REP. ZELDIN CONTINUES HIS ASSAULT ON STRIPED BASS

Last week’s meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Striped Bass Management Board was expected to be uneventful.  It was only scheduled for 45 minutes of discussion, and that discussion was going to revolve around purely routine matters, including a review of state compliance with the management plan, an update on the pending benchmark stock assessment, and electing the Management Board’s Vice-Chair.

I had something planned for Wednesday afternoon, and so wasn’t able to listen in on the meeting, but in all honesty, even if my time was free, I probably wouldn’t have signed onto the webinar, as the meeting promised to be pretty dull.

Unfortunately, that promise was broken.

Things went pretty well through all of the scheduled agenda items.  There was a small hiccup involving Maryland’s compliance with circle hook requirements, and an even smaller issue involving Maine, but in the end, the compliance report sailed through the Board without a lot of debate.

No problems arose until what was usually the most innocuous part of the meeting, the call for any new business.

It’s normally routine.  More times than not, no issues are raised.  But last Wednesday, at the Management Board meeting, that wasn’t the case.  A representative of the National Marine Fisheries Service rose to inform the Management Board that, at the apparent behest of higher-ups in the Department of Commerce, NMFS will soon be holding scoping hearings on opening up sections of the Exclusive Economic Zone around Block Island to striped bass fishing.

That was a bit of a bombshell.  And things didn’t end there.  

According to folks who attended or listened in on the meeting, there was also a strong suggestion that Commerce was thinking about eliminating the 30-year-old ban on striped bass fishing in the EEZ altogether.

That would certainly be a bad thing.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-New York) has been trying to open the EEZ around Block Island for a long time.  He has stated that

“One of the top legislative priorities of Long Island fishermen is the need to clarify the federal regulations regarding striped bass fishing in the small area of federally controlled waters between Montauk Point and Block Island.”

That’s a dubious statement at best.  

I’m a long Island fisherman, and I know a lot of other Long Island fishermen, and that’s certainly not our “top legislative priorit[y].”  

We can read pretty well—as far as I know, we all made it through high school, in the day when passing English remained a graduation requirement—and the wording of the regulations in question, 50 C.F.R. 697.7(b), is already perfectly clear. 

You can’t fish for striped bass in federal waters between Montauk and Block Island.  Period.  End of discussion.  No clarification needed.

What Zeldin is trying to do isn’t to “clarify” such regulations, but to negate them.  At the least, he should be up front about that.

Of course, he might not want to take credit for some of his earlier efforts.

The first, which he launched in 2015, involved H.R. 3070, a bill that he decided to title the “EEZ Clarification Act.” 

Like his more recent efforts, H.R. 3070 didn’t “clarify” anything at all.  Instead, it muddied the waters considerably, by creating two different EEZs—the first, the boundary that we all know and love, drawn 3 miles off the Atlantic coast, and the second, a separate EEZ that would be the same as the first for most purposes, but would make some crazy zigs and zags around Block Island, and would only apply to fishery management questions.

To add a little more “clarity” to the mix, the initial draft of H.R, 3070 actually had the "second" EEZ running through the southeast corner of Block Island, so that a surfcaster with his feet firmly planted on a Block Island boulder would be illegally fishing for striped bass in federal waters, while a Montauk charter boat captain fishing dead in the middle between Block Island and the Montauk Light would be on the right side of the law.

Zeldin, or at least one of his staffers, probably should have taken the time to look at a chart before dropping that bill, but I suppose the need to frustrate conservation efforts was a far more pressing concern than drawing boundaries that made some kind of sense.

And, of course, that assumes that either he or one of his staffers would actually know how to plot out the boundaries of his "new" EEZ, and actually read a chart, if they tried to consult one.

The error must have been caught over time, because an amendment was eventually filed that did away with the “clarity” created by the two EEZs, and merely encouraged federal managers to work with ASMFC to consider opening the waters in question to striped bass fishing.

Zeldin kept trying to open federal waters off Montauk to striped bass fishing, filing H.R. 1195, the “Local Fishing Access Act,” during the most recent session of Congress, but that bill was little more than a rehash of his amended H.R. 3070. 

