Since early in 2014, the federal fishery management system
has been under attack by a coalition of recreational fishing industry, boating,
and anglers’ rights groups which are trying to convince citizens and legislators
alike that the Magnuson-Stevens
Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which promotes science-based
management, prohibits overfishing, and requires the prompt rebuilding of
overfished stocks, places unreasonable burdens on recreational fishermen and
the recreational fishing industry.
Instead of scientifically rigorous, data-driven management
measures, the coalition, arrayed under the banner of the Center for Sportfishing
Policy, would prefer to see anglers managed under the less restrictive measures
that characterize recreational fisheries management in most coastal states,
which can be driven by local politics and short-term business concerns as much
as by science, tolerate overfishing and overfished stocks, and rarely, if ever,
hold the recreational sector accountable for its overharvest.
That conservation-averse position was first formally
articulated in early 2014,
when the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, acting in conjunction
with the member organizations of the Center for Sportfishing Policy (then, the
Center for Coastal Conservation) released a manifesto titled “A Vision for
Managing America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries” which, among other
things, stated that
“Many state natural resource agencies, especially those in
the South, recognize the benefits of a vibrant recreational fishing community
and have managed to promote it while conserving their saltwater resources. Striped bass, red drum, black drum, summer flounder,
sheepshead, snook, spotted seatrout and tarpon are examples of successfully
managed state fisheries that sufficiently meet the needs of recreational
anglers while providing extensive economic benefits to their state and the
national economies.”
The TRCP report fails to provide any data to support the
naked assertion that state conservation measures are adequately conserving the
fisheries in question. That’s not
particularly surprising, first because that the so-called “report” was designed
from the start to be a persuasive piece of industry propaganda, rather than a
document with any vestige of academic integrity, but ultimately because the
statement itself was, in large part, untrue.
For example, benchmark stock assessments clearly demonstrated that striped bass were already in a downward spiral that began a few years before the report was released, and state managers’ inaction has now caused the stock to become overfished.
On the East Coast, the Atlantic States
Marine Fisheries Commission admits that it just doesn’t know whether the red
drum stock is overfished; while in the Gulf of Mexico, spotted
seatrout biomass in both Mississippi and Louisiana had already fallen to
overfished levels five years ago.
Mississippi finally took action that might fix the problem, but Louisiana
is still allowing its fish to languish; proposals to tighten what are now the
most liberal speckled trout regulations in the United States have been made,
but so far, state managers have not been willing to act in the face of
resistance from anglers, or at least from the angling press.
Those are hardly examples of management success.
Some of the other fish mentioned are doing OK, but we can
also add another species to the list of state managers' failures.
That species would be southern flounder.
Southern
flounder are having trouble in both the South Atlantic and in the Gulf although, in order to limit the length of this piece, I’ll only address the South Atlantic
today. But on either coast, the problem
is the same: State managers were aware
of problems with the stock for some time, but they delayed for far too long before trying to fix them.
That is well illustrated by the State of North Carolina, which completed a stock assessment in 2019 that found that southern flounder, across its North Carolina to Florida range, was both badly overfished and still experiencing overfishing. The assessment notes that the southern flounder stock began to decline in abundance in 2006, and that recruitment has been in a declining trend over that time as well. On the other hand, fishing mortality increased beginning in 2007, peaked in 2013, and remained relatively high.
A combination of declining abundance, coupled
with increased fishing mortality, could only bode ill for the stock.
That wasn’t North Carolina’s first hint that something was
amiss with southern flounder. The initial
fishery management plan, created by biologists at the state’s Division of
Marine Fisheries and adopted in 2005, suggested that
overfishing might well have been occurring since 1991, and that a 30% reduction
in fishing mortality was needed. At
that time, it was thought that more than 85 percent of North Carolina’s southern
flounder landings were attributable to the commercial fishery, and less than 15
percent to anglers, which meant that most of the needed reduction would have to
come from the commercial fishery.
However, North Carolina’s Marine Fisheries Commission, which
was composed of both scientists and recreational and commercial fishermen, didn’t
see things that way, and imposed only a 15 percent reduction on the commercial
fishery, while seeking to reduce recreational landings by 30.5 percent. It’s probably not surprising that such decision,
which ran contrary to both facts and logic, didn’t end overfishing.
A 2009 stock assessment indicated that the stock was
overfished, and overfishing was occurring.
More restrictions were placed on the recreational fishery, but not on
the commercial fishery that accounted for most of the landings. Again, such
half-measures were inadequate to end the stock’s problems.
In 2014, North Carolina tried to place more restrictions on the commerfcial fishery, but the commercial fishermen sued, and a judge
enjoined the new rules because the stock assessment that they were based on was
ultimately deemed to be inadequate for management purposes.
Finally, after completing the 2019 stock assessment, North
Carolina realized that very severe restrictions were needed. As described by the North Carolina Wildlife
Federation,
“The spawning stock biomass of southern flounder estimated by
the peer-reviewed stock assessment for 2017 was now just 2.3 million pounds
while the spawning stock biomass required to achieve the statutory requirement
to declare the southern flounder recovered was 12 million pounds within 10 years
(by 2028).
