SUMMER FLOUNDER, SCUP AND BLACK SEA BASS: WILL PRUDENCE PREVAIL?

Summer flounder, scup and black sea bass have always been at the heart of the southern New England/upper Mid-Atlantic recreational fishery, and thus have always been lightning rods for fishery management disputes.

In recent years, an abundance of scup has made that species’ management much less controversial.  On the other hand, consecutive years of below-average spawning success has complicated summer flounder management, and that has, in turn, impacted the black sea bass fishery.

The summer flounder debate may have hit its crescendo last July, when  New Jersey decided to go outof compliance with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s managementplan, and the U.S. Commerce Department, instead of supporting ASMFC andlong-established conventions of interstate fisheries management, decided tooverrule the Commission’s decision and approve New Jersey’s deviance, a decision that has caused substantial and perhaps irreversible harm to the interstate management process.

At the same time, as more and more anglers have trouble finding summer flounder, effort has shifted into the black sea bass fishery, forcing managers to increase size limits and reduce bags, despite the black sea bass’ high levels of abundance.

As the 2017 season wore on, many anglers wondered about what 2018 regulations would look like, and whether they might even be more restrictive than they were this year.  Yet at the same time, the relatively poor fishing throughout much of the region—summer flounder were scarce and black sea bass, while plentiful, were mostly too small to keep—coupled with often inclement weather apparently discouraged anglers from fishing as much as they usually do.

In the five states between New Jersey and Massachusetts, which account for a substantial majority of all summer flounder, scup and black sea bass landings, fishing effort was down for the first eight months of this year.  Compared to 2016, effort through August 31 was off by 16% in Massachusetts, 53% in Rhode Island, 9% in Connecticut, 46% in New York and 17% in New Jersey, and down 29% for all five states combined.

Since effort has a big impact on the size of the harvest, it’s probably not surprising that summer flounder landings, measured in numbers of fish harvested, were also down by 55% when compared to 2016.  Black sea bass were down by 18%, while scup landings were effectively flat.

In the case of summer flounder, some reduction was expected.  The three states that account for the lion’s share of recreational summer flounder landings, Connecticut, NewYork and New Jersey, were supposed to reduce their summer flounder harvest byabout 30% (although New Jersey’s actual reduction was expected to be significantly less than that, thanks to the Commerce Department’s wrongheaded decision), so the portion of the 2017 reduction in landings that would theoretically be attributable to a reduction in effort would be about 25%.

 

Recreational scup landings were also supposed to be reduced,by 29%.  While no reduction appears to have been achieved when landings are calculated in numbers of fish harvested, when landings are calculated in pounds, a 21% reduction—about ¾ of the reduction required—was realized.

Black sea bass landings were expected to be about flat (although a reduction had originally been required, based on some questionable late-seasonlandings data), so the 18% reduction can be attributed to reduced effort overall, although both the landings and the number of directed black sea bass trips jumped in New Jersey, by 196% and 146%, respectively.  That increase, compared to decreases in other states, is probably attributable to the fact that New Jersey’s minimum size is a mere 12 ½ inches, compared to 15 inches for the other four states, meaning that New Jersey anglers would be able to retain black sea bass that anglers from the other states would have to release.

Now, the big question is, how will those low landings numbers impact 2018 regulations.

Generally, regulations are judged on their performance.  If they successfully constrained landings at or just a bit below the recreational harvest limit, regulations will normally remain unchanged in the following year, provided that the recreational harvest limit also stays the same.  However, if regulations either allow harvest to exceed the harvest limit, or cause much of the recreational quota to remain unfilled, a modification can usually be expected.

Typically, such regulatory changes are based solely on harvest, with no consideration to whether harvest was or is likely to be impacted by the effects of weather, year classes entering or leaving the fishery, effort shifting between fisheries or similar, non-landings-related matters.

That is a particular concern in 2018, for should regulations be liberalized due to this year’s low landings, either coastwide or in any particular state, next season, and effort returns to 2016 levels, significant overfishing would inevitably occur.