His next really notable event didn’t occur until about a year ago, when he seemed to hope that Long Island’s striped bass poaching community—which includes a fair number of constituents way out on the South Fork—might name him their “Man of the Year.”

He did that by having two amendments attached to the House version of last year’s Omnibus Spending Bill, which would have prevented both NMFS and the Coast Guard from spending any of their appropriated funds to enforce the regulations prohibiting striped bass fishing in federal waters north and west of Block Island.  If Rep. Zeldin had gotten his way, striped bass poachers would have been able to operate in the clear light of day, flagrantly violating the law, knowing that they were free to flip the bird to the Coast Guard and NMFS enforcement agents who might otherwise cite them for illegal striped bass harvest.

Fortunately—at least that’s what we thought at the time—the Senate watered down the language to look a lot like the language of H.R. 1195 and the amended H.R. 3070, merely encouraging NMFS to work with ASMFC to consider allowing striped bass to be harvested in a small section of the federal sea off Block Island.

Unfortunately, we weren’t as fortunate as we had first believed.

As mentioned earlier, Zeldin's revised language, NMFS is now apparently planning to hold scoping hearings on the topic, hearings that will likely lead to proposed regulations opening the EEZ, not only off Block Island, but very possibly along the entire East Coast.

That bodes ill for the striped bass, because if we’ve seen any one thing from this administration, it’s that they care little for fisheries conservation, and whether we’re talking about red snapper, summer flounder or—I’m afraid—striped bass, and are always going to favor someone making abundant dollars today over everyone having healthy fisheries tomorrow.

A lot of folks fear that, as of right now, the striped bass population is already less than healthy.  Although there was a dominant year class in 2011, and another that was significantly above-average in 2015, a 2016 stock assessment update still shows the population to be barely 1,000 metric tons above the spawning stock biomass threshold that defines an overfished stock, while 13,000 metric tons below the target that defines a fully healthy spawning stock.  The assessment update made no projections as to whether the stock is likely to increase substantially under current regulations, but found it unlikely that it would be come overfished.

At the same time, there are some members of the Striped Bass Management Board who believe that the current target and threshold are too high, and that more bass ought to be killed for the usual “socio-economic benefits” (i.e., short-term profits) that such higher kill would bring.  The upcoming benchmark stock assessment will include a range of reference points, some of which could allow a substantially larger harvest than is currently the case.

Such higher harvest, coupled with an EEZ opening, could create a perfect storm for the striped bass.

If the only thing that we were talking about was opening the EEZ on two sides of Block Island, things would be bad enough.  The additional fish that would be caught as a result (and don’t think for a minute this isn’t about killing more fish; folks wouldn’t be trying so hard, for so long, to get the rules changed) might be enough, in some years, to lead to overfishing, although any overage would probably be fairly small.

But if NMFS opened the entire EEZ...

In promoting his prior legislation, Zeldin had claimed that

“It offers a simple local solution to a unique local issue,”

comments that seemingly reflect the testimony of Capt. Joe McBride, of the Montauk Boatmen and Captains’ Association, at a December 2015 field hearing on the bill, where Capt. McBride claimed that

“This anomaly exists only in this area because of the extended distance between Block Island, RI and Montauk Point, NY…

Over the last 35 years, I’ve gone to a lot of fisheries hearings here in New York, and the Montauk for-hire fleet has always claimed that they are in some way unique, and so somehow entitled to special consideration.  But anyone familiar with the entire, coastal striped bass fishery knows that is untrue.

There are plenty of bass on Stellwagen Bank in the EEZ off northern Massachusetts, and anglers illegally fish for them there, just as they illegally target them in the EEZ off Block Island.  

Further south in the Bay State, charter boats who want to fish rips off southern Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard have their own “unique” geographical arguments to make about why the EEZ should be open along their part of the coast.

Off western New York and northern New Jersey, a spring herring run will sometimes concentrate big striped bass in the EEZ, where they are met by a big fleet of boats, including a lot of for-hires.  

That’s a pretty “unique” situation, too.  

And I’ve seen boats, private and for-hire, cross the three-mile line in the fall off Long Island, to jig striped bass feeding on sand eels.