“To achieve this goal, the peer-reviewed stock assessment
stated that harvest had to be reduced by 72%.
Despite this clear statement in the stock assessment, the [Department of
Marine Fisheries]…and the [Marine Fisheries Commission]…only required a 62% reduction
in harvest for 2019, further delaying the necessary 72% reduction until 2020…[The]
reduction achieved in 2019 was only was only 34%.
“Despite awareness of the 2019 harvest reduction shortfall in
2020, no effort was made…to adjust the 2020 harvest reductions to get back on
track. The 2020 commercial seasons
opened during the peak harvest season…therefore the likelihood of achieving the
needed 72% reduction in the 2020 harvest is slim. Importantly, even if a 72% reduction is
achieved in 2020, the overharvest in 2019 compromises the overall rebuilding
projections.”
That sort of less-than-effective management approach couldn’t happen pursuant to Magnuson-Stevens, which requires fisheries managers to prevent overfishing and adopt regulations that have at least a 50 percent probability of achieving that goal. And if a sector does overfish, as occurred in North Carolina in 2019, that sector would be held accountable, and probably required to make pound-for-pound paybacks in the following year.
But none of that was required under North Carolina law, so a less effective management approach could be maintained.
It’s easy to understand why state fishery managers aren’t as effective as those operating onh the federal level—their departments report directly to each state’s governor, and so are more vulnerable to the prevailing political winds. In North Carolina, a lot of those winds are being generated by the commercial fishing sector, which opposed the southern flounder rebuilding program.
As so often happens, they
began by attacking the data underlying the stock assessment, despite the
long decline in their own southern flounder landings. One
stated that
“If you do simple math, the stock is good, according to my
math, and my fifty years on the water.”
A second argued that
“There are plenty of fish in Currituck [Sound]. I fished for twenty-eight days this year and
it was as good as ever,”
while a third whined that
“This is the biggest joke: the Marine Fisheries Commission is
ultimately going to decide what happens to us?
They have never given a crap about us.”
That sort of language makes it difficult for state fisheries
managers to put needed regulations in place, no matter how much they might want
to do the right thing, because they’re not the only ones who hear it. Politicians hear it, too. And while managers might be adept at counting
fish, politicians are even better at counting votes, and aren’t afraid to let
managers know when the people who vote are unhappy.
And it doesn’t just happen in North Carolina; state managers
are under the same pressures everywhere.
In some cases, they aren’t even empowered to adopt the needed management measures themselves; in
South Carolina, for example, changes to fisheries management measures—including
those related to southern flounder—are made by the state legislature, and not
by state biologists.
So decisions on flounder management in South Carolina will be based primarily on political, and not scientific, considerations, and
political issues tend to take a long time to resolve. While North Carolina’s response to the latest
stock assessment might have been somewhat flawed, at least the state took quick
action; South
Carolina’s professional fishery managers won’t be able to seek legislative
approval of their proposed measures until later this year, giving the stock
even more time to decline before action is taken.
Even in states where legislation is not needed to adopt
management measures, states often act slowly.
Florida,
for example, decided to adopt more restrictive southern flounder regulations just
one month ago, even though the state has been aware of the depth of the
flounder’s troubles since 2019.
But the organizations who are trying to undercut federal
fisheries managers, and praise state approaches, don’t view delay as a bad thing. In fact, when
it comes to rebuilding fisheries, they actually favor a dilatory approach. The TRCP report argued that
“the 10-year rebuilding provisions [in Magnuson-Stevens]
should be revised to provide greater flexibility than is currently allowed,”
and that
“the regional councils and fishery managers set lower harvest
rates that would allow fish stocks to recover gradually [rather than within 10
years] while diminishing socioeconomic impacts.”
While drawn-out rebuilding timelines might add
uncertainty to the rebuilding process, and perhaps harm fish stocks in the long
term, they also preserve higher short-term economic returns, which are
important to industry members, who tend to favor them.
To best promote such narrow interests, trade associations—whether representing
the commercial or the recreational industry—and anglers’ rights groups typically
prefer to see regulations set at the state, rather than the federal level,
because it’s far easier to amass the political clout needed to weaken, delay,
or completely defeat harvest restrictions at the state level than it is to
frustrate federal management efforts.
Because of such political realities, state-managed fisheries often
find themselves in much worse shape than to those managed at the federal level.
That’s what happened with striped bass and spotted seatrout,
and it’s what happened with southern flounder, too.
Rebuilding the southern flounder stock will be neither a short
nor a simple job. The job would have
been far easier if state managers had started it sooner, as they would have had to do if they
were bound by the same standards that bind federal managers, which require them
to promptly end overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks.
But the states weren’t under such mandates when the problems first arose (and only North Carolina is now), so they are going to have to work that much harder to make up for their delay.
To their credit, they’re now headed in the
right direction, but they still have a lot of catching up to do.
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