CHUB MACKEREL: LET'S MANAGE THEM RIGHT THE FIRST TIME AROUND

If you told me ten years ago that I’d be writing about, or even caring about, chub mackerel, I’d probably have looked at you a little funny.  Yes, I caught one every now and then, often while fishing for fluke, and I knew that they could be an important food for tuna and some other species but to be honest, they weren’t really much on my mind

I recalled Atlantic mackerel well enough, and the runs that we used to have every spring, back in the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s.  But those runs tapered off a long time ago, and they only time I thought about mackerel at all was when I was heading out on a shark trip, and stopped by the gas dock for bait.

But that all changed a few years ago.

Suddenly, chub mackerel started swarming my chum slicks, and showing up on the inshore grounds.  One day in September 2017—it was the day of the solar eclipse—I stopped by the Fire Island Reef on my way home from a black sea bass trip, hoping to put a few porgies (aka “scup”) in the cooler, and found the mackerel grabbing my clam-baited hooks before they got close to the structure below,

And chub mackerel were showing up somewhere else—in the commercial landings. 

Prior to 2010, it was rare to see many chub mackerel caught by commercial fishermen in the Mid-Atlantic.  2003 saw a whole 33 pounds being landed, while 2005 through 2009 saw no chub mackerel landings at all.  However, in 2010, more than 175,000 pounds were brought to the dock.  That spiked to more than 4,374,000 million pounds in 2013, then tapered off to a little over 1,400,000 pounds in 2015 and then to a little under 560,000 pounds in 2016, the last year for which landings are available (note that some landings also occurred in the New England and South Atlantic regions).

The timing couldn’t have been worse for the mackerel.

In 2013, the same year that Mid-Atlantic chub mackerel harvest peaked, a forage fish workshop was held in North Carolina, with the hope that it would inform federal fishery managers on an important aspect of ecosystem-based management.  In 2014, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council began thinking about how to protect unmanaged forage fish, in order to protect them from start-up fisheries that could cause harm to the stocks before biologists could figure out how to manage them.

If that process had begun in 2010, or a little before, chub mackerel would almost certainly have been safely tucked into what ultimately became the Mid-Atlantic Council’s Unmanaged Forage Omnibus Amendment, which was intended to

“prohibit the development of new and the expansion of existing directed commercial fisheries on certain unmanaged forage species in Mid-Atlantic Federal waters.”

The amendment further explained that

“The Council intends to prohibit such fisheries until they have had an adequate opportunity to assess the scientific information relating to any new or expanded directed fisheries and consider potential impacts to existing fisheries, fishing communities and the marine ecosystem.

But the fact that more than one million pounds of chub mackerel had been landed in two nearly-adjacent years, that occurred during the development of the amendment, meant that there were people who didn’t want to have their potential future incomes threatened by regulations, and they settled in to keep chub mackerel out of the Unmanaged Forage amendment.

They didn’t quite succeed.

Instead, when the final rule was issued in 2017, the National Marine Fisheries Service, following the Council’s recommendation, established a 2,860,000 pound annual catch limit for chub mackerel, which represented the average of landings in recent years.  It was a rational compromise, and given that the catch limit would only be in effect through 2020, it provided the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council with an incentive for putting a chub mackerel management plan on their front burner.

Predictably, the few entities that targeted the chub mackerel resource weren’t happy with that outcome.  When it issued the final rule, NMFS noted that

“One individual recommended that NMFS implement a 5.25 million-lb (2,381-mt) annual limit for chub mackerel because it reflects the historical fluctuation of the chub mackerel market, is more consistent with the market’s overall direction, avoids implementing artificial constraints, allows equal access to the market, and facilitates competition in the market rather than consolidating control by a select group of large vessels…Lund’s Incorporated and the [Garden State Seafood Association] support the higher limit, stating there is no evidence that the higher limit would harm the stock and that it would reduce discards until the [Mid-Atlantic Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee] can set a reasonable biologically-based limit in a future action…”

That wasn’t an unreasonable argument, although it is necessary to point out that, while there was no evidence that the higher limit would harm the stock, there was also no evidence that such higher limit was sustainable, nor that such higher level of removals wouldn’t have an adverse impact on either some predator populations or on fisheries targeting such predators.

And even though NMFS did gave no effect to such argument in the Unmanaged Forage amendment, it would certainly come up again when the Mid-Atlantic Council started to consider chub mackerel management measures, to prevent regressing to a wide-open fishery when the chub mackerel measures in the Unmanaged Forage amendment sunset on January 1, 2021.

Which brings us up to today.

The Mid-Atlantic Council has drafted a Chub Mackerel Amendment, which will become a part of the Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan, and has released a Public Hearing Document for public comment. 

The plan, as described in the Public Hearing Document, would nearly double the annual catch limit for chum mackerel, to 5,070,000 pounds (2,300 metric tons), almost, but not quite, what was suggested in some of the comments to the Unmanaged Forage amendment.

