Fishery management meetings can be very mundane, on those
rare days when there’s no one disputing the data, allocations aren’t being
contested and the need for management measures is clear.
Or they can be bare-knuckled brawls, which pit sectors
against sectors, regions against regions or conservationists
against the fast-buck crowd. At those
times, tempers flare, pointed comments are thrown and the lambent hostility
seems to thicken the air in the room—and that’s just at the management table. The mood of the audience can make a lynch mob seem tame.
Yet hostility seldom solves problems, and often makes it far
more difficult for people to find workable solutions. While it may be immediately satisfying to
posture and make a lot of hostile noise, particularly when cronies are cheering out in the crow, such posturing only causes folks on the other side of an
issue to dig in their heels, and be less willing to forge any sort of
compromise.
Often, the louder you yell, the less you are heard.
Thus, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission
held its spring meeting a little over a week ago, it was refreshing to see a particularly thorny black sea bass debate resolved through
well-crafted diplomacy, rather than by forcing votes that, regardless of the
outcome, were likely to lead to more problems.
Allocation was the key
issue, and as anyone familiar with fisheries issues knows, allocation
squabbles can be very bitter, and are some of the most difficult fights to
resolve.
The black sea bass problem was spawned from a typical set of circumstances. Warming
water had caused the fish’s distribution to shift northward; the fishery in
southern states, which had dominated recreational landings a couple of decades
ago, had declined, while northern states that had more modest fisheries at the
turn of the century suddenly found themselves hosting the lion’s share of the
fish.
A
recent benchmark stock assessment divided the stock into northern and southern
components, and recognized the northern shift in black sea bass abundance. However, regulations remained mired in past
patterns, allowing the southern states, that used to have a lot of fish, to
maintain very liberal management measures, while forcing the northern states,
where most of the fish now are found and are caught, into ever more restrictive
regulatory regimes as their anglers merely
caught the fish that teemed at their doorstep.
That was true even though such benchmark assessment found
that
“Relative to F40% (0.355 in the north, 0.365 in the south)
[which represents the fishing mortality threshold], the retro adjusted [fishing
mortality] in the north (0.14) is well below the threshold wheras retro
adjusted [fishing mortality] in the south (0.39) is slightly above…”
meaning that the southern states were arguably overfishing
their local black sea bass population (although, since one set of reference
points are used for the entire stock, such local overfishing does not trigger
any sort of remedial action).
The northern states—those between New York and
Massachusetts—believed that the historical approach to black sea bass led to an
inequitable result, and tried to correct the problem. Unfortunately, when the issue ultimately came
to a vote, the southern states remained deeply committed to their outdated
catch histories, and were unwilling to adopt a new allocation that fully
reflected the current distribution of black sea bass. Because there are more southern than
northern states, which lets them control ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea
Bass Management Board, the
northern states were forced into a so-called “compromise” that compelled them
to increase restrictions on harvest once again.
“I don’t need to go to two decimal places to count 6 to
4. That is my problem. I do appreciate the fact that we just spent a
lot of time trying to cooperate. When
you’re bargaining from a losing position to start with, it really doesn’t make
you all that comfortable…”
In the end, the northern states appealed the Management
Board’s decision to ASMFC’s Policy Board, and that’s where the diplomacy came
in.
At first, it appeared that the northern states had only two
choices. They could take an appeal on
the merits of their case and, if the appeal was not successful, they could go
out of compliance with ASMFC’s black sea bass management plan, as
New Jersey defied ASMFC on summer flounder last season.
Neither option was all that palatable.
Historically, appeals to the policy board usually failed;
there was no assurance that a black sea bass appeal, however meritorious, would
fare any better.
And going out of compliance could have led to even worse
outcomes than the Management Board’s decision imposed.
Ultimately, the states would have to justify their
noncompliance to the Secretary of Commerce who, if he ended up dismissing their
arguments, had the power to shut down their black sea bass fisheries until they
complied. On the other hand,
if the Secretary found their noncompliance justifiable, such finding, combined
with the similar finding made with respect to New Jersey’s summer flounder fishery
last year, could have emasculated ASMFC’s enforcement powers, and caused
serious long-term harm to East Coast fisheries.
Fortunately, the northern states found a more diplomatic
approach to their problem, and like most good diplomacy, it involved both a
carrot and a stick.
So the stage was set for a true compromise that would give everyone some sort of win in 2018.
But the really big win for the northern states will come in the
future, as the Policy Board directed the Management Board to base 2019
recreational measures and, eventually, commercial measures as well, on current
patterns of black sea bass abundance, and not on obsolete historical data.
That just shows what diplomacy—and hard work—can do.
But that was never going to happen. Those who claim otherwise are just fooling
themselves—or, perhaps, trying hard to fool someone else. There are real limits to what the fishery management
system allows, and changing that system takes time.
But change, for black sea bass, is coming next year, thanks
to the effective diplomacy of fishery managers in the northern states.
For that, they deserve a big round of thanks.
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