ASMFC STRIPED BASS BOARD FINALLY ADDRESSES CONSERVATION EQUIVALENCY, BUT...

On Tuesday, February 4, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board met to discuss and, most likely, approve the various “conservation equivalency” proposals submitted by the states, many of which seemed intended to adhere to the letter, while evading the intent and spirit, of the recently adopted Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan.


Addendum VI was intended to end overfishing in the striped bass fishery; ASMFC staff determined that, to have a 50% probability of returning fishing mortality to the target level, such mortality had to be reduced by 18%.  

The Management Board adopted a 28 to 35-inch slot limit as its preferred way to achieve that reduction in the recreational fishery, but that slot wouldn’t have the same impact on every state.  Some states that adopted it would see almost no reduction at all, while others would see greater impacts.  So delegates from New Jersey, which would have experienced a 43% mortality reduction as a result of the slot, convinced the ASMFC last October to permit states to adopt “conservation equivalent” regulations as an alternative to the preferred slot, so long as the state achieved an 18% fishing mortality reduction—regardless if, by choosing such alternate regulations, the state or states doing so reduced the probability of lowering coastwide fishing mortality to the target level.


Thus, as I settled in to listen to last Tuesday’s meeting, I had low expectations.  I was betting that all I would hear was a parade of states presenting creative, supposedly conservation equivalent regulations in an attempt to skate around their obligations to assure the future health of the striped bass stock.


What I actually heard was quite different.  

Most states put the bass first, questioned the wisdom of broadly-applied conservation equivalency, and decided to take a hard look at every state’s conservation equivalency proposals.  If it hadn’t been for one innocent, but ultimately consequential, tactical misstep made toward the end of the meeting, we might have ended up with a consistent 28-35” slot limit along just about all of the coast.


While the final outcome of the meeting might have been a bit disappointing, the fact that the Management Board was finally willing to take a very long, hard look at conservation equivalency was a heartening change.


I actually missed the beginning of the meeting, which began about 45 minutes before its scheduled starting time, and didn’t hear anything that happened before 11:00.  By then, the reports were just about completed, and Management Board members were able to ask questions about the 49 different conservation equivalency proposals submitted by the 14 jurisdictions (not counting federal agencies) that host striped bass fisheries.


At that point, the tone of the meeting was pretty well set by two of New York’s representatives, Capt. John McMurray, the Legislative Proxy, and Emerson Hasbrouck, the Governor’s Appointee, who both asked variations of the same question:  “If the conservation equivalency proposals are approved, can the Technical Committee tell the Board what the coastwide reduction might be?”


It turned out that the answer was no.  Because there were so many different possible combinations of alternative, “equivalent” regulations, the Technical Committee did not have a clue.


That didn’t go over very well.


G. Ritchie White, the Governor’s Appointee from New Hampshire, was quick to point out that the only option likely to produce the full 18% reduction in fishing mortality was the 28 to 35-inch slot, adopted coastwide; Raymond Kane, his counterpart from Massachusetts, suggested that perhaps the Technical Committee should be asked to come back with alternatives likely to achieve the 18% fishing mortality reduction before further action was taken.  While nothing along those lines was done, other Board members were also clearly concerned about achieving the needed coastwide reduction.  


Pat Kelliher, Maine’s fisheries administrator, pointed out the risks posed by conservation equivalency measures that don’t adequately constrain mortality, and raised the possibility of imposing accountability measures on states that adopted insufficiently restrictive regulations.


That was a big step forward in the discussions, for while conservation equivalency is a very popular thing at the ASMFC, particularly among the handful of states that chronically employ it to cadge extra fish from the rest of the coast, ASMFC commissioners usually react to the concept of accountability measures in about the same way that vampires react to holy water.  There is just no way that they want their states to be held accountable when they kill too many fish.  


Which, of course, is one of the reasons that the ASMFC has such a dismal record in rebuilding overfished stocks.


