Since March 2019, the
Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council), in conjunction with the
Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Summer Flounder, Scup,
and Black Sea Bass Management Board (Management Board) have been quietly
working on changing the way that some recreational fisheries are managed.
The reform initiative
was initially intended to address only the recreational black sea bass fishery,
but it quickly expanded to include summer flounder and scup as well. At its
August meeting, the Management Board also considered including bluefish, and
invited the ASMFC’s Bluefish Management Board (Bluefish Board) to collaborate
on the matter.
In order to identify
issues that should be considered in any reform process, the Council and Management
Board created a Recreational Management Reform Steering Committee (Committee),
composed of representatives from both such bodies, along with staff from the
National Marine Fisheries Service’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office,
which has spent most of the past eighteen months contemplating what
recreational reform might look like. It appears that the Committee may be
nearing the end of its deliberations, and that the Council, Management Board
and, probably, the Bluefish Board will soon start putting a draft management
document together.
Will such
recreational reform improve the fisheries management process?
The vision
The Committee has agreed on a vision intended to guide
the development of any reform document, which it presents as
·
Stability
in recreational management measures (bag/size/season)
·
Flexibility
in the management process
·
Access
aligned with availability/stock status
None of those things,
on their faces, are unreasonable proposals, but all could be problematic if
improperly implemented.
Regulatory stability,
for example, can benefit both anglers and the angling industry. If fishermen
know what the regulations will be in the upcoming year, they can easily make
travel plans for the next fishing season. Tackle shops have a better idea of
how much inventory to order. Charter and party boats can better plan their
seasons and begin booking trips, while fishing clubs, local chambers of commerce
and other organizations can set tournament dates far enough in advance to
better assure participation.
On the other hand,
prioritizing stability over the health of fish stocks can lead to managers
taking no action to address problems with a stock until such problems become
severe. The ASMFC’s failure to intervene when the striped
bass stock began to decline, allowing the stock to become overfished,
demonstrates the consequences of management inaction.
Because regulations
now frequently change from year to year, based on estimates of recreational
landings, changes in fish abundance and similar factors, neither anglers nor
angling-related businesses regularly enjoy the benefits that stability can
bring. Thus, the Committee suggested some objectives that might
promote recreational stability and its ensuing benefits, as well as advance the
other aspects of the Committee’s vision.
The objectives
The first such
objective was to “Better incorporate uncertainty in the [Marine Recreational
Information Program (MRIP)] data into the management process.” That’s a
reasonable goal, as MRIP data does vary from year to year, particularly when
used at a state, seasonal, or sector level. Sometimes, particularly when used
at such levels, MRIP data will produce an estimate that seems very improbable,
and can be viewed as an outlier that is unlikely to reflect actual landings
levels. The Committee suggests developing a process that could use recognized
statistical methods to “smooth” estimates that seemed incongruously high or
low.
Such an approach
would almost certainly enhance the overall quality of MRIP data.
Another possible
approach would recognize that some uncertainty always surrounds recreational
catch, landings, and effort data, which MRIP expresses as a “percent standard error” (PSE). The Committee
suggested that if the recreational harvest limit for any given year falls
within the PSE for the previous year’s landings, then the previous year’s
recreational regulations could remain in force.
That, too, is a
statistically justifiable approach to regulatory stability.
And because fisheries
managers must try to set the upcoming year’s regulations before the current
year has ended, making it impossible to fully know the magnitude of the current
year’s landings, the Committee suggested that managers give greater
consideration to when the use of preliminary landings estimates, usually based
on landings for the first eight months of the year, are appropriate, and
whether they should be supplemented by an additional information.
That is a question
that fisheries managers have been wrestling with for a while, and certainly
deserves further thought.
The Committee’s
second objective was to “Develop guidelines for maintaining status quo measures.”
Such objective
obviously supports the desire for regulatory stability. Currently, management
measures are generally set by comparing landings estimates with the
recreational harvest limit (RHL); if the landings are above the RHL, more
restrictive measures are imposed, but if the landings are below the RHL,
regulations are often relaxed.
The Committee
suggested a more nuanced approach, that would consider not only the
relationship between landings and the RHL, but also the biomass of the stock,
fishing mortality levels, and the recruitment of new fish into the population
when deciding whether regulations ought to be changed.
