RECREATIONAL FISHING DATA--THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, AND IT'S NOT HARD TO FIND

 

Last Thursday, I wrote about the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s upcoming deliberations about 2021 recreational regulations, and how such deliberations will be badly hampered by a lack of fisheries data.  But I also noted that such lack of data was a direct result of COVID-19’s impacts on the data gathering process.

In most years, recreational fisheries data is both abundant and easy to find.  Yet that truth doesn’t prevent debates over such data to become one of the most pervasive aspects of fisheries management on the East and Gulf coasts, nor does it prevent such debates from being among the most bitter and divisive discussions that occur at fisheries meetings; only fights over allocation might provide a challenge in such regards.

At one time, the debate over recreational data was easy to understand.  Prior to 1981, the National Marine Fisheries Service based recreational landings estimates on a survey that was woefully imprecise.  Beginning in ’81, the agency began relying on something called the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey, which was usually shortened to “MRFSS.”

MRFSS was a big step up from the haphazard survey that had existed before, but it still had a lot of problems—something pointed out in the National Academy of Sciences 2006 report, Review of Recreational Fisheries Survey Methods. 

Yet, despite its flaws, MRFSS wasn’t a hot topic among anglers for the first two decades of its existence, simply because the estimates didn’t have much real-world impact on their activities.  During that time, there weren’t too many recreational fishing regulations in place along most of the coast, something that was particularly true in the northeast and mid-Atlantic states, and anglers were generally free to fish—and to overfish—without worrying too much about what MRFSS might have to say. 

But around the turn of the century, that all started to change.

The change was heralded by the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, which for the first time required NMFS to end overfishing and to rebuild overfished stocks within a time certain—usually within ten years, although under certain, specified circumstances, the rebuilding period might be stretched out.  But fisheries managers had allowed overfishing to go on for so long, and had taken so little action to rebuild overfished stocks, that they kept doing business as usual, even after the law had changed.

Then, in 2000, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley, and that decision shook the federal fishery management system, and in particular the regional fishery management councils and the casual approach that they had historically taken to overfishing, to its roots.

The court decided that when NMFS adopted fishery management measures, it had to adopt measures that it expected to work—or, at worst, could no longer adopt measures more likely to fail than succeed.  In response to a Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council-approved summer flounder management measure that only had an 18 percent probability of ending overfishing—a fairly typical thing for a council to do up until then—the court wrote

“Only in Superman Comics’ Bizarro world, where reality is turned upside down, could the [National Marine Fisheries] Service conclude that a measure that is at least four times as likely to fail as to succeed offers a “fairly high level of confidence.”

Once that decision came out, regional fishery management councils could no longer blithely allow overfishing to continue, or adopt so-called “rebuilding plans” that, in reality, had very little chance of rebuilding overfished stocks.  Instead, they were compelled to impose restrictions on commercial and recreational fisheries that had at least a 50 percent probability of preventing overfishing and rebuilding overfished stocks by the legally mandated deadline.

Suddenly, MRFSS began to matter to anglers, because it was the sole measure used to determine recreational landings, and so to set regulations that would govern recreational fishermen.

That happened at about the same time that some popular East Coast fish, most particularly summer flounder, were in the throes of rebuilding.  To make that rebuilding happen, anglers were placed under a fairly strict, and very unpopular, regulatory regimen.  It didn’t take long before such anglers--and, perhaps more to the point, the businesses anglers supported--began attacking MRFSS, claiming that the numbers were wrong, overstated recreational catch, and should be discarded.

The National Academy of Sciences report justified some of their claims—MRFSS was, in fact, badly flawed—so NMFS moved forward with a new survey, the Marine Recreational Information Program, or “MRIP,” which was intended to clear up the problems.  In that, NMFS largely succeeded.  While it still isn’t perfect, in 2017 the National Academy of Sciences gave MRIP a very positive review in its report, Review of the Marine Recreational Information Program.

But while the critics of MRFSS were right in one respect—that such survey was badly flawed—they were wrong in their assumptions that MRFSS overestimated recreational landings.  MRIP, with its improved sampling methodology, proved that just the opposite was true:  Anglers were catching far more fish than previously believed.

That had two immediate effects.  Because the higher landings implied a higher biomass that could support them, estimates of most fish stocks increased, as did both commercial and recreational harvest limits.  But because anglers were really harvesting so many more fish than previously thought, recreational regulations were often tightened as a result.

That got a lot of anglers upset, because MRIP was telling them things that they didn’t want to hear.  Thus, those anglers did what it seems that a lot of people do in these times:  Reject the verifiable facts relating to recreational landings in favor of “alternative facts” that, although largely divorced from reality, better support their views of how things ought to be.

Then they target MRIP data with the same sort of animus that they had for MRFSS, and spin some wild stories, and some absurd conspiracy theories, about both MRIP and the fishery managers who use it.

Thus, we see a Maryland party boat captain spouting off about how

“MRIP (the NOAA Marine Recreational Information Program, the way NOAA counts recreational catch data) was no good right out of the gate,”

largely because it shows that recreational landings are higher than he’d prefer to believe.

Such captain’s opinion is markedly at odds with that of the National Academy of Sciences panel that issued the report on MRIP mentioned above.  To the best of my knowledge, the party boat captain, unlike the people who wrote the report, lacks a doctorate—or a master’s degree, or any other academic qualification—in statistics, fisheries management, or a related discipline, but he nonetheless has a fairly decent Internet following that share his ravings far and wide, and have won him a bit of a following.