The fact that the Management Board was holding a real discussion on the subject was, in itself, news.  And it wasn’t a discussion that everyone welcomed.  Michael Luisi, the Maryland fisheries manager, seemed particularly upset by the notion that states be held responsible for their own actions.  Surprisingly, he held up Maryland’s experiences under Addendum IV  Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan as a reason why accountability would be a bad idea.


For those unfamiliar with what happened there, recreational fishermen in Chesapeake Bay, including the Maryland section thereof, were supposed to reduce fishing mortality by 22.5%, compared to mortality in 2012.  But instead of reducing their landings,Maryland’s anglers pigged out on the big 2011 year class that was justrecruiting into the fishery in 2015, the first year that Addendum IV waseffective, and ended up increasing their landings (compared to 2012) by morethan 50%. Even though Maryland managers were well aware of those excessesby late 2016, they allowed overfishing to continue through 2019.


For every other state on the coast, which all managed to reduce their landings in accordance with Addendum IV—some of them reduced far more than that addendum required—it probably sounded more like an argument for accountability, rather than against, as there probably weren’t too many people sitting around the table who wanted to see such rank overfishing, for such a long time, occur again.  


Still, Michael Luisi followed up his first questionable line of defense by arguing that individual state’s performances shouldn’t be viewed so closely, so long as all of the states, taken as a group, achieved the desired result.  It wasn’t the only time during the meeting when he spoke about “team,” rather than individual state, performance being what really mattered.  But besides the self-serving nature of the argument—you guys go paint the house, while I sit here under the tree, drink a few beers, and admire the job that “we” did—that’s just not how teams work.  Most of us played enough sports in our youth to know that if just one of the defensive linemen keeps missing blocks, and so keeps letting the quarterback get sacked, the whole team usually loses, even if everyone else is doing their job.  

To be successful, everyone has to perform.


At the end of the meeting, Pat Kelliher introduced a modest accountability proposal that merely would have required states that failed to achieve the required mortality reductions in 2020 to adopt new measures that would hopefully be more effective.  Emerson Hasbrouck seconded.  But it the idea of abandoning ineffective management measures for those that might actually work was still too radical an idea for many Management Board members, even though, as Capt. McMurray noted,


“The public demands it.”

Michael Luisi (unsurprisingly) made a motion to postpone action on accountability measures until the May meeting, which was seconded by Martin Gary of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission.  At that point Adam Nowalsky, Legislative Proxy from New Jersey, another long-time member of the “equivalency without responsibility” caucus, said that he hoped to further delay consideration of accountability measures by pushing them into the upcoming discussion about a new amendment to the management plan.  So to that extent, on Tuesday, irresponsibility ruled.


The conservation equivalency discussion went somewhat better although, as mentioned earlier, not as well as it could have.  Ritchie White led off, noting that conservation equivalency was

“going off the rails,”

and that it should only be used with

“strict sidebars.”

He noted that conservation equivalency was supposed to be used for “tweaking” management measures, typically for biological reasons, and not merely to allow states to find new ways to kill fish.  He also pointed out that the ASMFC held a series of hearings on Addendum VI all along the coast, that the public was not given the chance to speak on conservation equivalency, and thus that it should only be used sparingly.  John McMurray agreed, and had to courage to point out 

“the elephant in the room,”

which is the fact that some states take advantage of conservation equivalency to increase their landings.  

He linked conservation equivalency with accountability measures, and again pointed out the obvious:  that if the data wasn’t good enough to use for accountability measures, it wasn’t good enough to use for conservation equivalency, either.


Dan McKiernan, a fisheries manager for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was even more pointed, noting that at the same time that the Management Board voted for the 28 to 35-inch slot last October, a lot of the people around the table were

“sitting with pencil and paper trying to figure out what their conservation equivalency proposals would be at the next meeting.”

He asked

“Why did we go out to public comment…when the majority of states are not abiding by that?”

and ended his comments by saying that states were trying to maximize their landings, and the public doesn’t like it, because

“It’s not what the public wants us to do.”

