IT HAS FINALLY BEEN SAID

Last Wednesday, Capt. John McMurray, owner/operator of Oceanside, New York-based One More Cast Charters and President of the American Saltwater Guides Association, testified before the House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Waters, Oceans and Wildlife’s oversight hearing, “The State of Fisheries.”

Most of his testimony was predictable.  As a guide who takes people fishing just about every day, from April into December, he spoke of the need to manage fisheries for abundance, so that both his clients and everyday anglers can have a reasonable expectation of encountering fish when they choose to go out.

He spoke of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and its unprecedented success in ending overfishing and rebuilding overfished stocks.  In that context, he spoke of the importance of Magnuson-Stevens’ strict requirements that overfishing not be permitted and that overfished stocks be promptly rebuilt because, as he knows from his nine years of service on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, without those requirements, the political pressure to do nothing, and maintain short-term harvest levels—along with the short-term economic benefits that such harvest would yield—would inevitably lead to management inaction, and the depletion of the nation’s fish stocks.

He spoke of the need to expand ecosystem-based fisheries management, and the protection of forage fish.  He spoke of the need to improve recreational fishing data collection, and the need to adjust fishery management measures for the effects of climate change.

All of that is true.  But all of that has also been said before, by Capt. McMurray and others, although it never hurts to remind legislators about it, just one more time.

Yet there was one truth embedded in his testimony that, so far as I know, has never been raised before a Congressional committee before—the consistent failure of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Committee to rebuild overfished stocks, and to maintain such stocks at sustainable levels.

Other people, in other hearings, have hailed the concept of state management of recreational fisheries, and have even argued that recreational fisheries current under federal jurisdiction should be handed off to the states, which would supposedly do a better job.

But all such comments have been suspiciously devoid of any objective, supporting data, and Capt. McMurray quickly demolished such claims with the easily verifiable statement, reproduced here from his written testimony, that

“On the issue of managing federal stocks like the states manage their fisheries, one need not look any farther than the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC)—A cooperative compact of East Coast states that share migratory fishery resources.  While their charter would certainly seem to suggest that they prevent overfishing and rebuild stocks, they have no federal or other mandate to do so.  As a result, this body frequently bows to political pressure and allows overfishing.

“The ONLY stock the Commission has successfully rebuild since it was created in 1942, is Atlantic striped bass.  Now, however, a recent stock assessment has revealed that even striped bass are once again overfished and subject to continued overfishing.  Certainly, the Commission could have avoided that.  And if striped bass had been managed under federal law it’s likely that they would have.”

Capt. McMurray’s written testimony would have been provided to House Committee staff well before the day that he testified, so it didn’t contain another very relevant fact:  The day before the Subcommittee hearing, ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board held its spring meeting, where it initiated an addendum to address the stock assessment’s findings.

While the Management Board did propose action to end overfishing, it took no direct action at all to rebuild the overfished stock, despite clear language in ASMFC’s current management plan that says

“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 [no more than 10 years]. [emphasis added]”

A biologist belonging to ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee did advise the Management Board that reducing fishing mortality to or below the fishing mortality target would “theoretically” lead to the biomass rebuilding to target biomass, at some undetermined point in the future.

But there’s a big difference between “theoretically” rebuilding the biomass at some point in the future, and a non-discretionary requirement (because “must” doesn’t allow any discretion) to rebuild that biomass within 10 years.

If Capt. McMurray had been able to include comments on ASMFC’s seeming indifference to mandatory rebuilding measures in its own striped bass management plan, and its obvious failure to make any effort to timely rebuild the overfished stock, in his testimony, would have merely reinforced the undeniable truth of his words when he ultimately stated

“It is my opinion that such management body should be subject to some sort of federal oversight in the near future.  It would be good if the Commission had to comply with the same federal mandates that the Councils do.  [emphasis added]”

That would include preventing overfishing.  Promptly rebuilding overfished stocks.  And basing management decisions on the best available science.

I’ve pointed that out many times before.  Right now, ASMFC sits in the same place that the regional fishery management councils did prior to passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996.

ASMFC management decisions are made primarily by amateurs—the governors’ and legislative appointees who, by-and-large, have no formal education in fishery management, but often have an economic or other interest in the outcome of management decisions—rather than by trained, professional fishery managers, who are outnumbered two-to-one in each state’s delegation to every ASMFC management board. 

That is a recipe for fisheries disasters, particularly when there are no legal constraints the exercise of such amateurs’ discretion.  Under such circumstances, it’s hardly surprising when management decisions fail to follow the dictates of science, and instead represent the short-term economic interests of the businesses, friends, neighbors and industries that are important to each appointee.

Thus, we saw ASMFC mismanagement of the northern shrimp, a creature already badly beset—and perhaps already doomed—by the effects of climate change.  Instead of being particularly cautious, given the fraught environmental conditions, ASMFC’s northern shrimp management section set annual quotas higher than those recommended in the scientific advice and, contrary to such advice, opened the trawl season too early, resulting in the harvest of females still carrying eggs.  

At least, it did that until the population collapsed and the fishery had to be closed.

And we see ASMFC allowing overfishing in the tautog fishery for 21 years, knowing since 1996 that fishing mortality had to be reduced, but constantly postponing effective action to do so until an amendment to the management plan was finally adopted late in 2017.  And even that amendment allowed overfishing to continue in Long Island Sound until 2029—with only a 50-50 chance that it will end even then.

By 2029, most of the Commissioners who voted to approve that provision will probably be retired or otherwise gone, leaving it to someone else to clean up their mess in Long Island Sound--if there are enough tautog left in the Sound to make the effort worthwhile.

American lobster—at least the Southern New England stock—is faring far worse than the tautog are.  Like northern shrimp, the southern stock of lobster is facing changing, and increasingly hostile, environmental conditions.  And like northern shrimp, ASMFC managers are ignoring the science that calls for a fishery closure, and maintaining the harvest at unsustainable rates, adopting weak and largely symbolic management actions while avoiding the hard decisions needed to, with some luck, allow the lobster the respite they need to survive in a changing sea.

So if Southern New England lobster share the northern shrimp’s fate, we can probably figure out why.

Which brings us back to striped bass today, when ASMFC stands ready and willing to ignore the fact that the stock is again overfished, and also to ignore a clear mandate to rebuild in the striped bass management plan.

Those are the sort of things that, say, the New England Fishery Management Council would do—and did—after learning of problems with cod, prior to the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act.

And those are the sort of things that caused the Sustainable Fisheries Act to be passed in the first place—irresponsible management actions taken contrary to the public interest in healthy, abundant and sustainable fish populations, in order to promote the private interests of a handful of people who want to squeeze the last bit of profit, for as long as they can, out of declining fish stocks.

Thus, Capt. McMurray said what desperately needed to be said.  

The ASMFC management process is badly broken, and needs to be fixed.  And he said it in the right place, before legislators capable, and hopefully willing, to make such fix happen.

They can do that in one of two ways.

They can require that the ASMFC management boards are again peopled by trained fishery managers, as they were prior to a 2000 change in the Commission’s charter, with the appointees serving only in an advisory role.

That would be in accord with the way that most natural resources are managed.

Or they can amend the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, as they amended Magnuson-Stevens, with a “Sustainable Inshore Fisheries Act,” that would impose the same sort of management measures on ASMFC as already apply to the regional fishery management councils.

One way or another, as Capt. McMurray pointed out, something needs to be done.

Because Atlantic coastal fisheries need conservation and science-based management, too.