Sunday, September 23, 2018

MODERN FISH ACT SUPPORTERS STILL DISTORTING REALITY



Its supporters know that if they don’t get the bill signed into law soon, and if control of the House of Representatives changes hands, as it’s now predicted to do, they will lose their best chance in many years to substantially weaken the conservation and stock rebuilding provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. 

Only one barrier stands in their way, and that’s the lack of a companion bill in the Senate.

So far, no Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill has been introduced in the upper chamber of Congress, so H.R. 200 supporters need a different sort of vehicle to get their bill passed if they are to have any hope of emasculating the science-based federal fishery management system before the 115th Congress draws to a close.  Thanks to members of the recreational fishing and boatbuilding community, who are more than willing to strike a Devil’s bargain with those who have long been trying to gut Magnuson-Stevens, H.R. 200 supporters still have one viable chance to succeed.

It takes the form of a bill numbered S. 1520, the  “Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act,” better known, thanks to a massive and well-funded public relations campaign, as the “Modern Fish Act.”

S. 1520, along with its House companion, H.R. 2023, was originally crafted by recreational fishing and boatbuilding industry groups, and various anglers’ rights organizations, as a way to increase recreational landings of various species of fish, particularly in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, and thus, at least in theory, bring greater economic gains to fishing tackle and boating industry businesses.

The Modern Fish Act didn’t seek to increase the recreational kill by rebuilding still-depleted stocks or maintaining the abundance of healthy fish populations.  Instead, it was built around a two-pronged strategy of impairing the commercial fishing industry.  

Once prong sought to both shift allocation from the commercial sector to anglers, and impair fishery managers’ ability to experiment with new and innovative methods that might allow them to create healthy and sustainable commercial fisheries.  The other prong would free the recreational sector from much of the burden of conserving fish stocks, even when anglers are responsible for most of the landings, while being more tolerant of overfishing and delays in rebuilding overfished stocks.

Many of the most objectionable provisions of S. 1520 were either watered down or completely eliminated during the committee mark-up process that took place months ago.  Now, there are reports coming out of the Senate that the bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) is circulating another version of the bill that has been watered down even further, to the point that it has become an almost trivial piece of legislation—except for its potential to open the door to H.R. 200’s passage.

That potential exists because the House of Representatives failed to move its Modern Fish Act, H.R. 2023, forward.  

Instead, late last year, Modern Fish Act supporters made their Devil’s bargain, agreeing to support the conservation-hostile H.R. 200 if it was amended to include many of H.R. 2023’s provisions.  In return for things such as regular reviews of recreational/commercial allocations in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, eliminating annual catch limits in some or all recreational fisheries and halting the creation of catch-share programs that help prevent overfishing, the recreational/boatbuilding cabal was willing to accept provisions that could, for example, indefinitely delay the rebuilding of just about any managed fish stock.


Their ultimate goal is clearly to get an effectively neutered S. 1520 passed in the Senate, then send the two alleged “Modern Fish Act” bills to conference, where a handful of legislators, working largely out of the public eye and without any meaningful public input or debate, can craft a Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill that could incorporate most of the worst parts of H.R. 200 into federal law, while tossing the Modern Fish Act folks enough crumbs, on allocation issues and such, to allow them to claim a “win.”

So the Modern Fish Act crowd is pushing hard to get everything done before too much time passes and H.R. 200 goes to its well-deserved grave.  In order to take their bill across the finish line, they are clearly willing do distort reality to fit their narrative, something that became very apparent in a recent op-ed that appeared in the (Mississippi) Clarion Ledger.


The distortions begin at the very beginning of the piece, which seems to suggest that the purpose of Magnuson-Stevens is to promote the recreational fishing and boating industries.  After a brief, one-sentence introductory paragraph that merely notes that 11 million anglers fish in salt water, the piece kicks off by saying

“In Mississippi, saltwater recreational fishing has a total sales impact of $656 million annually and supports 9.511 jobs.  As Congress considers updating our nation’s principal fishing law—the Magnuson-Stevens Act—it is important to our state to pay attention to the challenges facing marine recreational anglers and the marine recreational fishing industry…”
Later in the op-ed, Faulkner expands on the same theme, noting that

“…more than 70 percent are bought so owners can fish from them.  Confidence of having access to fisheries goes a long way in the decision to purchase a boat.  Considering that the recreational boating industry supports more than 650,000 American jobs and annually contributes more than $121 billion to the U.S. economy, Congress should be paying attention…
“The marine recreational fishing industry contributes $63 billion a year to the U.S. economy and generates 440,000 American jobs from coast to coast and every state in between…”
The thrust of his argument was clearly that the Modern Fish Act should be adopted, and Magnuson-Stevens amended, for the good of the angling and boatbuilding industries.  The only problem is, Magnuson-Stevens isn’t a jobs bill.  Its purpose is not to protect and build up the angling and boatbuilding industries, but rather to protect and build up fish stocks, for the good of American fishermen.