At that point, he made a motion which said, in essence, that if the Technical Committee determined that the combination of measures proposed by the states didn’t add up to an 18% coastwide reduction in fishing mortality, every state would have to default to the 28 to 35”slot.  Ritchie White seconded.


The motion sparked resistance, in part for legitimate reasons—there are places such as the Hudson and Delaware rivers where modest conservation equivalency proposals make sense—and in part because some Management Board members probably knew that it was aimed at their states.  In the end, John Clark, a Delaware fisheries manager, tried to go back to business as usual, and offered a substitute motion that all of the states’ conservation equivalency measures be approved in a single vote; predictably, it was seconded by Michael Luisi.


Both argued for the motion, with John Clark saying that the Management Board agreed to allow conservation equivalency in October, and that the states that submitted proposals were only doing what the Board asked them to do. 

Michael Luisi took up the same tune; then he tried to score a few extra points by arguing that the measures adopted in Addendum VI would require different states to take different levels of reductions, and that he hadn’t seen the New England states that have to take smaller reductions offer to do more.


He probably shouldn’t have tried that gambit, for Pat Kelliher soon responded that at a Maine meeting, held to discuss adopting the 28 to 35-inch slot, anglers instead focused on the ASMFC’s failings; in direct response to Michael Luisi’s comment, he said that

“Maine anglers are willing to do much more, including moratorium conversations.”

Because yes, there are a lot of anglers up and down the coast, not only in Maine, whose first concern is the long-term health of the stock, and not how many dead bass they can stack on the dock before the fishery falls apart.  Michael Luisi has a lot of those folks right in Maryland, and might even figure that out if he spent more time talking to his own state’s recreational fishermen, and less pandering to a relative handful of commercials and for-hires. 


Not surprisingly, the New Jersey delegation lent its support to the motion, with Russ Allen, Proxy for the Governor’s Appointee, whining that

“We’ve been doing this every year, and this is the first time this conversation has come up,”

but never asking whether it was right to unquestioningly adopt conservation equivalency measures before, perhaps because “right” doesn’t matter if you’re killing more fish.  Adam Nowalsky actually admitted that conservation equivalency would probably cause Addendum VI to fall short of its goal, but supported the motion anyway, saying 

“We’ve set a level of confidence here that when we put all the conservation equivalency proposals, the number will be less than 18%,”

but also that he guessed that the actual reduction wouldn’t be too far below 18%.  He said that it didn’t matter, given how much effort, and so landings, have already fallen since 2017. 

On the other hand, he never seemed to make the obvious connection between decreasing striped bass abundance and decreasing angler effort, nor did he seem to realize that achieving the target mortality reduction, and beginning to rebuild the stock, might get effort up again, to the benefit of the recreational fishing industry that he had been a part of for so many years.


In the end, conservation equivalency supporters' arguments failed, as only four states supported the motion, while twelve jurisdictions, including both federal agencies, voted against. 

It was one of the few times that I have ever seen any ASMFC management board vote against wholesale approval of conservation equivalency measures that had been OKed by the Technical Committee.  I have never seen wholesale approval fail by such a lopsided vote.


I thought it was a hopeful sign.


After that, the Management Board tried to address Dan McKiernan’s original motion, but couldn’t come up with language that satisfied a majority of the Board, so each state’s proposals were taken one-by-one.  

Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts all chose to abide by the Amendment VI slot, so there were no issues.  Rhode Island proposed a few possible measures, including a 32 to 40-inch slot and a 30 to 40-inch slot for its for-hire fleet.  That led to an objection from Connecticut, which felt strongly that Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York fished the same waters, and should adopt the same rules.  Nonetheless, Rhode Island’s measures were approved 9 to 4, with the federal agencies abstaining.


Connecticut adopted the slot, and posed no problem, but the New York proposals were complex. They included the Addendum VI slot on the coast and in the Delaware River, with the possibility that a 31-inch minimum size might be adopted for just the for-hire fleet.  Hudson River anglers would fish on an 18 to 28-inch slot intended to shift a substantial portion of the effort onto male fish, while the coastal commercial fleet would be restrained by a 26 to 38-inch slot.  

