Revised recreational
catch estimates drive the discussion
As was true two decades
ago, the current issues have arisen out of a single event, although this time,
that event wasn’t new legislation, but instead was the revision of recreational catch and effort estimates, as
reported by the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP).
For many years, the
number of fishing trips that anglers took each year was estimated through the
use of a telephone survey, but such survey proved unreliable, particularly as
the use of cell phones became more widespread. To improve the effort estimates,
MRIP now relies on a mail survey, which has proven to be far more accurate. In
January 2017, the National Academy of Science released a report, Review of the Marine
Recreational Information Program, in which it noted that “The
methodologies associated with the current Fishing Effort Survey, including the
address-based sampling mail survey design, are major improvements from the
original Coastal Household Telephone Survey that employed random-digit dialing
to contact anglers.”
The improved effort
survey unexpectedly determined that recreational fishermen fish much more, and
catch many more fish, than fisheries managers had previously believed. That
wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, although some members of the recreational community initially panicked when
they heard the new numbers, believing that they meant that anglers were engaged
in wholesale overfishing of just about every stock.
That wasn’t really the case.
It turns out that
recreational catch estimates are incorporated into every assessment of
recreationally important fish stocks. In particular, they are included in virtual population analyses, which use historical catch
estimates to calculate the past size of fish populations; such calculations are
then projected forward to assess the populations’ current state. Such analyses are
rooted in the notion that, if fishermen are catching more fish than believed,
then the fish populations must be larger than previously believed as well, or
else they would not have been able to support such higher level of landings.
That’s exactly what was
the MAFMC and the Management Boards discovered in October, when they met to
consider a recent operational assessment of the bluefish, scup and black sea bass stocks and
set harvest limits for the 2020 and 2021 fishing years. In every case, the
operational assessment found that recreational catch and effort was higher than
previously thought, and in every case, that finding led to higher estimates of
population size. But that’s where the commonality stopped, for those findings
had very different implications for each of the species involved.
Bluefish are overfished
The operational assessment probably had the greatest impact on
the bluefish fishery, which it found to be overfished, although overfishing was
not occurring in 2018, the operational assessment’s terminal year. While the
operational assessment found bluefish biomass to be higher than previously
believed, it also determined that the biomass target and threshold should be
set at levels nearly twice as high as they were before.
The operational assessment also revealed that the recreational
bluefish landings were about 3.3 times higher than former estimates. Such an
increased level of removals had a very significant impact on the operational
assessment, and led to the conclusion that the stock had become overfished. But
there was one other interesting aspect to the higher catch estimate. It appears
that recreational releases increased at a higher rate than the recreational
catch itself, and as a result, release mortality, which is thought to equal
about 15% of all bluefish released, also increased.
The recreational discard issue also involved another twist. The
Northeast Fisheries Science Center (Science Center) determined that, for many
years, the total weight of the dead discards has been badly underestimated.
For many years, the
Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) merely took the average
weight of the bluefish encountered during the MRIP creel survey, and multiplied
that by the presumed 15% of the released fish that do not survive. But the
Science Center looked at some data from the American Littoral Society’s Fish Tagging Program and
from three states’ voluntary angler surveys, and found that anglers tended to
release larger bluefish, and keep the smaller ones.
That tendency to keep the smaller fish and release the large
ones wasn’t reflected in the GARFO estimates, but any bluefish angler would
probably believe that the Science Center’s finding was right.
Bluefish can be an oily,
strong-tasting fish, which grow oilier and stronger-tasting as they grow larger
and feed on forage fish such as menhaden. Thus, most recreational fishermen, if
they keep any bluefish at all, usually do prefer to keep the smaller fish,
which are comparatively mild-flavored. However, if the MAFMC and Bluefish
Management Board accepted the Science Center’s release mortality figure, they
would be compelled to reduce the recreational harvest limit from 11.62 million pounds in 2019 to just 3.62 million pounds in 2020.
While the 3.62 million pound harvest limit probably represented
the best available science, it was clear that MAFMC and Bluefish Management
Board members weren’t prepared to slash landings to such a low level. They
chose to accept the GARFO estimate of release mortality, which then allowed
them to set a recreational harvest limit of 9.48 million pounds, just 2 million
pounds less than the limit in 2019.
Because of the higher,
revised recreational landings estimate, which showed that anglers landed their
entire bluefish allocation, there will be no transfer of supposedly unused recreational quota to
the commercial sector in 2020, which will be the first year since 1998 when
such transfer does not occur. The higher estimate almost certainly also means
that the pending allocation amendment which, among other things, would
have permanently transferred some recreational quota to the commercial sector,
will not move forward in its current form.
Because the bluefish
stock is overfished, conservation provisions in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens)
require that the MAFMC initiate a rebuilding plan that will restore the stock
to the target level within ten years. Such plan must be implemented within two
years after the MAFMC is formally notified, by the Secretary of Commerce or his
designee, that the stock is overfished. Such notification is expected to occur
in December 2019. Once such notification is received, the MAFMC will probably
expand the allocation amendment to include the rebuilding plan, at which point
allocation will become a secondary consideration.
2020’s reduced
recreational harvest limit will probably lead to more restrictive regulations.
The fact that 2019 recreational bluefish landings through August 31
were about 50% higher than they were for the same period in 2018 makes such
added restrictions even more likely, even before the depressed state of the
stock is taken into consideration.