Those people know what they want to believe.

It’s a classic example of “confirmation bias,” which is a fancy way of saying that people will believe things, even very unlikely things, that support their existing opinions, and disregard any facts to the contrary.

It’s the same sort of thing that we’re seeing today, when millions of otherwise-rational and respectable folks have talked themselves into believing wild conspiracy theories about elections being stolen by voting machines produced by a socialist-supporting company founded by Hugo Chavez, the late dictator of Venezuela, which were programmed to send all voting results to Europe, so that they might be altered to favor Joe Biden, rather than the simpler and far more provable explanation that their candidate ultimately got fewer votes, both popular and electoral, than the other guy.

But when you don’t want to believe that your candidate lost, conspiracy theories may be all you have left.  The same is true when it comes to fisheries data.

Thus, we see an outdoor writer in Louisiana complaining that

“The federal folks use the Marine Resources [sic] Information Program, a system of estimating recreational catch, and a system decried for years by many marine biologists—including those in the pre-Gov. John Bel Edwards administration—for its lack of timely information and a seeming inability to accurately estimate the Gulf of Mexico’s red snapper stock.”

It’s hard to know where to begin when a writer doesn’t even get MRIP’s full name right—it’s “Recreational” not “Resources”—and seemingly fails to understand that the purpose of MRIP is solely to estimate recreational catch, effort, and landings, and not to estimate the size of the red snapper—or any other fish—stock.

But anglers upset over what they view as restrictive red snapper rules will undoubtedly take those words as gospel, because they say what such anglers want to hear.  Thus, those anglers will already be primed to accept his word that

“The federal folks are trying to bring the recreational catch estimate [from various state surveys] in line with their MRIP data, and there’s every reason to believe that their numbers are skewed.

“It’s been a long-held belief the first thing folks entering state and federal positions is [sic] a crash course in Bureaucracy 101 or some such number to take it to a graduate-level course.

“The course’s first lesson is preserving your job, and clinging to MRIP as the be-all, end-all of fisheries management falls somewhere in applying that first B101 chapter.

“With federal folks insisting Gulf states come in line with MRIP is akin to equipping our modern military with flintlock muskets…”

Folks opposed to current red snapper management were undoubtedly as quick to believe those words as some voters are willing to believe Joe Biden didn’t win Georgia despite three recounts that can prove he was the victor, with neither the writer nor the anglers who believe him willing to learn that the state surveys estimating recreational red snapper landings are considered “specialized surveys” that either

“have replaced MRIP general surveys…[or] are used alongside MRIP general surveys to collect data for select fisheries or during select fishing seasons,”

and that such state surveys were never intended to stand on their own, but rather are a part of MRIP

“designed to improve regional monitoring of the recreational red snapper catch and effort. 

Anglers—and perhaps the writer—might also be surprised to learn that the need for calibrating the specialized state-administered surveys with MRIP, what the above-quoted writer referred to as “bringing the recreational catch estimate” from state surveys “in line with MRIP” is not a new issue.  Nor is it, as Ted Venker, Conservation Director of the Coastal Conservation Association claimed, some sort of 

“gamesmanship”

 and an effort by NMFS to maintain

“its adversarial relationship with the states and with recreational anglers,”

an “adversarial relationship” which exists only in some folks’ conspiracy-obsessed thoughts.

Instead, the need for calibration was recognized and discussed at least two years ago.  Because MRIP and the state-administered surveys each approach data collection a little differently, the data from each needs to be put into the same statistical context—into a so-called “common currency”—before it can be combined and used in a Gulf-wide red snapper management program.

But since it appears that, at least for some states, calibration will lead to more restrictive red snapper regulations, too many anglers, and angling industry advocates, want to view it as some a sinister federal conspiracy, rather than just as good science.

Other fisheries have seen similar criticism’s of MRIP data, coming from writers, editors and anglers who are less interested in fact-based truths and more concerned with creating or believing a narrative that casts themselves as victims of a nefarious federal management system.

Yet it only takes a modicum of effort to prove that the alternative facts such folks choose to believe are not really facts at all.  The National Academy’s report is a good place to start, but folks unwilling to read a hundred or so pages of fairly dry analysis and recommendations, but willing to learn how the recreational data system really works, will find that NMFS has done an exemplary job of explaining the process in language that is readily accessible to the layman.

It has produced a number of brochures, fact sheets, infographics and videos that are designed for anglers, and explain how recreational data is gathered and used, which are all made available on a single web page.

Anyone seeking more detail on how angler intercepts—the in-person interviews and catch samples—and effort surveys are combined into catch estimates can find it on another web page, while those seeking even more detail can download the Recreational Fishing Survey Design and Statistical Methods Manual which, for those willing to do the reading, sets out exactly how the survey works.

The Bible says that

“The truth will set you free.”

That wisdom applies to all facets of life, and it thus behooves any angler wanting to be free of the unfounded rumors and conspiracy theories that cloud the issue of recreational data to take some time to seek out the truth, which is most definitely out there, and easily found simply by clicking on some of the links provided above.

Those who seek the truth not hear what they want to hear, but they’ll learn what they need to know.