Many anglers and conservationists were disappointed last
month when the
Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management
Board caved in to the demands (and perhaps threats) from the Omega Protein
Corporation and the Commonwealth of Virginia, and failed to adopt interim
reference points that would have required managers to consider menhaden’s value
as a forage fish, as well as the mere sustainability of the fishery, when
adopting annual quotas.
For over the past decade or so, it has become increasingly
clear that traditional single-species management, which considers the harvest
of each species in a vacuum, and not in the context of entire ecosystems, is
not the best way to manage fisheries, particularly fisheries for forage fish—the
fish that everything else, including the most valued commercial and
recreational species, feed on.
Although there may be exceptions, forage fish generally have
very low value, and to be profitable, must be prosecuted on a high-volume
basis. Thus, we see the
menhaden fishery land nearly 1.75 billion pounds of product, that’s worth a
mere $181 million dollars—just 10 cents per pound. That’s a lot of fish being sold for very
little money, which will end up as food for farmed fish in China, instead of for
striped bass, king mackerel and humpback whales in the waters of the U.S.
While menhaden are an important forage fish along the entire East
Coast, but it’s easy to argue that up in New England, it’s importance is
eclipsed by that of Atlantic herring.
Herring support a fishery, too. It’s
not as big as the one for menhaden—a
little less than 138 million pounds are landed—and the fish are a little
more valuable—about 21 cents per pound—but still falls well within the “high
volume, low value” category.
But herring aren’t low-value in the New England
ecosystem. They
are critical forage for bluefin tuna, as well as for more mundane, but
still valuable species such as striped bass and cod. And when the herring aren’t around, the bigger
fish that eat them, and are in turn sought by fishermen, often aren’t around
either.
John Pappalardo, executive director of the Cape Cod Commercial
Fishermen’s Alliance, says that
“Our guys are not fishing the way they did 12 years ago
around the Cape because those fish aren’t there because the bait isn’t
there. We live in a migratory corridor
here. We depend on the bait to be there.”
The region’s fishermen, both commercial and recreational, have
asked the New England Fishery Management Council to draft a regulation that
would force the big herring trawlers to fish farther offshore, and prevent them
from impoverishing the inshore ecosystem.
It’s a controversial request, not only because of the
inevitable opposition from the big trawl operators, but because it
involves the much-debated topic of “localized depletion,”
“a reduction of population size, independent of the overall
status of the stock, over a relatively small spatial area as a result of
intensive fishing.”
Thus, intensive forage fish harvest can result in localized
depletion of a species occurring in one particular place, at one particular
time, even though the overall stock of fish is extremely healthy. That has led to the concept being challenged
when brought up in a management context.
As one
former member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, who has had to
deal with the question at various meetings, has written
“So, some industry reps have successfully argued that it’s
not ‘depletion’ or a conservation issue at all.
It’s simply a ‘gear conflict’ issue—big industrial boats impacting
smaller boats. By framing it in this
way, they can argue that they have a right to be there as much as any other
resource user. I’ve heard industry reps
say that no one group ‘owns the ocean.’
That may be true. But if that’s
the case, one resource user shouldn’t be able to ruin things for the rest of us…this
IS a public resource.”
The good news is that on December 5, the
Council responded to the Cape Codder's concerns by releasing a draft Amendment 8 to its fishery management
plan for Atlantic herring for public comment. Of the Amendment’s ten options, nine (the
tenth is status quo management) would each
“establish a long-term acceptable biological catch (ABC)
control rule that ‘may explicitly account for the herring’s role in the
ecosystem and address the biological and ecological requirements of the stock.”
That’s a big deal.
Regulations—which is what would result from a control rule—that
would “explicitly account” for a forage fish’s “role in the ecosystem” were
exactly what folks hoped would come out of last month’s menhaden meeting. While there’s still a chance that will happen
in the future—menhaden-specific ecosystem reference points are still being
developed; the rejected interim reference points were far more generic—seeing the
same issue crop up in the case of Atlantic herring makes it clear that managers
still see value in the concept, applied to other forage species.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that such a control rule will
be adopted; the big trawl operators will be pushing hard for status quo. They’re the folks best positioned to bring money and lobbyists and political
connections to bear on this issue—and if we’ve learned anything from the Gulf
recreational red snapper reopening and the New
Jersey summer flounder debacle, it’s that money, lobbyists and political
connections, rather than good science, is what matters with the folks currently
holding the reins in Washington.
But the very fact that the New England Fishery Management
Council, a council that has historically lagged all of the others when it comes
to conserving fish stocks, is looking at Atlantic herring in an ecosystem context gives some reason for hope in a year
that has seen a number of U.S. fish stocks take serious body blows from a newly
erratic management system.
This is an issue worth following, worth commenting on, and
worth supporting, and may represent a little good news at an otherwise dismal time.
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