In 1996, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC)
determined that tautog (also known as “blackfish”) were being badly overfished,
and that the fishing mortality
rate had to be reduced to no more than 0.15. Such a fishing
mortality rate would result in about 14% of the tautog being removed from the
population each year.
That reduction was never achieved, and the
tautog population suffered badly as a result.
When
the decision to reduce fishing mortality was first made, the fishing mortality rate was estimated to be 0.54, which
meant that between 40% and 45% of the
tautog were removed from the population annually—three times
the rate recommended by ASMFC.
Had the
tautog fishery been governed by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery
Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens), which
governs fishing in federal waters, overfishing could not have legally continued
past 1998. However, since tautog are managed by the states through ASMFC,
tautog managers faced no such deadline. Instead, they didn’t require the states
to end overfishing until 1999.
But even after 1999, overfishing
continued.
In 1997, ASMFC acknowledged that “The tautog
resource is at low levels and will not likely rebuild without strict
conservation measures. Further, another year of fishing at current levels [a
fishing mortality rate greater than 0.50] will delay initial stock rebuilding,
will contribute to further declines in spawning stock biomass, and could
contribute to truncation of the age structure. These are important
considerations given the slow growth rate and long life span of tautog.”
Despite
such acknowledgement, after the states failed to bring overfishing under
control by 1999, ASMFC put off the
required harvest reduction for three more years, deferring it to
2002.
The
primary justification for delaying harvest reductions was a lack of good,
state-level data. That’s an argument that never would have prevailed under
Magnuson-Stevens, which requires that fishery management measures be based on
the “best scientific information available [emphasis added],” even if such information
isn’t quite as good as managers would like it to be. Courts have recognized that
“by specifying that decisions be based on the best scientific information
available, the Magnuson-Stevens Act recognizes that such information may not be
exact or totally complete.”
At ASMFC, however, such incomplete information
can justify a delay in imposing needed management measures, even if such delay
can lead to “delay[ed] initial stock rebuilding, …declines in spawning stock
biomass, and…truncation of the age structure” of the stock.
Because
of such delays, the fishing mortality rate in 2001
was still far too high. At 0.41, it was nearly triple the original
target of 0.15. However, additional data, made available to ASMFC’s tautog
managers in 2002, led them to abandon their original target fishing mortality
rate in favor of one twice as high. They believed that the higher fishing
mortality rate would result in a tautog stock that retained about 40% of the
spawning potential of an unfished population, a level that managers considered
sustainable.
Yet the tautog managers never established
a deadline for achieving that spawning potential, and never adopted a plan to
hold states and their fishermen accountable should fishing mortality exceed the
new target. Lacking such safeguards, the stock never rebuilt.
In 2007, ASMFC admitted that “The trend in total
stock biomass and spawning stock biomass has been generally flat and at low
levels since 1994.”
Ten years of supposed management, highlighted
by ASMFC’s managers dithering and delaying needed management measures instead
of taking decisive action, accomplished no rebuilding at all.
In an
effort to spur stock growth, tautog managers reversed course, reducing the target
fishing mortality rate to 0.20; for the first time, they also set a spawning
stock biomass target of 26,800 metric tons and a spawning stock biomass
threshold, which defined an overfished stock, at 20,100 metric tons. When such
actions were taken, the spawning stock stood at about 10,600 metric tons, and
so remained very badly overfished.
Once again, the managers failed to
establish annual catch limits to prevent overfishing, and never set a
rebuilding deadline for the stock. Once again, they failed to hold fishermen
accountable when they overfished. And once again, they failed to rebuild the
tautog stock.
In
2011, the spawning stock biomass was
still estimated to be just 10,533 metric tons. The fishing mortality
rate was 0.38, nearly twice the 0.20 target.
At that point, ASMFC’s tautog managers
came full circle, and found themselves where they were fifteen years before,
recommending a target fishing mortality rate of 0.15.
Unfortunately,
once again, they adopted no mechanism to prevent overfishing and no hard target
date for the recovery of the stock.
And so once again, the tautog stock
languished.
In 2016, the tautog stock
assessment was updated. The new assessment revealed that, on a
coastwide basis, the lack of annual catch limits and the failure to hold
fishermen accountable yielded the expected results: the fishing mortality rate
hadn’t changed. It was still at 0.38, more than twice the fishing mortality
target. The stock remained badly overfished, as well.
Although the new stock assessment bore the
same dismal news, it recommended a new approach to tautog management. Instead
of managing the species on a coastwide basis, it suggested that tautog be
managed as four separate, regional population, to account for the fact that
they don’t make long, coastwise migrations. At first, the new management
approach gave fishermen reason to hope that ASMFC would, finally, get tautog
management right.
All four of the local
populations were overfished, but the two at either end of the
species’ range—the tautog off Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and those off
Delaware, Maryland and Virginia—were not subject to overfishing. While tautog
found in the ocean off New York and New Jersey were subject to modest
overfishing, those found in Long Island Sound between New York and Connecticut
were suffering from overfishing so severe that a 47% reduction in landings
would have only a 50-50 chance of ending the problem.
Unfortunately,
a 47% reduction was far more of a cut than some in the angling community were
willing to accept. When ASMFC held a public meeting in New York to take public
comment on the question, representatives of the party and charter boat industry
weren’t even willing to let the ASMFC representative speak. Soon after the
start of the meeting, one Montauk captain told her that
“We don’t care about your science. Your science is bullcrap.” That set the tone
for the rest of the event, which was more mob scene than meeting, as captain
after captain rejected the biological data and demanded that the regulations
remain unchanged.
Another
meeting held in Connecticut saw attendees that were somewhat more orderly, but held similar opinions.
Such
truculence seems to have worked, for at its August meeting, ASMFC’s Tautog
Management Board chose to defer action on Long
Island Sound harvest reductions. When action was finally taken in October,
ASMFC opted to reduce Long Island Sound harvest by only 20.3%, far less than
needed to achieve the fishing mortality target. Once again, it did not
establish any deadlines to end overfishing, and chose not to set any final
rebuilding date for the stock.
Thus, it seems that after twenty-one years
of failure, ASMFC’s tautog managers have still failed to learn that without
hard annual catch limits to prevent overfishing, without measures to hold
fishermen accountable when they do overfish and without a firm rebuilding
deadline to guide the rulemaking process, tautog are unlikely to be rebuilt.
Managers
seem more intent on avoiding politically unpopular management measures than on
rebuilding the stock. They seem more willing to hope that a couple
of strong year classes in Long Island Sound will restore the local population,
and less willing to take affirmative actions that will make such a recovery far
more certain.
In their actions, ASMFC’s tautog managers
demonstrate why state fishery managers, who aren’t required to end overfishing
or rebuild overfished stocks, have so consistently failed to restore depleted
fish populations.
Their failure stands in marked contrast to
the successes of federal fisheries managers who are required, by the provisions
of Magnuson-Stevens, to set annual catch limits for each managed species, hold
fishermen accountable when they exceed those limits and rebuild overfished
stocks within ten years or, if that is not feasible, then by the earliest
possible date.
If tautog were federally managed,
fishermen might have been enjoying the experience of fishing on fully-rebuilt
stocks today. Because they are managed by ASMFC, tautog fishermen, more often
than not, merely experience disappointment.
-----
This essay first appeared in
“From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation
Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/
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