Scup anglers squeezed by
small quota
It appears that larger than expected scup landings will also force scup
anglers to face substantial landings reductions in 2020, even though the
operational assessment found spawning stock biomass to be at about 200% of the target level at the end of 2018. Any such
recreational catch reductions won’t be driven by the needs of the stock, or by
Magnuson-Stevens, but rather by a fishery management plan that allocated only a
22% of the overall catch to the recreational sector.
The commercial fishery,
which is allocated 78% of the catch, has been chronically unable to catch its
entire quota. Between 2015 and 2018, it only landed between 55% and 84% of its scup quota. There is
just too little demand for the fish, which fishermen sell for about $0.70 per pound, far less than they receive for
fish such as black sea bass or summer flounder, which can generate ex vessel prices in the $3 to $4 range.
As a result of the
commercial underharvest, scup are not experiencing overfishing despite the high
recreational catch. Even though the annual catch limits will be reduced slightly in 2020 and 2021 in response to poor
spawning success in 2016, 2017 and 2018, the commercial underage, if
transferred to the recreational fishery, should still be large enough to avoid
harsh restrictions on anglers.
Unfortunately, the fishery management plan, as currently
written, doesn’t allow for such transfers, and there is no time to amend the
plan prior to the 2020 fishing season. GARFO staff are hoping to find a legally
and procedurally viable solution to the problem before then. If they can’t,
scup anglers could be facing very restrictive regulations next year, even
though the scup stock continues to thrive.
Black sea bass biomass
declines
Black sea bass anglers
will probably also be facing more restrictions in 2020, even though the spawning stock biomass was about 240% of the target level
at the end of 2018. In this case, recreational landings reductions will be
driven by a trifecta of higher than expected landings, high levels of angler
effort and a black sea bass spawning stock that, while still large, has
been steadily declining in size since 2014.
It is clear that recent recruitment won’t maintain current black
sea bass abundance. The 2015 year class, once thought to equal the huge year
class of 2011, turned out to be only about half its size, while the 2017 year
class was the smallest in the entire 30-year time series. While, thanks in
large part to the revised recreational catch figures, the recreational harvest
limit will be significantly larger in 2020 than it was in 2019, it will begin
to decline after that in concert with declining black sea bass abundance.
Even with the higher 2020 catch limit, recreational landings
will probably need to be reduced by about 30% to prevent overfishing. Unless
angling effort declines, further restrictions on recreational black sea bass
fishing are inevitable as the stock continues to decline toward the target
abundance level.
Is reallocation part of
the answer?
Some members of the recreational fishing community have criticized the
revised recreational catch and effort estimates because they are likely to lead
to additional restrictions on anglers. However, the same revised estimates
could also lead to further increases in recreational harvest limits.
That’s because
recreational landings data dating as far back as 1981 have been revised
upwards. Those upward revisions include the so-called “base years” used
to determine the recreational and commercial allocations. It now appears that
such allocations were based on data that underestimated the recreational share
of the landings.
If allocations were
revised to reflect what are now believed to be more accurate recreational
landings estimates, anglers would receive a larger share all of the
recreationally-important species managed by the MAFMC. That might be
particularly important in the case of scup, which would see anglers’ share of
the catch increase substantially, from 22% to 35%. Such an increase might be enough to eliminate
the need for potentially crippling harvest restrictions on anglers, while doing
little harm to the commercial fishery, since it typically underharvests its
allocation.
The increase in anglers’
share of other fisheries would be far smaller, but still significant. The
recreational summer flounder allocation would increase from 40% to 45% of landings, while the recreational share
of black sea bass landings would increase from 51% to 55%. In the case of bluefish, the recreational
allocation could increase from 83% to 90%.
It’s impossible to
predict whether any or all of those allocation changes will be made. The MAFMC
and the ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board voted to initiate an amendment to consider the
allocations of summer flounder, scup and black sea bass at the October meeting.
The reallocation effort will undoubtedly be opposed by
commercial fishermen, although it could be argued that any allocation change
based on the revised MRIP estimates is not so much a true reallocation than a
correction, with the new allocation merely representing what the recreational
and commercial catch actually was during the long-established base years.
In any event, the reallocation, should it be made, will not
happen soon. The best estimate is that the amendment will take about two years
to complete.
Anglers are thus less focused on any possible reallocation than
they are on the December joint meeting of the MAFMC and the Management Boards,
when the new recreational harvest limits will be compared to anglers’ estimated
harvest in 2019, and regulations governing the 2020 recreational fishery will
first be proposed.
It’s still too early to know what those regulations will look
like, but given the discussion at the October joint meeting, it seems likely
that they could be restrictive enough to incite many anglers to support the
reallocation effort.
-----
This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog
of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at
http://conservefish.org/blog/
Too many managers. GARFO, MAFMC, and ASMFC. We don't need them all. Everyone is looking at the 15 bluefish bag limit and mid sized to large blues, when it really is meant to accommodate all the "snapper" fishers. Flounder are damn near a lost cause. I can't speak to Scup other than they are everywhere, probably because there is little commercial value. Sea bass seem to be doing just fine, but I only base that on what I can read, not from any experience.
ReplyDeleteExcellent blog, very informative, thank you!
ReplyDelete