And no, that’s not just my opinion.  Magnuson-Stevens clearly states its “purposes” right at the start of the bill, and foremost among them, purpose #1, is

“to take immediate action to conserve and manage the fishery resources found off the coasts of the United States, and the anadromous species and Continental Shelf fishery resources of the United States…”
The other six stated purposes include

“(2)  to support and encourage the implementation and enforcement of international fishery agreements for the conservation and management of highly migratory species…;
(3)  to promote domestic commercial and recreational fishing under sound conservation and management principles, including the promotion of catch and release programs in recreational fishing;
(4)  to provide for the preparation and implementation, in accordance with national standards, of fishery management plans which will achieve and maintain, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery;
(5)  to establish Regional Fishery Management Councils to exercise sound judgment in the stewardship of fishery resources…;
(6)  to encourage the development by the United States fishing industry of fisheries that are currently underutilized or not utilized by United States fishermen…; and
(7)  to promote the protection of essential fish habitat…”
You can the law for yourself, but I guarantee that you won’t find a single word in the law about protecting, supporting or otherwise helping out the tackle and boatbuilding industries. 

No, not one word.  

The closest it comes is in purpose #5, which notes that fishery management plans should

“take into account the social and economic needs of the States,”
but it’s a long stretch to try to twist that into the proposition that the fishery management programs should be designed to meet the needs and demands of the angling and boatbuilding industries. 

Given the context of all of the law’s stated purposes, taken together, it would be more appropriate to advise such industries to scale their ambitions to match the needs of the resource and the demands of the management process.

Naturally, the industry sees things differently.  According to Faulkner,

“federal fisheries management is limiting the true economic potential of the recreational fishing industry.  With unreasonably short seasons, abrupt fishing closures and inconsistency in setting seasons from year to year, recreational anglers are not fully confident that they will have access to America’s public marine resources under the current system.”
But, again, Magnuson-Stevens isn’t about unlocking “the true economic potential of the recreational fishing industry.”  It’s about “conserv[ing] and manag[ing] the fishery resources found off the United States,” and “promot[ing] domestic commercial and recreational fishing under sound conservation and management principles.”  

The same seasons that Faulkner deems “unreasonable” are, in the eyes of professional fisheries scientists, needed to prevent overfishing and maintain stocks at sustainable levels. 

And when you deal with living resources, nothing stays the same from year to year.  Fish numbers are not consistent; they rise and fall in accord with any number of natural and man-made conditions.  It is only reasonable that fishing seasons also expand and contract to accord with such changing abundance. 

It’s always interesting to observe that, any time managers try to reduce fishing days, industry voices will passionately cry out for seasons that remain the same every year.  However, when fish stocks increase and managers advise adding weeks, sometimes even months, to a season, there is a resounding silence; for some curious reason, not a single person who called for consistent seasons in the past will ever rise up in protest at the thought of making a season inconsistently longer

But Faulkner leaves that truth unsaid.

He does, however, drag out the canard that

“anglers and boaters are the backbone of marine conservation.  Through license sales and excise taxes paid on fishing equipment and boat motor fuel, anglers and boaters contribute $1.3 billion annually for sportfish conservation and management, boating safety and infrastructure, and habitat restoration,”
ignoring the thruth that only a small part of that $1.3 billion comes from salt water anglers, and never acknowledging that, while a portion of the revenues attributable to salt water fishing gear does fund important state conservation and management efforts, much of it also goes toward things that don’t promote conservation at all, such as salt water fish hatcheries and the aforementioned “boating safety and infrastructure,” that benefits the industry while doing nothing at all for the fish.

But the greatest distortion of all may be the suggestion that the Modern Fish Act is really modern at all, and doesn't represent several steps back into the past.  Faulkner complains that

“Retrograde management of recreational fishing guided by the woefully outdated Magnuson-Stevens Act has unnecessarily hamstrung an enormous economic driver.”
He alleges that

“The Modern Fish Act would promote public access for recreational anglers by updating federal regulations to fit recreational fishing.  By improving data collection and allowing for proven recreational fishing management approaches, we can find a better balance of angler access and conservation of our natural marine resources.”
But what Faulkner, and the rest of the Modern Fish Act—and, more to the point, H.R. 200--supporters, are actually seeking to do is not to modernize federal fishery management, but to return it to the bad old days before the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 was enacted, and the 2006 reauthorization of Magnuson-Stevens took place.

Thanks to the Sustainable Fisheries Act, overfishing may not occur, and harvest is limited to “optimum” yield, which is defined, in relevant part, as

“maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as reduced by any relevant economic, social, or ecological factor.  [emphasis added]”
Pursuant to that definition, fishermen are already landing as many fish as biologists believe is prudent; thus, the only way to further “promote public access for recreational anglers” is to substantially increase the risk of overfishing, and go back to a time when fully unleashing “an enormous economic driver” was seen as more important than conservation—at least until the fish disappeared.

In the same way, Faulkner’s reference to “allowing for proven recreational fishery management approaches” is, in effect, a euphemism for doing away with the annual catch limits and accountability measures that were part of the modernization of Magnuson-Stevens in 2006, and to go back to a time when anglers could overfish with impunity. 

The results of such “proven recreational fishery management approaches” can be seen at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which employs such recreational management measures and, as a result, has failed to rebuild a single fish stock in the past 20 years. 


That’s hardly a “modern” approach. 

But if you see the world through the distorted mirror of the H.R. 200 supporters, who are using the Modern Fish Act to achieve their goals, everything old should be deemed new again, and fishery managers should be doomed to repeat the mistakes of their past.

Hopefully, the Senate will have a much clearer vision than that, and H.R. 200 will die.


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