CONSERVING BLUEFISH

It is now official.  The Secretary of Commerce, acting through the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, has formally notified the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council that bluefish are overfished.  

The notification that bluefish are overfished triggered several provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.  Section 303(a) of Magnuson-Stevens requires that

“Any fishery management plan which is prepared by any Council, or by the Secretary [of Commerce], with respect to any fishery, shall contain the conservation and management measures, applicable to foreign fishing and fishing by vessels of the United States, which are necessary and appropriate for the conservation and management of the fishery to prevent overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks, and to protect, restore, and promote the long-term health and stability of the fishery…  [internal numbering and some internal formatting omitted]”

That section later goes on to require that such fishery management plan

“specify objective and measurable criteria for identifying when the fishery to which the plan applies is overfished…and, in the case of a fishery which the [relevant regional fishery management] Council or the Secretary has determined is approaching an overfished condition or is overfished, contain conservation and management measures to prevent overfishing or end overfishing and rebuild the fishery.”

Section 304(e) then provides a timeline for putting a rebuilding plan in place, specifying that

“…If the Secretary determines at any time that a fishery is overfished, the Secretary shall immediately notify the appropriate Council and request that action be taken to end overfishing in the fishery and implement conservation and management measures to rebuild affected stocks of fish…

“Within 2 years after…notification under [the foregoing paragraph], the appropriate Council…shall prepare and implement a fishery management plan, plan amendment, or proposed regulation for the fishery to which the…notice applies, to end overfishing immediately in the fishery and to rebuild affected stocks of fish…

“For a fishery that is overfished, any fishery management plan, amendment, or proposed regulations…for such fishery shall specify a time period for rebuilding the fishery that shall be as short as possible, taking into account the status and biology of any overfished stocks of fish, the needs of fishing communities, recommendations by international organizations in which the United States participates, and the interaction of the overfished stock within the marine ecosystem; and not exceed 10 years, except in cases where the biology of the stock of fish, other environmental conditions, or management measures under an international agreement in which the United States participates dictate otherwise…  [internal numbering and some internal formatting

And, of course, all federal fisheries must be managed for “optimum” yield, which is defined, in part, as

“the amount of fish which…in the case of an overfished fishery, provides for rebuilding to a level consistent with producing the maximum sustainable yield in such fishery.”

So, now that the Mid-Atlantic Council has received the required secretarial notice that the bluefish stock is overfished, such Council must prepare a plan that rebuilds that overfished stock “to a level consistent with producing the maximum sustainable yield in such fishery” within a time period “that is as short as possible…and is “not [to] exceed 10 years.”  Annual catch limits may not exceed “the amount of fish which…provides for rebuilding to” the biomass target, which is the biomass required to produce maximum sustainable yield in the bluefish fishery.

To their credit, the Mid-Atlantic Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Bluefish Management Board have reacted quickly to the Secretary of Commerce’s notification, and are expected to approve a new scoping document, which will help them prepare a new Bluefish Allocation and Rebuilding Amendment, when they hold a joint meeting on December 10.

We should expect the Council and Management Board to hold a limited number of scoping hearings, and seek public comment, on the pending Amendment in late December and/or early next year.  Fishery managers are going to have to move quickly to get the rebuilding plan in place, for the National Marine Fisheries Service must not only draft, but implement the new Amendment within two years—as a practical matter, in time for the 2022 fishing season—which means that the Council and Management Board needs to finish their work sometime around June 2021, to give the agency sufficient time to do a thorough review, post preliminary regulations, accept and evaluate such comments, and then put the rebuilding plan in place before 2022 begins.

Hopefully, they won’t hit any snags.  But bluefish still need to be managed in the meantime.

The foundation for next year’s regulations has already been built.  In October, the Mid-Atlantic Council and Bluefish Management Board held a joint meeting, where they agreed to a commercial quota of 2.77 million pounds and a recreational harvest limit of 9.48 million pounds.  In December, after additional 2019 recreational landings data becomes available, they will meet again to determine what the 2020 recreational bluefish regulations will look like.

While the final regulations won’t be set for a few weeks, one thing is completely clear:  The current 15-fish bag limit is a thing of the past.