Such an approach
could certainly provide benefits. As the Committee noted, “poor or declining
stock status indicators could require changes when status quo would otherwise be preferred.” However,
managers could also argue for the opposite effect, using supposedly positive
information to argue for status quo regulations
when landings significantly exceeded the RHL.
There is also the
question of who would be empowered to interpret the biological data. Under the
current system, prescribed in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens)
the Council maintains a Scientific and Statistical Committee, composed of
trained scientists, who set the acceptable biological catch (ABC), from which
the RHL is derived. If the Council, Management Board and/or Bluefish Board base
regulations on MRIP estimates and the RHL, they’re standing on a solid
statistical and scientific base.
However, if the
people sitting on those management bodies, the majority of whom are not trained
scientists, are permitted to make their own interpretation of the scientific
data, and use that interpretation to decide whether maintaining status quo regulations is justified, even if such
regulations caused recreational landings to significantly exceed the RHL, the
management process will be skating dangerously close to managing by laypersons’
opinions, rather than by scientific advice.
That would be a bad
direction to take, although at the Council, the situation couldn’t grow too
dire, for the mandates of Magnuson-Stevens would still apply; the Council would
not be allowed to adopt or maintain any management measure that is likely to
cause overfishing. But no such constraint would bind the ASMFC.
Thus, this objective,
if implemented badly, could increase the risk to fish stocks.
The Committee’s third
objective, “Develop process for setting multi-year recreational management
measures,” also incorporates a significant level of risk, as it calls for “a
commitment to making no changes in the interim year,” even if there is “new
data that would otherwise allow for liberalization or require restrictions.”
While foregoing
liberalization would do no harm to the stock, taking no action if new
information indicated that the stock is declining or experiencing excessive
fishing mortality could cause further damage to the resource. While this
objective, like the one described above, would be constrained at the Council
level by the language of Magnuson-Stevens, the reluctance to take action in the
face of adverse data is still worrying.
If the need to
maintain stable regulations over a period of years is, in fact, so compelling,
managers could better assure stability by setting relatively conservative RHLs
that have a high probability of preventing overfishing, so that if such RHLs
were exceeded, overfishing still would not occur. But when one considers the
Committee’s vision also calls for “accessibility,” that is not likely to be a
palatable approach.
The Committee’s final
two objectives, “Consider improvements in the process used to make changes to
state and federal recreational management measures” and “Consider making
recommendations for federal waters recreational measures earlier in the year,”
were not as fully fleshed out as the other three, and probably have lesser
implications for the health of fish stocks.
Some of the topics
associated with the latter objective, improving the process of changing
regulations, including establishing guidelines for using MRIP data at a state,
seasonal, or sector level, when such data is significantly less accurate than it
is when used to derive coastwide estimates, certainly deserve a deeper look. On
the other hand, suggestions that managers consider data other than that
supplied by MRIP as part of the regulatory process could well increase
management uncertainty, unless such data was derived using a statistically
valid methodology that had successfully passed through the peer review process.
The final option,
implementing federal regulatory changes earlier in the year, perhaps in August
or October rather than in December, would bring both costs and benefits.
The federal
rulemaking process imposes strict timelines for the rulemaking process;
although the fishing season for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and
bluefish begins on January 1, and anglers usually presume that any new
regulations are in effect by that time, that is usually not the case. Because
of the requirements established by the federal Administrative Procedures Act, such measures don’t
typically become enforceable until April or May. Allowing the Council to adopt
such measures as early as August would allow regulations to be in place at or
near the start of the fishing year.
Early adoption of
regulations would also allow businesses more lead time to order merchandise,
book trips, and prepare better business plans for the upcoming year.
On the other hand,
such early adoption would mean that regulations would, at best, be based on
recreational catch, effort and landings estimates through June 30, and provide
managers with no idea of what was caught in July and August, when most fishing
activity for the species in question occurs. That would add considerable
uncertainty to the management process.
Thus, the vision and
objectives established by the Committee are a mixture of good and potentially
problematic points. Because the Council could not override the express
provisions of Magnuson-Stevens with respect to overfishing, rebuilding
overfished stocks, establishing annual catch limits, and employing the best
science available, the downside of such recommendations is limited. At the same
time, the potential improvements to the management system could be very real.