There was concern that the Marine Recreational Information Program data couldn’t adequately deal with the for-hire limit, and Connecticut didn’t believe that such limit, which allowed New York's for-hire anglers to target larger bass, was fair to Connecticut boats.  Thus, Dr. Justin Davis, Connecticut’s fisheries manager, made a motion to approve all but the special for-hire rule; Dennis Abbott, New Hampshire’s Legislative Proxy, seconded, and the motion passed with 11 in favor, 2 opposed and the feds abstaining.


That set the stage for New Jersey, which seemed to pose the biggest threat to coastwide consistency with a proposed 33-inch minimum size (the so-called “bonus fish,” carved out of the state’s unused commercial quota, was a given to pass).  

Once again, Dr. Davis took the lead, saying that he was sympathetic, but that no state should be allowed to fish on bass—the over 35-inch fish—unavailable to others.  Adam Nowalsky, with the support of Delaware’s John Clark, tried to push the proposal through, but failed on a vote of 3 in favor, 8 opposed, 3 abstentions and one “null” vote (cast when there is no majority vote in a state delegation).  Pat Kelliher, supported by Dennis Abbott, then made a motion that compelled New Jersey to accept the Addendum VI slot, and allowed it its bonus fish.  That one passed 10 to 3.


Things were on track for coastal consistency, until Sen. David Miramant, Maine’s Legislative Appointee, made a motion to reconsider the vote on Rhode Island.  Objectively, it was probably the right thing to do, but tactically, it was a mistake, for when the vote failed, leaving Rhode Island with the option of adopting a 32 to 40-inch option, it opened the door to a later unexpected motion that didn’t do the striped bass any good.


Before that happened, things generally moved quickly.  Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the District of Columbia did not present controversial proposals.  Maryland then presented the last seemingly controversial proposal of the day; while it adopted the Addendum VI slot on the coast, its recreational Chesapeake Bay proposal was a convoluted thing, dependent in part upon a seasonal ban on targeting striped bass that was based on shaky data and might prove difficult to enforce.  John McMurray called it

“smoke and mirrors,”

making particular reference to the targeting ban.  But in the end, somewhat surprisingly, approval came easily, on a 10 to 3 vote.


Although there was some discussion, measures for Virginia, the Potomac River Fisheries Commission and North Carolina were also quickly approved.  It looked like consistent coastwide regulations were finally an attainable goal—until the unexpected motion creeped through the door opened when Rhode Island’s rules were reconsidered.


Adam Nowalsky rose to observe that, because the motion to reconsider failed, Rhode Island could potentially put in a slot with a 40-inch top end.  And because Rhode Island could do that, he argued, New Jersey ought to be able to adopt a slot with a top end of no more than 40 inches, too.  So he made a motion that would allow New Jersey to adopt such a slot (no mention of how low the bottom end could go), so long as the Technical Committee found that the slot would reduce New Jersey fishing mortality by at least 18%.  Emerson Hasbrouck seconded.  And, to my surprise, the motion passed easily on a 9 to 4 vote, even though, as John McMurray noted, everyone seemed to be losing sight of the need for the 18% coastwide reduction that had been governing their votes before.


What was probably more surprising was that, after the New Jersey vote, motions to allow New York to adopt a similar slot for its charter fleet, and to allow Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island to use a 32 to 40-inch slot to achieve regional consistency, failed on close votes.


It was as if New Jersey was the one spoiled child in the ASMFC family that all of the adults in the room gave in to, if only to stop the whining, while other coastal states were held to a higher standard.


That wasn’t the right way for the meeting to end, but on balance, the effort to rein in the excessive use of conservation equivalency was heartening, and a conversation that was about twenty years overdue.  The fact that people were willing to speak about accountability measures, even if they are still far from enacting them, was also a positive sign.


On balance, the outcome of the meeting could have been better, but it also could have been—and I had expected it to be—worse.  And the conversations that were held might finally give reason to hope that folks at the Management Board table will start getting serious about protecting the striped bass resource in the long term.