They had long held out state fisheries
managers as the shining knights of the fishery management system, but here were
state managers from Mississippi threatening CCA’s beloved red drum.
What was the organization to do?
Being a little dishonest was the first step.
In a letter to NMFS opposing issuance of the exempted
fishing permit, CCA wrote that it was
“opposed to the exempted fishing permit (EFP) application
filed by the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources… [emphasis added]”
CCA went on to explain its opposition, citing the
proceedings at a red drum data workshop and saying
“The workshop was requested by the [federal] Gulf of Mexico
Fishery Management Council…The workshop determined that ‘fishery dependent’
data (such as those collected by fishermen those that would be collected by the
EFP) were already more than adequately represented by each state.”
It was clear from those comments that CCA knew that it
was Mississippi, and not the federal managers, who were trying to allow red
drum harvest in federal waters. However,
in a public press release, CCA sang an altogether different, and very
misleading, tune.
The release was titled “Not Another Flawed Federal
Experiment [emphasis added],” as if it was NMFS, and not CCA’s
beloved state managers, who were trying to open up federal waters to red drum
harvest.
It concludes by saying
“The Mississippi permit application is another unfortunate
byproduct of failed federal management,”
without even trying to explain how, given that Mississippi
was actually seeking an opportunity to find a new fishery for its charter boat
fleet, the fish would be better off under a state management regime that would
undoubtedly increase pressure on spawning-sized drum.
Because, of course, when you’re doing everything you can to
smear the record of federal fisheries managers, while putting the same amount
of efforts into exalting the deeds of state fisheries managers, you can’t admit
that a state is at fault, even when the facts all point that way…
FOUL! STRIKE TWO!
Mississippi is again in the spotlight when it comes to
spotted sea trout, although they call them “speckled trout” down there.
Apparently, the
Mississippi population of speckled trout isn’t doing very well; in fact, it’s
overfished. That is very possibly
because, back in 2007, the size limit was reduced from 14 to 13 inches, and
that size limit remained in place even after the
stock showed signs of steady decline, beginning in 2009.
The Gulf States
Marine Fisheries Commission produced a spotted sea trout management plan in
2001; it was the last such plan ever prepared. It may be just as well that no further time
and effort was spent on such a project, for some of the most important
conclusions of the 2001 plan seem to be largely ignored.
That is particularly true for the plan’s suggested benchmark
for a healthy stock, a spawning potential ratio of 18%.
Mississippi
has set its benchmark a little higher, at 20%, but it’s clear that, for years,
that number was largely ignored. Between
the years of 1981 and 2013, the SPR for Misissippi’s speckled trout never rose
even a single point above that 20% number, and fell as low as 8% SPR, but the
state never managed to adopt effective regulations to rebuild the stock. Today, SPR stands at a mere 10%.
The irony here is that even as the Center, supported by the
leadership at CCA’s national office, are doing whatever it takes to produce a “vision”
depicting the superiority of state fisheries managers, the members of CCA’s
Mississippi chapter know where the problems lie, and are trying to fix things.
A
press release issued by CCA Mississippi declared that
“CCA Mississippi calls for action on speckled trout. Anglers undo state managers to undo damaging regulations…
““A controversial decision to lower the minimum size limit for
speckled trout to 13 inches eight years ago has resulted in exactly the kind of
stock decline that recreational anglers feared at the time…the Mississippi
chapter of Coastal Conservation Association is calling on the Commission on
Marine Resources to reverse course and take the necessary steps to
put the fishery back on solid footing.
“’Eight years ago, we were very much opposed when
[state] mangers took an awfully risky position with its trout regulations and
now that unfortunate decision has come home to roost,’ said F. J. Eicke,
Chairman of CCA Mississippi’s Government Relations Committee. ‘We’ve taken
a giant step backwards with a resource that’s treasured by anglers, but now we
have an opportunity to work with the states to set things right and we
shouldn’t waste any more time.’
“…’At 13 inches it is clear that too many fish are being caught
and kept before they have a chance to spawn even once. If you remove fish
before they can spawn, catastrophic declines are inevitable, ‘ said
Eicke. ‘Fortunately, trout can rebuild relatively quickly if state
managers will put the proper conservation measures back in place. They
dug quite a hole for trout that we have to dig out of now…
[emphasis added]’”
So would even CCA Mississippi agree with the Center that
spotted sea trout are being “very successfully” managed by the state?
It doesn’t look that way from what they’re saying. And that means it’s
STRIKE THREE!
for the Center, and time to send it, along with the fatuous claim that state fisheries
managers are, on the whole, more successful than those in the federal
management system, to the showers.
When you take a look at the management of three showcase
species, which the Center holds out as examples of exemplary state management,
what you find is something very different—state management so bad that, in two
out of three cases, even CCA, one of the Center’s foremost members, has to
admit that it’s not even in the same ballpark as the sort of work federal managers are doing on a regular basis.
So let’s do the right thing, score the “vision” report as a
game-ending error, and declare a win for the federal fisheries management system.
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