WILL ASMFC REBUILD THE STRIPED BASS POPULATION

The 2018 benchmark stock assessment told us what many of ushad already suspected:  The striped bassstock is overfished.

The question now is, “What is the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission going to do about it?”

On it’s face, the question seems easy to answer.  

Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass clearly requires that

“If the Management Board determines that the biomass has fallen below the threshold in any given year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to the target level within [a timeframe that may not exceed ten years].”

Unfortunately, it’s hard to believe that’s going to happen.

For the moment, leave aside all the talk about changing thereference points that define a healthy stock. For while there are those on ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass ManagementBoard who would like to do that, and create a new normal where a diminishedstock and higher landings are viewed as OK, that isn’t my biggest concern.  If the reference points do end up changed, both we and the bass will be well and truly screwed, and it probably won’t be long until tanking abundance and unhappy fishermen, recreational and commercial alike, force managers to rebuild the stock.

What I’m talking about, and what worries me the most, isn’t that ASMFC will do nothing at all, or that it will lower its standards.  I worry that ASMFC will instead take some minimal action that might slow or maybe even stop the current decline, but won’t lead to rebuilding.  

Under that scenario, the striped bass, and striped bass anglers, could well find themselves locked into a long, torturous twilight zone where the bass population perpetually hangs on the brink, perhaps bolstered by sporadic, stronger year classes, but also always facing the risk that a few poor year classes could push it over the edge and into calamity.

Those worries were recently bolstered by an article in the Martha’s Vineyard Times, which quoted Michael Armstrong, who is not only assistant director of Massachusetts’ Division of Marine Fisheries, but also Chairman of the Striped Bass Management Board, as saying

“The current dip in population is related to environmental conditions in the Chesapeake Bay from 2005 to 2010,”

which is absolutely true.

But it’s also true that, when there are fewer fish in the water, harvest needs to be cut back, in order to maintain a healthy spawning stock until such time as environmental conditions improve (right now, there’s a lot of variation, with very good year classes produced in 2011 and 2015, weak ones in 2013, 2014 and 2016, and the worst ever recorded in 2012). 

Thus, when Mr. Armstrong suggested that ASMFC may only reduce landings by 15% or so, resulting in the size limit only being increased by an inch (possibly coupled with a 40-inch maximum size), it’s difficult to understand how such a modest cutback will fulfill ASMFC’s obligation to rebuild the stock to target levels within ten years.  That’s particularly true given some of the pessimistic projections made in the benchmark assessment.

Unless, of course, ASMFC has no intention of fulfilling all of the obligations that it assumed when Amendment 6 was adopted, and plans to ignore the Amendment’s clear requirement that it rebuild the stock.

If ASMFC chooses that route, it won’t be the first time.

Amendment 6 contains a number of so-called “management triggers” which require the Management Board to take action if certain events occur.  Along with the trigger quoted above, there is one that requires the Management Board to reduce fishing mortality to or below target levels if overfishing occurs, and two others, which say

“If the Management Board determines that the fishing mortality target is exceeded in two consecutive years and the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target within either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to reduce the fishing mortality rate to a level that is at or below the target within one year.”

and

“If the Management Board determines that the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target for two consecutive years and the fishing mortality rate exceeds the target in either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above the target within the timeframe established in Section 2.6.2.  [emphasis added]”

Section 2.6.2 allows the Management Board wide discretion in selecting a rebuilding timeframe, so long as such timeframe does not exceed ten years.

When the 2013 benchmark stock assessment was released, itrevealed that both of those management triggers had been tripped.  While the stock was not yet overfished and overfishing was not yet occurring (according to the information managers had on hand back then), female spawning stock biomass had fallen below the biomass target, and had remained there for a few years, and fishing mortality had exceeded the fishing mortality target in those years as well. 

In response, the Management Board dutifully adopted Addendum IV to the management plan, which seemed to reduce fishing mortality to the target rate.  But it completely ignored its obligation to rebuild the stock, despite Amendment 6’s clear language that it “must” do so.

Mr. Armstrong’s comments about a 15% reduction in landings suggests that the Management Board is planning a similar action again, reducing fishing mortality enough to hopefully end overfishing, but taking no action at all to restore the now-overfished stock.

Such a plan, if it exists, would be troubling on its face, but it would be even more troubling given past conduct of the Management Board.

Amendment 6 clearly spells out situations that require the Management Board to take action.  The Management Board used those provisions of Amendment 6—the deemed “management triggers”—to avoid taking action at times when the stock was having problems, and a stock assessment update warned of worse times ahead.  At the November 2011 meeting, for example, various Management Board members argued against taking action for just that reason, saying things like

“it just appears that all the work that the committee has done and the background—the 688 pages of documentation that say the stock is pretty doggone healthy—that we’re looking at a sustainable yield and at the same time looking at sustainable spawning stock biomass…and then considering on the sideline the triggers that are built into the [fishery management plan] where you have addressed the concerns of what is going to happen to certain year classes or what is the size of them, boy, it leads us down a very narrow path as to where we have to go in making our decisions.”

