On March 28 and 29, the National Marine Fisheries Service
(NMFS), with the cooperation of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Service
(ASMFC), held the 2018 Recreational Fishing Summit in Alexandria, Virginia.
Such summits have been held every four years or so. I’ve
attended the last few, and in previous years was underwhelmed, as the programs
have too often been used by various organizations to coopt anglers’ voices, and to promote their own agendas.
That was a particular problem in 2014, when various
organizations affiliated with what is now known as the Center for Sportfishing
Policy (Center) used the Summit to spotlight their recently-issued
manifesto, “A Vision for Managing America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries,” (Vision
Report) to kick off their campaign to weaken the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens),
and promote the legislation that they call the “Modern Fish Act.”
I’m
happy to report that the 2018 summit was quite a bit different. Diverse
viewpoints were represented, and no one agenda dominated the discussions.
At first, it didn’t look like
that was going to happen. The agenda seemed freighted with Modern Fish Act
talking points, and the keynote speaker was Bill Shedd, Vice Chairman of the
Center, who immediately began urging anglers to support that legislation.
Fortunately, and contrary to at least one industry report that claimed otherwise, that was the last
time that the Modern fish Act was mentioned by any of the presenters. Instead,
attendees had the opportunity to hear from panels of experts that were drawn
from everywhere between the Atlantic Coast and American Samoa, who brought a
wide range of perspectives to all of the issues addressed.
We were scheduled to address four general topics over the four
days; the first was “Innovative Management Alternatives and Approaches,” a
concept seemingly similar to the “alternative management measures” that were
extensively discussed in the Vision Report and are a regular talking point for Modern
Fish Act supporters. However, when the conversation began, it was
refreshingly objective.
Kenneth Haddad, an advisor to
the American Sportfishing Association, clearly wanted to move fishery managers
away from poundage-based annual catch limits, but failed to propose any clearly
viable alternatives.
He admitted that two proposed
approaches, using annual catch (removal) rates instead of hard-poundage limits,
and restricting anglers to fishing inside a designated depth contour or
distance from shore, were “not extensively researched,” and that the former
would require managers to expend substantial resources to develop the annual
recruitment indices and abundance estimates needed to make a rate-based
management program work.
He mentioned other possible
approaches, virtually all beset by problems, although one idea—setting optimum
yield well below maximum sustainable yield to increase fish abundance and
better support fisheries for species that are often released, such as king
mackerel—seemed to be both a practical and a desirable management option.
However, Mr. Haddad clearly misspoke when he said that
Magnuson-Stevens placed a “stifling pall” on such innovative management
measures because of its “prescriptive nature,” and suggested that managers
“needed to push the envelope or push change to test and allow new management
approaches.” As made clear in the published guidelines to Magnuson-Stevens’ National Standard One, the law
already allows the use of many so-called “alternative” management measures,
specifically including managing by catch rate, and no changes to current law
are needed to put such approaches in place.
That point was driven home by
Alan Risenhoover, the Director of the Office of Sustainable Fisheries at the National
Marine Fisheries Service. He emphasized the considerable flexibility already
allowed in the National Standard One guidelines, and also emphasized one point
that, although obvious, often gets lost in the alternative management debate:
“Preventing overfishing keeps everybody in business.”
Other speakers addressed
issues such as the need to develop data that would allow fishery management
decisions to be made more quickly, so that managers could make timely
adjustments in response to changes in fish abundance, and developing innovative
ways to purchase quota from the commercial fishing industry, in order to assure
a sufficient supply of fish for the for-hire fleet and its customers.
After the initial panel
discussion, we moved to a more general discussion of items that were
particularly relevant to each section of coast. Not surprisingly, improving the
timeliness and accuracy of fisheries data was an overarching concern; although
it was not really an alternate management approach, everyone recognized that
good data was the key to good fishery decisions. Attendees also generally
recognized that obtaining good data required adequate funding of
data-collection efforts.
Beyond that, anglers
suggested a wide range of “alternative” management measures. Ecosystem-based
fishery management and the preservation of forage fish populations were
mentioned, as was the need to recognize catch-and-release as a legitimate use
of recreational allocations, and not merely a reason to reallocate unharvested
recreational quota to the commercial sector.
Eliminating annual catch
limits from some or all recreational fisheries, as proposed in some versions of
the Modern Fish Act, generated very little enthusiasm at all.
Anglers also seemed to have
little enthusiasm for the second discussion topic, Socioeconomics in
Recreational Fisheries Management. Only 60% of attendees responding to a
pre-meeting survey thought that the topic deserved “high” or the “highest”
priority, placing it last among the four topics discussed. Still, the panel
presentation was comprehensive, and competently addressed a number of
socioeconomic issues.
In the general discussion
that followed the panel presentation, some of those present, who had served on
regional fishery management councils, observed that biology, and the need to
avoid overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks, drives most management
decisions; socioeconomics, while considered, is rarely if ever a decisive
factor. Thus, anglers pay socioeconomics relatively little heed.