Although some members of the for-hire industry, particularly here in New York, argue that they “need” the 15-fish bag limit, because

“the perception you can catch to the higher limit helps sell trips,”

the reality is that almost no one is currently catching and keeping 15 bluefish per day.  Not many people are keeping 10 bluefish, either—so few, that reducing the bag limit from 15 fish to 10 would, at best, reduce average bluefish landings (2016-2018) by 2 ½ percent.  Even reducing the bag limit from 15 fish to 5 would only achieve about a 14 percent reduction, which is less than needed to prevent overfishing.

Just how much landings need to be reduced to prevent overfishing next year depends on how many bluefish anglers land this year.  There are a few ways to estimate that number.

Anglers landed about 13.27 million pounds of bluefish in 2018, and managers can assume that they will land the same amount of fish again this year.

But 2018 landings seem uncharacteristically low; both members of the Bluefish Advisory Panel and scientists on the Bluefish Monitoring Committee believe that to be the case.  If they’re right, then basing 2020 regulations on 2018 landings might well result in overfishing.

To prevent that, managers can take two different approaches.  They can use the average recreational landings for the past three years, in the hope that the averaged number is more likely to reflect current and future reality.  Or, they can look at the landings through August 31 of this year, and then use the typical relationship of the first eight months of landings to those of the full year to calculate what 2019 landings are likely to be.

Using the former, averaging approach would predict that landings for all of 2019 will be about 23.15 million pounds, a figure that is 75 percent higher than the landings estimate for 2018.  Using the latter approach, and calculating landings for all of 2019 based on landings through August 31, would predict that 2019 landings will be 17.12 million pounds, roughly 30 percent higher than they were in 2018.

The Bluefish Monitoring Committee is recommending that the Council and Management Board take the least risk-averse approach, and base 2020 regulations on the assumption that 2019 landings will merely equal those of 2018.  That’s a somewhat dubious assumption, given that by August 31 if this year, 12.26 million pounds of bluefish had already been landed.  Thus, in order for 2019 landings not to exceed the 2018 figure, only 1 million pounds of bluefish can be landed during the last four months of this year. 

Even if the Monitoring Committee is right, the 13.27 million pounds of bluefish landed in 2018 is well above the 9.48 million pound recreational harvest limit established for the upcoming year.  Recreational landings would have to be reduced by 28.78 percent if they are to be kept within the 2020 harvest limit. 

That would require reducing the bag limit from 15 bluefish to 3.

Of course, there are other ways to achieve the needed reduction.  At last Tuesday’s meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council, a senior member of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Division mentioned that the bag limit could probably be increased to 5, if it was accompanied by a 19-inch minimum size.

The Monitoring Committee didn’t consider a size limit, noting that

“Size limit alternatives have been proposed but are not recommended due to angler preference to often harvest smaller fish since larger bluefish are deemed less desirable [as table fare],”

but the Council and Management Board are not bound to follow that recommendation.

Because 2018 recreational landings were so much lower than those in the immediately preceding years, there is a real chance that, if the 3-fish bag limit, or some equivalent management measure, is adopted, anglers will still overfish next year.  As bluefish is a federally managed fishery, Magnuson-Stevens requires that fishermen be held accountable when overfishing occurs, so there will be real consequences if anglers harvest more than 9.48 million pounds in 2020.

Right now, if historical, seasonal harvest patterns hold true, 2019 recreational landings are likely to fall somewhere in the neighborhood of 17.12 million pounds, and not the 13.27 million pounds predicted by the Monitoring Committee.  In that case, landings would have to be reduced not by 28.56 percent, but by 44.63 percent, to prevent overfishing.

If 2020 landings end up being substantially above the 9.48 million pound harvest limit, there will be another, bigger round of landings cuts in 2021, that not only reduces landings to what they should have been in 2020, but also goes beyond that to impose a pound-for-pound payback for the 2020 overage.

The question for the Council and Management Board, then, is largely one of allocating risk.  They can base 2020 regulations on 2018 landings, minimizing harvest reductions in 2020 but knowing, as they do so, that they’re taking the course most likely to lead to overfishing, further cutbacks, and pound-for-pound paybacks in 2021.

Or they can take a more risk-averse path in 2020, impose greater harvest cuts in the short term, and by doing so avoid both overfishing in 2020 and further restrictions, including paybacks, in 2021.

We’ll find out which course they choose about three weeks from now.