“We haven’t had a real spawning disaster to even trigger one of the triggers within the [fishery management plan], and we’re sitting here gnashing our teeth as to which way to go.”

“We agreed there was consensus to say that the board isn’t obligated to take any action at this point in time.  None of the management triggers have been tripped…You don’t have to take action, because none of the triggers have been tripped.”

“Amendment 6 does contain a number of management triggers that would invoke board action.  While these triggers have not been achieved…there have been declines in catch and abundance and low recruitment has been seen.”

“[H]ow can I be a hypocrite and go out to my public in New Jersey and basically say, oh, by the way, we’ve been doing so great with striped bass and there really is no—we haven’t hit any of the triggers and now I’m going to reduce your catch by 40 percent?”

and

“We have a healthy fishery, a healthy stock, and I’m in agreement that we’re in a green light fishery right now.  We have [a fishery management plan] where we’ve built two triggers into it. [emphasis, in all quotes in this series, added] ”

All of those comments, made to justify not reducing harvest because triggers had not been tripped, constituted an implied promise to the public that action would be taken in the event that the triggers were tripped at some point in the future, an implied promise that should be considered just as binding as the explicit commitment made in Amendment 6.

But ASMFC, acting through the Management Board, reneged on that promise when it failed to initiate a rebuilding plan in 2014, and Mr. Armstrong’s comments are just one more sign that it may very well intend to renege on that promise again.

If that happened, it wouldn’t be surprising.  Although ASMFC’s charter states that

“It is the policy of the Commission that its [Interstate Fishery Management Program] promote the conservation of Atlantic coastal fishery resources, be based on the best scientific information available, and provide adequate opportunity for public participation,”

and such charter also states that

“Above all, [a fishery management plan] must include conservation and management measures that ensure the long-term biological health and productivity of fishery resources under management,”

ASMFC’s history demonstrates a strong bias against reducing short-term harvest levels, even if maintaining such levels places the long-term health of the stock into question and/or goes against the best available scientific advice.

The quotes from the November 2011 Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board Meeting, which militate against precautionary management, are one example of that, but the striped bass is far from unique in that regard. 

Back in January 1999, when there might have still been a chance to keep the winter flounder stock from collapsing, ASMFC’s Winter Flounder Management Board voted to “suspend consideration of any state’s compliance” with requirements to maintain fishing mortality at sustainable levels, thus relieving them of the need to make harvest cuts.

We all know how that one turned out…

More recently, after failing to end overfishing for more than 20 years, ASMFC’s Tautog Management Board finally adopted Amendment 1 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Tautog in late 2017.  The new Amendment was a big improvement in what had gone before, and established management regions that better reflected the stock’s population structure.  However, in adopting Amendment 1, the Tautog Management Board decided to ignore the scientific advice to cut landings in half in Long Island Sound, and instead allowed overfishing to continue until 2029, apparently hoping that a couple of strong year classes might survive long enough to bail them out.

At about the same time the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board decided not to adopt interim ecological reference points, which would have considered the species’ role as an important forage fish when setting harvest limits, and instead decided to continue with single-species management until final, species-specific ecological reference points could be calculated and considered—but not necessarily adopted—sometime in 2020 or 2021.

In all of those cases, as well as in others that have not been listed, the pattern is clear.  ASMFC was unwilling to adopt precautionary (and sometimes, clearly needed) conservation measures.  It is far more likely to risk the future health of fish stocks by not imposing harvest reductions that might, in hindsight, prove to have been needed, than it is to impose harvest reductions intended to prevent a population decline, and take the risk that such cut had not been absolutely necessary to maintain the health of the stock.

That’s no way to create sustainable fisheries.  

ASMFC has been around since 1942.  In all of that time, it has failed to rebuild a single fish stock, and then maintain that stock at sustainable levels for the long term.  That, in itself, is ample reason to believe that a change is needed. 

If ASMFC fails to take decisive action to rebuild the striped bass stock, it is likely that striped bass anglers will look to Congress for such a change, and seek a bill that would require ASMFC to end overfishing and promptly rebuild overfished stocks, imposing the same sort of requirements on ASMFC that Congress imposed on federal fishery managers in 1996, when the regional fishery management councils acted much like ASMFC does today, subordinating the health of fish stocks to short-term economic concerns.

It’s unlikely that ASMFC would welcome such congressional intervention, but if that’s how ASMFC feels, then its course is clear.

It needs to rebuild the striped bass stock, just as it promised to do in Amendment 6.

For striped bass anglers aren’t looking to ASMFC for excuses, delays or evasions.  They’ve already had enough of those.

What they don’t have, but want and expect ASMFC to deliver is a rebuilt striped bass population.