In setting that limit, the Mid-Atlantic Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee admitted that they had no biological data to go on, saying

“that insufficient information exists to assess the status and trends of chub mackerel in the northwest Atlantic and instead relied on expert judgment to derive their [allowable biological catch] recommendation.  The SSC agreed that this level of catch is unlikely to result in overfishing given the general productivity of this species in fisheries throughout the world, combined with the relatively low capacity in U.S. Atlantic waters.”

But capacity can always increase, if the fish and the markets are there.  And that statement, if anything, understated just how “insufficient” the available scientific information is.  

Elsewhere in the Public Hearing Document, that insufficiency was made clear, when the Mid-Atlantic Council stated that

“The stock structure of chub mackerel in the western Atlantic Ocean has not been well studied.  Studies from other regions suggest, based on differences in morphology, spawning seasons, and/or sizes at maturity, that sub-stocks may exist…

“Migratory patterns in the western North Atlantic are also not well understood…

“Limited quantitative estimates of the contribution of chub mackerel to the diets of any predator species are available…

“The stock status of chub mackerel in the western Atlantic Ocean is unknown as there have been no quantitative assessments of this species in this region…

“Scientific experts on the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) and the Chub Mackerel Fishery Management Action Team reviewed the available data and concluded that chub mackerel are so data poor that even stock assessment methods designed for data poor stocks would not be appropriate for this species…”

So no one knows whether the chub mackerel that we see of the East Coast constitute a single stock, that can withstand substantial fishing pressure, or are composed of a number of sub-stocks that, because of their smaller size, might be more vulnerable to fishing activity.  No one understands their migratory patterns.  They don’t know how chub mackerel fit into the ecosystem.  They don’t know whether the stock is healthy or not, what level of fishing mortality it can sustain, and readily admit that there are so many unknowns that they can’t even begin to figure out how to assess the health of the population.”

Even so, they have faith—and “faith” is probably the only word that fits, because “knowledge” certainly doesn’t—that it’s OK to nearly double chub mackerel landings.

And, in truth, it very well might be.  But “might” is a pretty weak basis to uphold such an increase in harvest.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act requires that

“Conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available.”

Court decisions have made it clear that “the best” scientific information doesn’t mean perfect data; “the best” means “the best,” even when that “best” isn’t very good.

But no one has tried to address the question of what managers ought to do when they don’t even have iffy data, but instead have no data at all.  Except, perhaps, for the Unmanaged Forage amendment, which suggests that NMFS shouldn’t allow an existing forage fish fishery to expand “until they have had an adequate opportunity to assess the scientific information relating to any new or expanded directed fisheries and consider potential impacts to existing fisheries, fishing communities and the marine ecosystem.”

Perhaps if there is no scientific information that allows managers to understand, much less consider, potential impacts to existing fisheries, etc., they should permit no expansion at all.

And that’s where the public comes in.

Remember that Magnuson-Stevens requires that fisheries be managed for “optimum” yield which, as the Public Hearing Document notes,

“is [maximum sustainable yield] as reduced by social, economic, and ecological factors, which in practice takes the form of a reduction in the [allowable biological catch].”

Section 8.3.2 of the Public Hearing Document addresses the so-called “Alternative 3.B” of the Chub Mackerel Amendment, “[Optimum Yield] is Less than [the allowable biological catch].” 

“Under this alternative, the Council would adopt an [optimum yield] value that is less than the [allowable biological catch] that is recommended by the [Scientific and Statistical Committee] for upcoming fishing years.  The Council may consider doing this to address ecosystem considerations, which could include biological, ecological, and/or economic considerations.  The Council has not yet considered specific alternatives for a reduced [allowable biological catch].  If you wish to recommend a lower [allowable biological catch] than that recommended by the [Scientific and Statistical Committee], please provide a specific value and the basis for that recommendation.”

 That’s it in a nutshell.   

Over the past few years, as chub mackerel appeared here off Long Island, I’ve been struck by their importance as forage to inshore shark species, in particular the common thresher and sandbar sharks.  When chub mackerel appear in my chum slick, the sharks are never far away. 

I spent most of my offshore time last summer working with some graduate students, helping them catch sharks that they then sampled and tagged.  We fished the same area every time, and when the mackerel were  off Fire Island, we had thresher sharks in the 250 to 400 pound range take our baits, and when the threshers weren’t there, we found sandbar sharks so abundant that we only fished one line, hooking a sandbar, sampling and tagging it, then hooking another as soon as the previous fish was released.  Once the chub mackerel moved east, the threshers moved with them, eventually showing up off Montauk as soon as the thresher sharks did.  Similar patterns played out in previous years.

So there’s clearly an ecosystem component.

But there’s a precautionary component, too.  Decisions should be based on data; biologists shouldn’t find themselves shooting blindly into the dark, merely hoping not to do harm.  When data is lacking, caution should be the byword.

So this time, let’s try to get forage fish management right.

The Mid-Atlantic Council is taking comments until January 18. Such comments can be made here http://www.mafmc.org/comments/chub-mackerel-amendment.

We should all tell the Council that increasing landings, based on a complete lack of data, is not the right thing to do.