Thursday, March 4, 2021

STRIPED BASS--THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE

 

In his classic work On War, career Prussian soldier and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz observed that

“Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.”

The same can be said about striped bass management.

I was thinking about that just a few days ago, after reading an editorial titled “The Solution is Simple” in The Falmouth Enterprise, a newspaper that has been published on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod since 1895.  The topic was striped bass, and the article noted

“There is a good deal of concern about striped bass these days.  It is evident that the numbers of these popular fish are down, especially with big fish, which makes the striper the most popular sport fish on the East Coast.

“Amendment 7 [to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s striped bass management plan] is being developed to address this.

“Fisheries managers have a knack for making an easily defined problem very complex.  That much is clear in the commission’s motion to develop its new striped bass amendment [which contemplates an amendment that addresses nine different, and individually complex, issues].

“It’s mind-numbing.

“The simple truth is that the way to protect striped bass, or any species, is to protect their habitat and kill fewer of them.  The problem arises when there are competing interests…”

Thus, von Clausewitz’s quote.  For it’s those “competing interests” that makes that very simple way to conserve and rebuild striped bass—killing fewer of them—so very hard to accomplish.

As I started to think about von Clausewitz a little bit more—and, believe it or not, when your undergrad degrees are in History and English, and you’ve kept up those interests in the decades since, idly thinking about folks like von Clausewitz is the sort of thing that you do—I realized that some of his other thoughts on war were also very relevant to the fisheries arena.

Like

“There are very few men—and they are the exceptions—who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment,”

for nothing makes the simplest aspects of striped bass management more difficult to execute than too many stakeholders’—and too many fishery managers’—excessive focus on the short-term impacts of the management measures needed to assure the long-term health and stability of the striped bass stock.

There are numerous examples.  One that I frequently cite is the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board’s response to a 2011 stock assessment update, which found that the stock would become overfished by 2017.  

The threat to the striped bass stock was clear.  There was plenty of time for the Management Board to take action to avoid the problem.  It even went so far as to prepare a suite of prophylactic measures.  But in the end, it did nothing to halt the stock's decline.

The transcript of the November 2011 meeting shows that a number of Management Board members wanted to defer action, despite the clear warning in the stock assessment update, because the declining stock had not yet hit any of the triggers for management action, and they didn't want to cause temporary problems for fishing-related businesses.  Pat Augustine, then the Governor’s Appointee from New York, most clearly articulated that position when he said

“Amendment 6 [to the striped bass management plan] gives you two major triggers.  We haven’t hit either one of them to meet that action yet…

“…we’re managing fishermen, we’re affecting livelihoods.  Yes, I understand that there is a tremendous amount of money driving the economy by partyboats and charterboats going out and fishing on these fish.

“We’ve created a bonanza for folks who have a vessel who have got a captain’s license, but how of you [sic] are taking three striped bass trips a day?  We have charterboat guys in New York who are taking three a day with six guys on each vessel.  And, oh, by the way, they can take two greater than 28 [inches].  Read the fishermen magazine in your backyard and tell me that you don’t see what the implications are.

“The minimum size is typically 28 inches.  What the heck did we expect to happen?  You’ve got all the states fishing greater than 28 except for those that have made changes where they allow for a third fish or a slot-size fish, but the reality is that’s what you’re fishing for.  You’re fishing for eight-year-old fish and older.  Wake up and smell the trees—the roses…

“…If there is an aberration in the stock and the myco[bacteriosis, a disease fatal to striped bass] goes forward and destroys the population in the Chesapeake, we’ve got an issue.  There will be a trigger [requiring management action when the stock’s condition gets worse] and we will take action, but I think we’ve got to be realistic in goals and desires to protect the most protected specie of fish in the ocean that we many [sic]; and to do it at the demise of other species of fish that are also costing livelihoods and having a negative economic impact in several states along the coast, shame on us.”

In other words, the Management Board knew that there was an incipient problem with the striped bass stock, and it knew that too many fish were being killed, but in order to prevent adverse short-term economic impacts on the fishing industry, it chose to take no action until things got worse, until a crisis occurs (“myco goes forward and destroys the population [emphasis added”) and it was forced to do something.

And things did get worse, but the Management Board did too little, even then, ignoring clear requirements to begin rebuilding the stock included in its own management plan.

That stock, as we now, is now overfished, and still the Management Board has failed to initiate rebuilding.  But then, as von Clausewitz noted,

“War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.”

Fishery management may not be physically dangerous—at least, not most of the time—but they still make "mistakes that come from kindness," seeking to manage a depleted striped bass stock while avoiding short-term pain to stakeholders.  And such mistakes are dangerous, as they throw open the door to failure.

“…to introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity.”

Yet such absurdities abound in striped bass management, particularly with respect to the practice of “conservation equivalency,” which allows states to adopt management measures other than those chosen by the Management Board, provided that such alternate measures, in theory, provide the same conservation benefit.

Unfortunately, the Management Board’s desire to moderate the impacts of striped bass management—the greatest of its “mistakes the come from kindness”—cause its management efforts to fail, and leads to management travesties such as the recently-adopted Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, which was intended to reduce fishing mortality to the target level but, primarily because of conservation equivalency concessions the Management Board was willing to make to Maryland and New Jersey, faces a 58 percent probability that it will not achieve its goal.

In the end, there is only way to successfully manage striped bass, and that is for the Management Board to, again in the words of von Clausewitz,

“Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.”

And for the Management Board, such “one great decisive aim” can only be the full restoration of the striped bass spawning stock, and then maintaining the restored stock at healthy and sustainable levels in the future. 

For if they fail to achieve that biological goal, the subsidiary goals of maximizing the economic, social, and recreational benefits that flow from the bass fishery shall forever remain out of reach.

Which brings us back, full circle, to where this began, with the editorial in The Falmouth Enterprise, which concluded that

“[Needed fishery management measures] won’t be popular with everyone.  But it’s not about the fishermen, it’s about the fish.  Fisheries managers must look beyond competing interests if they are going to protect this important game fish.  [emphasis added]”

If the Management Board can accept that truth, and adopt the mindset and the principles necessary to achieve success, the striped bass spawning stock, and the striped bass fishery, can and will be restored.

But if it equivocates, tries to appease competing interests, and fails to understand that, in the end, the needs of the fish, not of fishermen, must come first, the Management Board’s efforts will fail.

Once again.

 

 

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