But if attendees were generally
indifferent to socioeconomics, they were deeply interested in helping NMFS
improve its data collection. Fully 80% of the attendees listed it among their
top priorities; no other topic got a higher rating. Even when the other topics
were being discussed, data issues always managed to wriggle into the
conversations, and rise to the top of anglers’ concerns.
We were asked to consider how anglers could contribute to the
data-gathering process; it’s not as simple a question as it might seem, since
the key is getting a statistically-valid sample. Anglers seem loath to report
their catches; even in the case of Atlantic bluefin tuna, where reporting is
required by law, only about 20% of the anglers comply. In Alabama, where anglers are
required to report their red snapper catch, overall compliance has never climbed much above 30%, and for
some periods, was as low as 7%.
Managers also realize that a
universal, mandatory reporting requirement is impractical. Not only would the
data from millions of anglers overwhelm the processing system, but requiring
anglers to report every family fishing trip, no matter how casual, would take a
lot of fun out of the fishing experience just when NMFS and the states are
trying to get more people out on the water.
Yet if angler reporting is
voluntary, how will managers be able to keep bias out of the system? Bias can
come from a lot of sources. Will all anglers, of all experience and interest
levels, choose to report at the same rate? Or will some very engaged anglers
report on all of their trips, others report only those trips where they were
very successful, and others not report at all, because they don’t want fishery
managers to know what they’re catching? Or will some of those mistrustful
anglers actually make false reports, hoping to manipulate the management process,
and produce a result they desire?
It quickly became clear that
the data-gathering process was a lot more complicated than anyone believed, yet
at the same time everyone offered suggestions ranging from smart-phone apps, to
government-sponsored “brag boards” where anglers could show off their catch to
the creation of rewards-based reporting systems, trying to make things better.
Like data, using conservation
measures to improve angling was a high-priority issue, at the top of 75% of the
attendees’ lists. And like data, it engendered a wide-ranging conversation that
revealed how complicated the topic really is. Some of the issues, such as
ecosystem and forage fish management, that were discussed in the initial,
innovative management section, arose again. The related need for stable, intact
habitats was also mentioned, coupled with the need for government agencies to
cross jurisdictional boundaries and address such things as clean water issues
that arise inland, but can have a marked effect on the coast.
Other suggestions were also
made, such as crafting fishing seasons to minimize barotrauma problems, keeping
them closed during those times of the year when fish reside in deep waters. But
the most important thing probably wasn’t the suggestions themselves, although
NMFS will hopefully find some of them useful. It was the fact that anglers from
every coast, with different opinions and outlooks, were willing to come
together to spend two days poking and prodding the management process, putting
their egos and their special interests aside in the hope of making that process
work better for everyone.
The only discordant notes,
when they came, came not from the anglers, but from what was said, and not
said, by some high-level government officials.
Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet,
the acting head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
was clearly proud of his agency’s record of repealing what he called
“burdensome fishing regulations”; he bragged that NOAA’s 50 deregulatory
actions “were an order of magnitude larger than at other agencies.” He didn’t
mention conservation at all.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur
Ross struck a similar tone when he addressed the assembled anglers and fishery
managers. He assured us that “The Trump Administration is working hard to
support your right to fish,” and that he “intends to cut billions of dollars in
burdensome regulations” affecting our fisheries. He said that he was committed
to “maximizing sustainable yield.”
He proudly listed what he viewed as his list of accomplishments
for recreational fishermen: Allowing New Jersey to remain out of compliance with the
Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s summer flounder management plan
(which injected turmoil and uncertainty into what had been a successful
interstate management system), reopening the private boat red snapper season in
the Gulf of Mexico (despite knowing that it would lead to overfishing, and was
contrary to explicit provisions of Magnuson-Stevens) and opening a short “emergency” red snapper season in the
South Atlantic (even though the Science and Statistical Committee of the South
Atlantic Fishery Management Council didn’t have a sufficient
opportunity to evaluate the impacts of such action).
As was the case with Rear
Admiral Gallaudet’s talk, the need to maintain the health and abundance of U.S.
fish stocks was not mentioned in his presentation.
Despite that, we left on a
good note. The last non-agency speaker to address the event was New York
charter boat captain John McMurray, whose closing statement offered a stirring
counterpoint to Bill Shedd’s opening statement.
Where Shedd aggressively
promoted industry and anglers’ rights organizations such as the American
Sportfishing Association and Coastal Conservation Association, holding them out
as catalysts of change, Capt. McMurray talked about the legion of
conservation-minded anglers who had no public representation at all, since the
big national organizations have abandoned their conservation heritage, and now
seek to weaken federal fisheries laws.
Where Shedd called for open-ocean aquaculture, and was willing to accept whatever
risks that entails, to “grow the marine resource pie,” Capt. McMurray talked
about growing the pie the old-fashioned way, through conservative management
measures that create the sort of abundant fish stocks that anglers, and charter
fishing businesses like his, need to survive.
Some of the fishermen present
clearly agreed; others most likely did not. But speaking to anglers after the
meeting, I got the impression that many took Capt. McMurray’s message to heart.
That’s good. We can only hope
that NMFS took his message to heart as well.
-----
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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