FISHERIES MANAGERS NEED MORE FUNDING FOR SCIENCE--AND NOT TO BE STABBED IN THE BACK

 

A week ago, I wrote about the Great Red Snapper Count that’s now wrapping up down in the Gulf of Mexico.  I wrote about how it will advance our knowledge of the red snapper population, but won’t prove to be a panacea for red snapper managers.

Comments from the folks actually performing the count, such as scientists at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, which received a $10 million congressional grant for the study, reflect that truth, saying that, once the count is completed and all of the numbers are properly compiled and reviewed,

“Results from this study will be compared with stock assessment results to examine what accounts for any differences observed.  This project represents a unique opportunity to bolster the stock-assessment derived estimate of red snapper abundance in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, with the goal of ensuring the most robust management possible for this iconic fisheries species.”

That’s the sort of thing that you’d expect scientists to say.  Data from the study will be combined with existing knowledge, in order to improve the management process and make things better for everyone.

Preliminary results from the study are starting to be released, and it looks like the Great Red Snapper Count will make a very meaningful contribution to scientific knowledge.  

One of the results of the study, which will probably come as a surprise to many Gulf anglers, is that most of the red snapper aren’t found on natural or artificial reefs, around oil rigs, wrecks, or similar high-relief structures.  Instead, about two-thirds of the red snapper are found on low-relief bottom—which makes sense, when you stop to think about it, because red snapper were abundant in the Gulf for millennia before people showed up to build drilling platforms and sink steel ships, and natural high-relief structure, while present in the Gulf, doesn’t make up a big part of the natural sea bottom.

Because such a large proportion of red snapper live on low-profile habitat, where no one spent much time looking for them before, it turns out that there are a lot more of them than people thought—perhaps three times more than previously believed.  An October 1 statement from the National Marine Fisheries Service explained that

“the preliminary abundance estimates produced by the study are consistent with those of the 2018 Gulf red snapper stock assessment conducted by NOAA Fisheries for natural and artificial structures, or high relief areas.  The commercial and recreational red snapper fisheries predominantly operate on those high relief areas.

“What’s new is that this study better estimates the red snapper living in the low relief/bottom habitat, such as sand or mud.  Those areas are very extensive, but have low fish per area so are not where the fishery typically operates.  In fact, the study suggests that most of the Gulf red snapper population is located in these low relief areas.  This confirms what some scientists, managers, and fishermen have long suspected, but did not have the means to prove until now. 

“Historically, much of the Gulf red snapper stock assessment data comes from the fishery.  The fishery occurs mostly on the high relief natural and artificial structures in the Gulf or from surveys conducted near those areas.  And, while we suspected there were more fish out there, a study of this magnitude is unprecedented…”

That’s what can happen when Congress proves willing to appropriate ten million dollars to study a single species in a relatively small part of the nation’s coastal sea.  That sort of spending, for such a narrow purpose, is probably unprecedented as well.  But red snapper management became politicized enough, and drew enough local attention (and generated enough political contributions) to make the needed appropriation possible.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act requires that

“Conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available.”

Today, as in the recent past, when managing Gulf red snapper, federal fisheries managers must rely on—and base regulations on—fisheries dependent information and fisheries independent survey data taken around high relief structure, because that is the best scientific information they have.

But once the data from the Great Red Snapper Count is finalized and released, it will presumably represent “the best scientific information available,” and be integrated into the data used to set management measures.

To that end, NMFS has stated that

“While it is difficult to determine exactly how this study will influence red snapper management, we intend to incorporate study results into an interim stock assessment in 2021.  We will work with our partners on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and their Scientific and Statistical Committee to peer-review the assessment and make adjustments to red snapper management as appropriate.”

That's a reasonable and appropriate way to incorporate important new data into the management process.  A peer review by qualified scientists will help assure that the way the new data is used will meet the gold standard for fisheries science.

Unfortunately, if not unexpectedly, the same people and institutions who have been trying to impugn federal fisheries managers in the Gulf for years, in order to pump up their own red snapper kill and, in some cases, pump up short-term profits, have little interest in maintaining a gold standard.

Gold just isn't their thing.  They're more comfortable with, and would rather throw, mud.

For example, the Texas Chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association responded to the release of preliminary Great Red Snapper Count information not by hailing the new knowledge, but by attacking the federal fisheries management system.  In a bout of shrill and shameless hyperbole, CCA Texas howled that

“This week, the public and Congress finally heard why nothing seemed to add up in federal management of Gulf red snapper.  It turns out that NOAA just doesn’t count snapper very well.