The story’s the same as you move down the coast, where just about every state has a “unique” situation where bottom topography and bait concentrations predictably coincide, to create a “unique” situation that could be used to justify striped bass harvest in the EEZ.

But nowhere does the situation become as critical for the striped bass as it does in the winter off Virginia and North Carolina, where most of the Chesapeake stock concentrates offshore.  There, the majority of the prime brood fish—the 40, 50 and even 60-pound fish that produce huge quantities of the most viable eggs—would be vulnerable to harvest if the EEZ opened up.

An interesting story that appeared in the Roanoke (Virginia) Times provides a pretty good idea of what would happen down there if the EEZ was opened up.  The author laments

“Winter striped bass fishing big disappointment along Virginia coast,”

and goes on to say

“Statistics from the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament tell the story.  The 2013 citation count for the stripers stands at around 325, with a few more to be added as late forms are tallied.  In 2012 the count was nearly a thousand more, the second highest on record at 1,331.  Of that number, 107 fish weighed more than 50 pounds apiece; 11 of those fish were more than 60 pounds.  Included was a massive 74-pound state record…”

It’s probably no coincidence that the drop in the number of big fish being caught coincided with NMFS bringing charges against five charter boat captains who were regularly fishing for, and catching big, prime female striped bass in the EEZ off Virginia, arrests that brought penalties serious enough to incentivize fishermen--and the for-hires--to play by the rules.

So down in Virginia, the charter boats admit to being both frustrated and worried that they can’t take their passengers out into the EEZ where the big striped bass are.

It seems that they have a “unique” situation, too.

Thus, it’s pretty clear that Zeldin has opened Pandora’s Box.

He was an early supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, getting behind the then-candidate Trump well before the 2016 Republican primary.  He has remained very close to the Administration ever since.  Because of that, his continuing desire to have the EEZ opened to striped bass fishing in going to bear substantial weight with the Commerce Department.

But what Zeldin apparently didn’t appreciate—or, just as likely, he appreciated, but just didn’t care about—is that by insisting on opening the EEZ off Block Island, he drew the Administration’s attention to the entire EEZ closure.  

And once this administration starts looking at a regulation intended to promote conservation, such as the EEZ closure, the first thing they’re going to do is try to figure out how to make that regulation go away, because as any Administration official will be more than happy to tell you, conservation is bad for business, and business is the only thing that they give a single damn about.

So, while striped bass almost certainly wouldn’t take a fatal hit if the EEZ around Block Island was opened to fishing, eliminating the EEZ closure entirely would do some real harm.  

The commercial fishery wouldn’t do much more damage, because it is subject to a hard-poundage annual catch limit, and so its harvest wouldn’t automatically increase.  That’s not the case with the recreational fishery, which has no catch limit, but instead is subject only to a “soft cap” based on removal rates, and such rates aren’t even calculated every year.

Thus, recreational overfishing can go on for quite a long time before anyone even knows that it's happening.

To make things worse, the upcoming benchmark stock assessment will calculate stock health at the end of 2017, and will probably be used to establish regulations, which could well allow a bigger kill, during the course of 2019.  Such regulations would, most likely, become effective in 2020.

Because regulations to open the EEZ would probably be adopted during 2019,their effects won’t be considered in either the 2018 benchmark assessment or the regulations adopted in 2019. 

That timing, coupled with the lack of an annual catch limit for recreational fishermen, would set the stage for years of overfishing, driven by the harvest of a lot more big females in the EEZ.  Such fishing would go undetected until the stock assessment is updated in 2021 or 2022, by which point the spawning stock biomass could well be badly depleted.

Thus, the striped bass, striped bass fishermen and, appropriately, even the Montauk for-hires that have kept the EEZ issue alive will all lose, and lose badly, if the EEZ opening occurs.

But there’s no reason to believe that Zeldin is thinking that far ahead.

Which is why, when the scoping hearings begin, it will be up to folks who actually care about the striped bass, and about the future, to do his thinking for him.

Because this screw-up would be far worse than just drawing the EEZ across southeastern Block Island, in a bill that died long ago.  

And fixing it could take many years.