Over
the past half-dozen years, the summer flounder stock has been having some
problems, although most anglers probably didn’t notice until the last season or
two.
Annual trawl surveys
conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) revealed that summer flounder spawning success had been below average in every year
between 2010 and 2015, the last spawning year included in the survey
data. As a result, the population has declined and NMFS has had to take
remedial action to prevent overfishing.
In the summer of 2015, biologists originally suggested that the 2016 annual catch limit for
summer flounder would have to be reducedby 43%. That engendered
strong opposition from the recreational and commercial summer flounder
fisheries, and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management
Council’s (MAFMC)
Science and Statistics Committee (SSC) decided that they had a high degree of
certainty with respect to the summer flounder data, and so could safely phase
in the reduction and impose a smaller, 29% catch limit cut in 2015.
As it turned out,
recreational summer flounder harvest was so low that it fell not only below
that year’s annual catch limit, but below the reduced catch limit for 2016 as
well. Thus, managers decided that no change in regulations would be required to further constrain anglers’
landings.
Unfortunately, summer flounder spawning remains below par, so
the SSC decided that the annual catch limit for 2017 will have to be reduced by
an additional 30%.
This time, there is no doubt that recreational regulations will
have to be changed, and that doesn’t make representatives of the fishing
industry happy. In New Jersey, the industry has apparently gotten a number of
congressmen involved, and convinced them to interfere with the decisions of the
SSC.
According to an article in Sportfishing magazine,
“In a
bipartisan letter submitted Sept. 29 to assistant administrator for fisheries
Eileen Sobeck, members of the United States House of Representatives stressed
the importance of scheduling a benchmark assessment for summer flounder in
2017. Citing the socioeconomic value of the commercial and recreational summer
flounder fishery and the incoming quota reductions proposed for 2017 and 2018
due in part to a lack of data, Rep. Tom MacArthur and four other
representatives indicate that any delay in the assessment of summer flounder
‘would be a major mistake and threaten the health of the summer flounder
population as well as the economy of the communities the fishery supports.’ ”
While it’s understandable that the congressmen want to appear
responsive to their constituents, their involvement exemplifies an ongoing
problem in fisheries management, which recurs each time politicians attempt to
substitute their judgment for that of professional fisheries managers.
Summer flounder are
assessed on a regular basis. The most recent benchmark
assessments were released in 2005, 2008 and 2013, and the 2013 assessment has been updated in every succeeding year. The
harvest reductions scheduled for 2017 and 2018 are being driven by six years of
below-average spawning, and not by any lack of data.
The congressmen’s
statement, although flawed, is probably based on arguments made by the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund (SSFFF), a New Jersey-based group
which seeks “to safeguard and improve fishing access to summer flounder, for
those who enjoy it and to ensure the survival of those who depend on it,
through scientific and legislative means.”
Put in plain language, SSFFF has a broad policy of opposing
harvest reductions and supporting harvest increases, and is willing to use
political influence to do so.
SSFFF has hired scientists to demonstrate that male summer
flounder grow more slowly and have shorter lifespans than females and has
argued that, because of such disparity, NMFS should permit higher fishing
mortality rates and set a lower biomass target and threshold than those
currently included in the fishery management plan.
Sex-differentiated data was incorporated into the 2008 stock assessment,
and when the 2013 assessment was being prepared, scientists at the stock
assessment workshop were explicitly instructed to “Review recent information on
sex-specific growth and on sex rations at age. If possible, determine if fish
sex, size and age should be used in the assessment.”
The stock assessment review
panel, composed of three internationally-recognized fisheries biologists, found
that the 2013 benchmark assessment successfully addressed that task.
Conducting a benchmark assessment in 2017 would disrupt the
existing assessment schedule, and require the assessment of other species to be
delayed. It would thus seem unwise to do so, as such an assessment would have
no impact on 2017 regulations, and there is no guarantee that even the 2018
annual catch limit would be materially changed as a result.
Thus, the timing of the next benchmark assessment is a matter
better determined by scientists, based on their needs, than by politicians who
are merely responding to someone’s complaints.
On the other hand, at least
the congressmen seeking a new summer flounder assessment had a scientific
justification for their request, and were merely asking the Northeast Fisheries Science Center to consider additional data. They
weren’t trying to make basic scientific decisions themselves.
That wasn’t the case in
2015, when members of the United States Senate’s Appropriations Committee
(Committee) issued a reportthat, although non-binding, gave specific
directions to biologists trying to manage red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.
The report read, in part
“The Committee
is disappointed that NOAA has failed to implement procedures to adequately
measure red snapper stocks in the northern Gulf—particularly in areas with
physical structures such as offshore oil rigs and artificial reefs. NOAA is
directed to begin incorporating fishery data collected on artificial reefs,
offshore oil platforms, and any other offshore fixed energy exploration
infrastructure directly into the agency’s stock assessments for reef fish in
the Gulf of Mexico…
“NOAA shall
take into consideration any imbalance in the ecosystem that may be occurring
between larger red snapper and other fish species before accepting amendments
to existing regulations or implementing new regulations that directly affect
red snapper quotas in the Gulf of Mexico.”
If anyone on the Committee
had taken the time to read the most recent benchmark stock assessment for Gulf of Mexico red snapper,
they would have quickly learned that research relating to red snapper abundance
on artificial structures was included in the assessment process.
The Committee’s instruction to put greater emphasis on fishery
data collected on such artificial structure could, if followed, distort the
resulting data by emphasizing areas known to concentrate fish, and thus make
red snapper appear more abundant than they actually were. While that might have
been some Committee members’ intent, it certainly would not have been good
science.
The Committee’s language referring to a supposed “imbalance in
the ecosystem” created by “larger” red snapper also lacks scientific merit, and
is all too familiar to anyone who has spent any time at fisheries meetings.
There is always someone who complains that, because of restrictive regulations,
“there are so many [pick your preferred species of fish] out there that they’re
eating everything else in the ocean.”
It’s the kind of statement
that must make folks wonder how any fish ever survived before people came along
to protect them from their predators. And it’s the kind of statement that the
Committee should never have made when it was writing up its report.
The fact that it did is just further evidence as to why
politicians should not try to tell scientists how to do their job.
There’s an old proverb that
says, “Let the cobbler stick to his last.”
That’s good advice for politicians who want to get involved in
fisheries matters.
Let legislators stick to
drafting laws, so that they can give us good bills such as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens).
And let scientists stick to doing science and managing fisheries
in the way that the authors of Magnuson-Stevens had always intended.
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This
essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish
Conservation Network, which may be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/
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