In the case of summer flounder, the recreational harvest limit is going to be increased by about 17% in 2018, which will provide some buffer against any increase in effort.  Even so, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council staff noted that

“the very low landings thus far in 2017 appear to be consistent with declining trends in nearly all fishery independent indices of abundance used in the assessment.  Staff recommend using precaution in pursuing substantial changes to measures given summer flounder stock status, uncertainty in the recreational data, and the large variation in observed harvest resulting from very similar management measures in recent years.  Summer flounder biomass is estimated at 58% of the target biomass.  Declining trends in most indices did not appear to improve with the 2017 data update, and several declined further, a potential indication that projected increases in biomass in 2018 [on which the 17% harvest increase was based] may not be realized…”

Based on such factors, Council staff recommended that ASMFC

“maintain largely status quo management measures given the uncertainty of recreational data,”

although that recommendation didn’t foreclose the possibility of returning to an 18-inch minimum size in the states landing most of the summer flounder.

It will be interesting to see whether that advice is heeded. 

I have little doubt that, there in New York, the same angling industry that rails against the Marine Recreational Information Program, and constantly cries out that “the numbers are wrong,” when the data results in more restrictive regulations, will embrace the current estimate, showing a 73% reduction in landings, and use it to demand a substantial liberalization of size limit, bag limit and season.  

Although I believe that state managers will do their best to resist the most extreme requests, it will be interesting to see just how much liberalization will be allowed.

In the case of black sea bass, Council staff recommended that the recreational harvest limit remain the same, but specifically states that such recommendation is not necessarily an endorsement of status quo management measures, and specifically recommends a reduction in the federal bag limit, which would allow managers to eliminate the current mid-September to mid-October closure of the federal fishery, which often conflicts with state regulations.

While that would be a positive change in the regulations, the risk again arises that state regulations could be excessively liberalized; that is again a particular concern in New York, where landings for the first eight months of the year fell by 78%, and there will undoubtedly be heavy pressure to reduce the size limit, lengthen the season and increase the bag. 

Unfortunately, if the size limit is reduced, many of the smaller fish that New York anglers had to release in 2017 would be harvested next season, and New York’s 2018 landings, and New York’s 2018 effort, could well spike in the same way that New Jersey landings and effort spiked this year, with overfishing the likely result.

That would not be good.  Scup may present a similar case, but for a very different reason.  

Council staff advised that

“Based on the projected 2017 landings estimate of 4.49 million pounds, it is assumed that status quo measures will result in a 39% underage compared to the 2018 [recreational harvest limit].”

Such advice seems reasonable, and will likely result in regulations being relaxed in 2018.  The only problem with such relaxation is the simple fact that fish grow.

In a typical year, the four states between New York and Massachusetts account for at least 95% of the recreational scup landings.  In 2016 and 2017, about the same number of fish were landed—2.7 million fish and 2.6 million fish, respectively.  However, MRIP data shows that the scup landed in 2017 averaged quite a bit smaller.  New York for-hire captains I’ve spoken to provided anecdotal support for that conclusion, observing that there weren’t many big fish being caught this season.  Thus, the poundage of the scup caught in the four-state region dropped about 22% this year, compared to 2016.

Council staff’s prediction of a 39% underage assumes that the scup caught in 2018 will, on average, be the same size as the scup caught this season.  But if most of the scup caught this year were relatively small, it is certain that next year, the average size of the fish will increase, meaning that regulations adopted to erase all or most of a 39% underage based on weight will very probably lead to overfishing.

Thus, in the case of all three species—summer flounder, scup and black sea bass—arguments could be made for increasing either federal or state regulations, based on unexpectedly low 2017 landings.  

Yet in the case of all three species, there are reasons to believe that significantly relaxed regulations could easily result in sharply increased landings next year, which will inevitably lead to much more restrictive regulations, and substantial angler discontent, in 2019.

So yes, there may be room for an 18-inch summer flounder, a longer black sea bass season or a small increase in the black sea bass bag.

But beyond that, managers should let prudence prevail, and relax the rules slowly, to better assure that hidden pitfalls don’t cause good intentions to lead to an unnecessarily bad outcome.