“After more than a decade of utter management chaos, Congress began to suspect that NOAA didn’t know what it was doing and so Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama appropriated $10 million for an intensive, independent assessment of red snapper numbers in the Gulf of Mexico…This week, the Great Red Snapper Count, as it was called, revealed that, while preliminary, instead of the 36 million red snapper NOAA believed were in the population, there are really more like three times that number, or 100-million plus red snapper out there…

“The implications of this are hard to overstate.  It means that the foundation of everything NOAA thought it knew about red snapper is fundamentally cracked.  It explains why the population kept expanding even when NOAA said anglers were catching too many fish and shortened our seasons down to a few days each year.  It implies that the allocation between the commercial and recreational sectors were never set right.  It means all those stock assessments that drove shorter and shorter recreational seasons were wrong.  It means NOAA didn’t rabidly need to promote schemes to privatize public marine resources.  It means that the only crisis in red snapper has been NOAA’s faulty data and its culture that tailors management for the privileged few rather than the many.  The snapper count means that NOAA has been wrong about a lot of things and has been wrong for a long time...”

Except that, other than in the fever dreams of some anglers and organizations that believe that they, and no one else, ought to be the final arbiters of red snapper management, that's not what it means.  

Not at all.

If the final results of the Great Red Snapper Count confirm that there really are three times as many red snapper in the Gulf than previously believed, all it means is that red snapper science has advanced a few pages, thanks to Congress finally coming through with $10 million dollars for a comprehensive population study that relieved a stingily-funded NMFS—and you can thank Congress for that historical lack of funding, too—from trying to do the job on its own.

It’s intellectually dishonest to say that “NOAA didn’t count red snapper very well.”  As noted earlier, the Great Red Snapper Count pretty well confirmed NMFS’ estimates of red snapper abundance on the high profile structure. 

Prior to The Great Red Snapper Count, virtually no one--not NMFS, and certainly not CCA Texas--knew that there were quite a few snapper living over sand and mud, although CCA Texas, with its 20/20 hindsight, might claim such knowledge now.  At best, both the agency and CCA Texas might have suspected that was true.  

But while suspicion might be all CCA Texas needed to muddy the management waters, federal managers couldn’t legally act until the “best scientific information available”--actual knowledge--allowed them to do so.  And until the Great Red Snapper Count was completed, actual knowledge of a larger snapper stock didn't exist.

And no, the “foundation” of federal red snapper management has not been “fundamentally cracked” by the Great Red Snapper Count.  Instead, it's been strengthened, as existing knowledge is shored up and augmented by the Count's data.  Using the language of the Harte Research Institute, the data will "bolster," not weaken, the current assessment.

So CCA Texas made some misstatements.  After those the seeming dishonesty began.

For nothing about the Great Red Snapper Count suggests that "the allocation between the commercial and recreational sectors were never set right."  Such allocation was based on each sector's red snapper landings, not red snapper abundance.  Thus, if there really are more red snapper in the Gulf, both the commercial and recreational sectors might see their quotas increase, but in concert with the current allocation.

Why should it be otherwise?  Unless, of course, CCA Texas was hoping to somehow use the Count's results to grab some of the commercial sector's fish for itself.

The same can be said with respect to the commercial fishery's catch share program, what CCA Texas apparently called “schemes to privatize public marine resources.”  That program was adopted in 2007 to end commercial overfishing, and has been completely successful, even while recreational overharvest continued apace.  It has nothing to do with red snapper abundance, only about restraining landings, regardless of the size of the commercial quota.

So why would CCA Texas be willing to risk renewed commercial overfishing by abolishing catch shares, unless that, too, was a gambit that might lead to reallocating more fish to themselves.

When we get to the line about NOAA tailoring “management for the privileged few rather than the many” goes, we transit from the simply dishonest to the absurd.

For when NMFS adopted "sector separation" in the Gulf red snapper fishery, in order to provide party boat anglers--who surely number among "the many"--a reasonable chance to catch a few snapper, CCA challenged that action in federal court.

To most people, that seems like the sort of thing that only a group representing the "privileged few" who own offshore-capable boats would want to do.

But beyond all that, CCA Texas seems to be trying to discredit NMFS, by implying, if not saying outright that the agency wasn’t involved in the Great Red Snapper Count, and had no idea how to count red snapper, despite the fact that the agency worked with the Count’s scientists to design the survey methodology.  

That was not an honorable thing to do.

Unfortunately, that sort of backstabbing keeps happening in fisheries management, as various people—unfortunately, as in this case, too often people from the angling community—would rather attack the federal fishery management system instead of attacking real problems.

The Great Red Snapper Count is an example of what can happen when people take on the problem, instead.

I can only think of what scientists here in the northeast could do with $10 million, dedicated to one of the region’s fisheries issues.

With that kind of money, they might finally figure out how to rebuild New England cod stocks.  Maybe, they could restore wither flounder.  Figure out why summer flounder recruitment declined.  Or finally come up with a way to properly manage black sea bass, a fishery with far too many similarities, both asea and ashore, to the red snapper fishery in the Gulf.

What our fisheries managers desperately need is not more critics, but more funding, so that they can have access to the new and better science that they need to do their jobs.  The Great Red Snapper Count is a prime example of that sort of science.

They don’t need is fishermen stabbing them in the back in an effort to forward self-serving agendas.

Unfortunately, as the Great Red Snapper Count draws to a close, it seems that's what they're going to get.