Sunday, March 1, 2020

DO ANGLERS CARE ABOUT BLUEFISH MANAGEMENT?



I call scoping the most important part of the process because, during the scoping process, everything is still on the table.  In the case of bluefish, the only thing that’s already decided is that the stock must be rebuilt, and rebuilt within ten years.  How the stock will be rebuilt—that is, will managers use size limits, bag limits and/or seasons—and whether the rebuilding period should be less than ten years, are all still up in the air.

But scoping takes in much more than that.  It sets the stage for what the bluefish fishery should look like after rebuilding.  For example, should it remain a primarily recreational fishery, with close to 90 percent of the landings going to the recreational sector, or should anglers have to give up some of their fish so that the commercial folk can enjoy a bigger share of the pie?  Should all anglers have to follow the same regulations, or should those on for-hire boats be granted special privileges?  And, perhaps most important of all in a recreational fishery where nearly two-thirds of fish caught are released, should bluefish be managed for the highest sustainable landings, which will reduce bluefish abundance and result in fewer big fish, or should it be managed for high abundance, which would lead to lower landings, but result in greater overall availability to anglers, and more of the larger “gator” blues in the population?

Given how important bluefish are to the recreational fishery, one might think that anglers would be concerned about such question, but at least here in New York, that’s apparently not the case.  When New York’s scoping hearing was held last Thursday night, recreational fishermen replied with a yawn.

That doesn’t mean that the hearing room was empty.

The for-hire fleet came in numbers, probably filling close to one-fourth of the available seats.  They can be a chaotic force at such meetings at times, but last Thursday the for-hires remained relatively disciplined and on-message.  They let the Council (and New York’s representatives to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, who were also in the room and will be a part of the process) know that, in their view, bluefish are not overfished, but merely went “someplace else” in the ocean, that the data used in the stock assessment is wrong, and that declines in bluefish landings can be attributed to most anglers’ lack of interest in the species as they can to a decline in the stock.

The lack of anglers at the hearing lent mute support to such claims of disinterest.

There were also quite a few commercial fishermen in the room.  Some left after the previous hearing, addressing the possible reallocation of summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass, was done, and those that stayed didn’t say very much, although they did make it clear that they were worried about their small 2020 quota and the possibility of a mid-season closure of the fishery.  While I don’t think that I heard any of them explicitly call for a permanent transfer of recreational quota, they also didn’t want to change the current provision of the management plan that allows the “unused”—and to make things clear, you can replace that word with “unharvested”—portion of the recreational quota to be transferred to the commercial sector if the Council elects to do so.

The commercials and for-hires accounted for most of the folks in the room, but there were also quite a few fisheries managers present.  There was Council staff, and at least one of New York’s Council members, along with representatives of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (one of whom was also acting on behalf of the Council as hearing officer), DEC law enforcement, and New York’s representatives to the ASMFC.

Outside of one reporter and someone who I believe was legislative staff, the smallest group at the hearing was made up of New York’s anglers.  I think that there were ten, and two of those were people I didn’t recognize, who might have been from the for-hire or commercial sectors.  They addressed different aspects of the bluefish management issue.

A number were concerned about maintaining the traditional fishery for young-of-the-year “snapper” bluefish, arguing that it was one of the ways to recruit children into recreational fishing, and also citing the importance of that fishery to the local bait and tackle industry.  They generally seemed to support a higher bag limit for the little bluefish, at least in the case of children (there was some talk of only allowing those less than 16 years old to keep extra fish), apparently believing that such young anglers won’t enjoy fishing unless they can kill a batch of snappers to show off at home.

I’m not sure that I buy the latter part of that argument.  Most kids on the dock either allow their snappers to bake in the hot August sun or toss them into buckets of only slightly cooler salt water to marinate for hours, meaning that the fish are largely unfit for consumption by the time they’re brought home; encouraging young anglers to show off fish that are later tossed out is probably the wrong way to initiate budding fishermen into the recreational community.  For years, I served as weighmaster at a local fishing club’s annual snapper contest, where we required every entrant to weigh their fish in alive and immediately return them to the water, and I don’t recall a single child being upset that they couldn’t take their fish home.

Maybe I’m wrong about that, but even if I am, a three-fish bag limit should be enough to satisfy a new angler’s desire to bring something home, while still having a negligible impact on the stock.

One angler, speaking for a large state organization, opposed in-season transfers of recreational quota to the commercial sector, but didn’t appear to be opposed to a permanent reallocation.

I was the only person in the room to focus on the fact that, among all of the federally-managed fisheries centered between Cape Hatteras and the Canadian border, bluefish stands alone as the only one that is both dominated by the recreational sector and dominated by catch and release, with about 65 percent of all bluefish landed between 2010 and 2019 returned to the water.  I argued that in such a fishery, managing for yield—that is, dead fish on the dock—is inappropriate; recreational release fisheries should be managed for abundance—for live fish in the water.

But as I said, I was the only one who pushed that point, although one other angler did agree that most bluefish were released (while someone else took a contrary view).

I don’t know what attendance was like, or what was said, at other hearings being held all along the coast.  But the biggest takeaway from the New York session is that anglers aren’t particularly concerned about bluefish.  Even with the hearing scheduled for 7:30, when most would have had time to get there after work, very few bothered to attend.

It’s not hard to believe that such lack of attendance was noted by all who were there, and will be taken into account when the rebuilding plan, and further management actions, are drafted. 

We can only hope that anglers’ low attendance was due to their decision to provide written comments instead.  The Council is accepting comments on the scoping document through March 17.  Details can be found at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/511cdc7fe4b00307a2628ac6/t/5e1cba2a701d3d18a809ba6b/1578940971944/Bluefish+Scoping+Document_Rebuilding_Final.pdf.

Of course, it’s possible that anglers aren’t sending in written comments, either.  But if that is the case, well, not showing up at the hearings and not providing comments is powerful testimony of its own kind.

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