Putting people first,
fish last
The recreational
reform process becomes problematic when suggestions and discussions that focus
on the issue of “accessibility” which, for practical purposes, means allowing anglers to harvest more fish than they
currently may.
The worst of those
suggestions harkens back to the debate over the so-called “Modern Fish Act,” and
the use of “alternative management measures” rather than
poundage-based annual catch limits to manage recreational landings. The same
organizations that spearheaded the fight for the Modern Fish Act are now proposing a “control rule” to replace management
measures keyed to expected landings and the RHL.
Such proposed control
rule would create a series of “steps” corresponding to levels of stock
abundance. Management measures, including size limits, bag limits, and seasons,
would be preset, supposedly to correspond to the status of the stock, becoming
more restrictive as biomass approached, and then dropped below, the biomass
threshold. No annual catch limit would apply.
The argument made in
support of that approach makes little sense, and seems mired in circular logic.
The organizations aver that “access (allocation) can be defined for the
recreational sector as a combination of size limits, bag limits and seasons,
instead of a pound-based quota. This is directly relatable to commercial quota
in pounds because access is less or more restrictive based on stock conditions
through changes to quota (commercial allocation) and management measures
(recreational allocation).”
The argument that the
proposed control rule is “directly relatable to commercial quota in pounds,”
never addresses why a recreational quota in pounds isn’t equally, or even more,
relatable to the commercial quota. Instead, while commercial fishermen are
subject to accountability measures, usually in the form of pound-for-pound
paybacks in a future year, under the proposed control rule, anglers would
apparently face no consequences for harvesting more fish than the stocks can
safely sustain.
The justification for
that seems to be that “Defining access in pounds does not work for the
recreational sector because recreational anglers have no control over the
harvest estimates that are generated when they follow established management
measures. Choosing to reallocate based on revisions to catch data has the
potential to result in continuous allocation changes…”
There was more
written, but that’s probably enough to demonstrate what’s happening here, and
none of it makes too much sense. What does “recreational anglers have no
control over the harvest estimates…when they follow established management
measures” even mean?
Recreational anglers
do have control over what they harvest, which is what the harvest estimates
measure, and the entire point of the management process is to revise management
measures if they allow fishermen, including recreational fishermen, to land too
many fish each year. The control rule proponents are trying to present those
facts in a way that somehow makes it seem wrong to rein in recreational
overharvest.
And there are no “continuous allocation changes.” Allocations
are set in the various management plans, which currently allocate 40 percent of the summer
flounder, 21 percent of the scup, and 51 percent of the black sea bass to the
recreational sector. That doesn’t change from year to year. Those quotas are
based on an overall annual catch limit intended to prevent overfishing, which
catch limit is then divided between the commercial and recreational sectors. If
both sectors stay within their quotas, and their respective allocations, the
stock should remain healthy in the long term.
The problem is that
anglers often don’t stay within their allocations, but instead exceed their
RHLs by a significant amount. Regulations must then be changed in order to
reduce recreational landings, hopefully to or below the RHL.
That has nothing to
do with changing the allocation. It has everything to do with trying to keep
anglers from exceeding their quota, and from potentially threatening the health
of the stock. The control rule’s proponents are thus trying to perpetuate
recreational overharvest, avoid recreational accountability, and place
short-term landings, and any potential economic benefits that may ensure, ahead
of the health of the stock.
Unfortunately, the
proposal is still a part of the recreational reform debate. It was discussed in
some detail at the Management Board’s August meeting, when we learned
that the standard for regulations at the highest level
of stock abundance would be the “most liberal set of measures preferred by
anglers when biomass is high,” while the standard for an overfished stock would
be the “most restrictive measures that could be tolerated without major loss of
business.”
Management measures
adopted because they are “preferred by anglers” or “tolerated without major
loss of business,” rather than management measures directly tied to the needs
of fish stocks, would represent a major step backward for federal fishery
management.
Fortunately, the
worst of their impacts would, again, probably be blocked by the clear language
of Magnuson-Stevens. Yet we can still expect to see the national angling
organizations, and the angling industry, pushing hard for their adoption.
That demonstrates
just why maintaining a strong Magnuson-Stevens, and making the law even
stronger in important respects, is necessary if we intend to keep the nation’s
fish stocks abundant and healthy well into the future.
-----
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/
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