For
many years, anglers have criticized estimates of recreational fish landings
produced by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which are used by
fishery managers to set seasons, bag limits and other regulations. Such anglers
typically argue that NMFS overestimates recreational harvest, which results in
unnecessary restrictions being placed on recreational fishermen.
The Jersey Coast Anglers’ Association
expressed such an opinion in 2013, when it challenged the Atlantic
States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) proposed black sea bass management
program, arguing, “It is obvious that the problem lies with an unrealistic
harvest limit…and the continued reliance on the fatally flawed [Marine
Recreational Fishing Statistical Survey] data which has not been significantly
improved by the introduction of the new [Marine Recreational Information
Program] system.”
About a year earlier, Jim Donofrio, Executive Director of the
Recreational Fishing Alliance, also expressed concern about
the data developed by the newly-adopted Marine Recreational Information Program
(MRIP), saying that “I would love to join the rest of the fishing community in
celebrating the good times ahead, but if the [Marine Recreational Fishing
Statistical Survey] staff is using the same effort and participation data
coupled with inadequate intercept data generated over the past 33 years, then
I’m not so sure that we’ve turned a corner instead of just running around in
more circles.”
Such critics should have been pleased to learn that NMFS had
similar concerns about the accuracy of its recreational catch and effort data.
Beginning in 2008, it began exploring
ways to improve the accuracy and the efficiency of its
estimates. Finally, on July 9, 2018, NMFS announced revised recreational catch and
effort estimates dating back to 1981.
That announcement was good
news, because more accurate catch and effort estimates will lead to more
accurate stock assessments; such assessments will, in turn, lead to more
effective regulations that can better prevent overfishing, rebuild overfished
stocks and keep fish stocks abundant and healthy in the long term.
Unfortunately, because the
revised estimates indicated that the effort, and so the catch of anglers
fishing from private boats and from shore (party and charter boats are covered
by a different survey) was substantially higher than previously thought, some
people didn’t wait to get the full story before they declared that the sky was
about to fall.
One well-known gadfly from the for-hire sector
was quick to announce that “We’re About To Go WAY Over Quota in
Almost Every Fishery (according to soon-worsening catch data) I Anticipate Many
Recreational Fisheries Will See Closures [sic]…We’ll soon be so over quota, in
every fishery, that our rod-racks will become wall-mounted spider farms long
before we’re allowed to fish again.”
While such statements may
serve to stir up discontent, they fall a very long way from the truth. They’re
based on the false notion that higher recreational landings necessarily mean
that anglers are overfishing, and that regulations will need to grow more
restrictive, in order to get such overfishing under control. The truth is that,
right now, no one really knows what the higher landings mean.
In announcing the revised catch
and effort estimates , NMFS tried to reassure anglers, letting
them know that “the increase in effort estimates is because the [Fishing Effort
Survey (FES)] does a better job of estimating fishing activity, not a sudden
rise in fishing…Implications of the revised estimates on all managed species
will not be fully understood until they are incorporated into the stock
assessment process over the next several years…In the meantime, the new FES
data can be back calculated into the [previous estimates] to allow for an
apples-to-apples comparison of catch estimates with management benchmarks, such
as annual catch limits, that were based on the [earlier estimates]…”
So no, the revised estimates will not immediately cause anglers
to exceed their catch limits and shut fisheries down. The higher catch numbers
could even be viewed as good news, for as NMFS notes ,
“Because the number of fish being caught is an indicator of fishery health, if
effort rates were actually higher in the past than we estimated, then it is
possible we were underestimating the number of fish in the population to begin
with.”
Whatever the implications of the new estimates, many anglers are
probably curious as to why the revisions occurred, and why angling catch and
effort estimates were revised upward. That is all explained in two NMFS videos ,
but the short version is this.
NMFS used to use something
called the Coastal Household Telephone Survey (Telephone Survey) to estimate
angling effort. It made calls to randomly-selected households in coastal
counties, with no prior knowledge of whether or not anyone in such households was
a recreational fisherman. The percentage of calls that successfully contacted
an angler was relatively low, which limited the amount of data that could be
obtained.
The Telephone Survey was
replaced by the FES, which uses lists of registered salt water anglers,
augmented by a United States Postal Service list of households to capture
effort by anglers who are not on the registration lists, to mail out a
hard-copy survey. Although it seems counterintuitive, such old-fashioned “snail
mail” actually produces much better information.
That’s because, by addressing
most of the surveys to registered anglers, NMFS is able to reach more
recreational fishermen, and better assure that the surveys actually get into
such fishermen’s hands. The combination of a better-targeted survey and an
improved questionnaire led to response rate that was three times greater than
the response to the Telephone Survey; in addition, responders provided more
complete data.
In most surveys, higher
response rates and improved data will lead to better results. The catch and
effort estimates gleaned from the FES were no exception to that rule.
NMFS explains that there are
two reasons why the revised catch and effort estimates are higher than those
developed through the Telephone Survey.
The first, deemed the
“Telephone vs. Mail Factor,” boils down to the fact that people respond
differently to mail surveys, which they can answer thoughtfully and at their
leisure, than they do to telephone calls, which demand immediate attention and
require instant response. The second is what NMFS calls the “Wireless Effect.”
It has been a factor since 2000, when the use of cellular phones became
widespread enough to seriously limit the number of households reached through
the random Telephone Survey; a developing trend of people with “landline”
phones taking, on average, fewer fishing trips than those without landlines has
made the Wireless Effect even more powerful in recent years.
Due to those two factors, the
difference between the original and the revised catch estimates remained fairly
constant from 1981 through 1999, when the Telephone vs. Mail Factor was the
only consideration, and increased substantially after 2000, when the Wireless
Effect also played a big role.
The revised estimates for
shore-based anglers were roughly five times higher than those developed through
the Telephone Survey; estimates for private-boat anglers did not quite triple,
which remains a substantial increase.
Thus, it shouldn’t come as a
surprise that the species reflecting the greatest increases in landings include
those that are most often caught from shore. Bluefish led the pack, with recent
landings about four times as high as previously thought. Revised estimates for
striped bass, another popular target for surfcasters, were three times higher
than the earlier figures. Fish that are typically caught by boat fishermen,
such as summer flounder, black sea bass, South Atlantic gag grouper, Gulf of
Mexico red snapper, and Atlantic cod, showed revised catch estimates that are
typically about 2 ½ times as high as estimates derived through the Telephone
Survey.
NMFS doesn’t yet know what
the new data means. It <strongcould
impact the status of some stocks, some management measures, and the allocations
between the commercial and recreational sectors. But it won’t necessarily lead
to any of those things.</strong
Until the revised estimates are incorporated into stock
assessments, no one at NMFS is venturing any guesses about how the data will impact
different species. It’s very possible that higher recreational harvest from
some still-healthy stocks will demonstrate that such fish are more abundant and
able to withstand more fishing pressure than previously believed, and will lead
to higher catch limits. It’s also possible that higher recreational landings
will at least partially explain why some stocks have never rebuilt to target
levels, despite years of management efforts.
Anglers should get their
first real indications of the revised estimates’ impact late in 2018, when
benchmark stock assessments for striped bass and summer flounder are released.
Assessment updates for a host of other species, including Gulf of Mexico red
snapper, Atlantic cod, bluefish, black sea bass and scup, will follow shortly
thereafter, and should provide additional insight.
Until the assessments come
out, all that anglers can do is wait, learn about the new survey, and rest
assured that the end of the world is not nigh.
-----
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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