Last Sunday, I described how stakeholder comments received by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission overwhelmingly supported strong, decisive action to conserve and rebuild the striped bass stock. Today, I’m pleased to say that the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Advisory Panel, made up of stakeholders from the angling, for-hire, and commercial striped bass sectors, has taken a similar position on the proposed Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.
The Advisory Panel’s support for sound striped bass
conservation took a number of different forms, and touched on many of the
issues included in the Public
Information Document For Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan
for Atlantic Striped Bass. But its single, most important action was recommending that Issue 2, which addressed
biological reference points, be removed from further consideration in the
Amendment 7 process.
If that happens, it would be a very big deal. It would also represent a very big setback to
the states of New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, which see Amendment 7 as their
best, and perhaps their only, chance to put more dead striped bass on the docks
of their respective states.
To understand just how big a win maintaining the current
reference points in Amendment 7 might be, it’s worth taking a look at the
history of the issue.
Maryland’s Michael Luisi was probably the earliest and most aggressive proponent of moving forward with a new amendment, in order to permit a bigger kill.
And that was after the assessment update also revealed that
anglers in the Chesapeake Bay—particularly in Maryland--not only failed to make
their required 20.5% reduction in fishing mortality, but actually increased their
fishing mortality by more than 50%.
Capt.
John McMurray, New York’s legislative proxy, called out Luisi’s hypocritical position, saying
“I’m trying to figure out what’s going on here. Harvest was up almost 55 percent in the Bay
states, where it was supposed to be decreased by 20.5 percent. I think, during your presentation,
recreational fishing effort was up 50 percent.
Coastal states on the other hand went down to one fish, and our decrease
was 47 percent, I think.
“Now we’re considering a request from the states that
overfished to do an analysis so they could catch more fish. It doesn’t make sense here. Nobody is discussing well, maybe we
should look at the regulations that they had in place that allowed them to go
54 percent over. Instead we’re
considering this. I don’t really
understand how the conversation even got here.
[emphasis added]”
Capt. McMurray’s comment didn’t go over well with the
Chesapeake Bay states; one representative was quick to explain that the fishing
mortality target was a coast-wide goal, making it fine for Chesapeake Bay
anglers to kill more bass than the management plan provided for, so long as
coastal states made greater sacrifices than the plan required to offset the
Chesapeake landings.
Not surprisingly, John Clark, a Delaware fisheries manager who consistently advocates for a bigger kill,
was quick to support Luisi’s attempt to increase landings. However, Michael Armstrong, a manager from
Massachusetts, disagreed.
“I very much appreciate what’s going on in the Bay, although
I look at the data, and I really want to talk more to you guys about it. I see and I hear the charter guys
talking. But I see you catching
the same number of fish that you did last year.
The harvest is the same. The
number of caught and release are more. I’m
struggling to see the difficulty that has created.
“I’m very open to the explanation. What really worries me, it’s a fool’s
errand to be messing around in the hundredths spot on an assessment. We’re kidding ourselves if we think there is
a difference between 0.16 and 0.18… [emphasis added]”
Trying to fine-tune regulations closely enough to address a
0.02 difference in the fishing mortality rate might have been a fool’s errand,
but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t people willing to look into the
possibility. Adam Nowalsky, New Jersey’s
legislative proxy, was one of them He
said,
“…what initiated this action [to reduce fishing mortality] a
short time ago was a very small tick in F above the F threshold [sic]. That very small tick above meant something…
“But that small tick was enough for us to take significant
management action. What is being suggested
today is that a tick under the F target now, just take a look at what that
could potentially mean…”
So like vultures circling above the high plains, keeping their
eyes on a sick and staggering cow, the representatives of Maryland, Delaware,
and New Jersey focused on the insignificant 0.02 difference between 2015 fishing
mortality and the target mortality rate, hoping for an opportunity to feed.
The possibility of reducing the female spawning stock
biomass target, and so of increasing fishing mortality, offered a chance
not just to feed on a single carcass, but to glut themselves on an entire herd. It was an opportunity that they couldn’t resist.
“…I’ve always been one that has thought that the current
targets that are set for spawning stock biomass, or set to a point where they’re
unachievable. They may be achievable,
but we’re unable to maintain them.
“It sets a false expectation for fishermen along the coast…”
“Five years [after developing the last addendum to the
management plan], it doesn’t seem as if what we did a whole lot of good as far
as recovering the stock. I feel as if we’re
in a different place and time right now.
Amendment 6 was developed back in the time period when we had a super
abundance of stripers in the ocean. We
no longer have that based on this assessment.”
Instead of attempting to restore that sort of striped bass
abundance, Luisi argued that
“I would be supportive of a more comprehensive look at all of
the elements that are in Amendment 6 for potential change, which would be goals
and objectives, trigger mechanisms, reference points, time periods. All of those elements, I think we need to
reconsider them. You know we did a
survey a year or two ago; I don’t remember when that was. But there was a clear indication that the
Board was kind of split; as far as do we want to have a super abundance of
large striped bass in the ocean, or do we want to have harvest a part of that
as well?”
At the same meeting, after the findings of the benchmark
assessment were released, Doug Grout, a fishery manager from New Hampshire, made
a motion that tasked the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee with providing
an example of management measures that might end overfishing and return fishing
mortality to the target level. John
Clark of Delaware, one of Luisi’s most dependable allies, didn’t care for that
idea.
“I’m opposed to this.
I think we know what this will turn out.
It’s going to be drastic, it’s going to be alarming, and it’s really
going to create expectations in the public that things are so terrible that we
have to take drastic action now…This is the time to start an amendment process;
where we rethink our management options, we look at different reference
points. [emphasis added]”
That’s a pretty remarkable statement.
Clark is admitting that “drastic action” would be needed to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, but despite the need, he doesn’t want to take such action “now.”
He doesn’t want the public to believe that the state of the striped bass
stock is “terrible” (although it’s probably worth noting that earlier
this week, at a striped bass webinar hosted by Rutgers University, Emilie
Franke, ASMFC’s current fisheries management plan coordinator, and Dr. Katie
Drew, the Team Lead for the striped bass stock assessment, actually used
the word “terrible” to describe the current state of the striped bass).
Instead of taking the action needed to end overfishing and
rebuild the stock, Clark’s proposed solution was to move the goal
posts, and adopt new reference points that wouldn’t lead to a greater abundance of bass, but would instead deem the current, depleted population to be the
new normal and without need of more restrictive management.
It looked like bass were headed for a bad place, particularly
after a
“Work Group” assembled by the Management Board, which included Luisi, issued a
report which, despite the stock’s overfished status, began with
the line that
“In the post moratorium era (ending 1990), the management of
Atlantic Striped Bass has largely been a story of success,”
reported that
“Multiple members of the [Work Group] indicated that
recreational dead discards may be the single most important issue at this time,
and addressing (or reducing discards) is the most important action that can be
taken going forward,”
and decided that
“management stability, flexibility, and regulatory consistency,”
rather than maintaining a healthy and fully rebuilt striped
bass stock, ought to be the “themes" of
the new amendment.
Then things looked a little worse when the resultant Public
Information Document contained a statement that
“the current reference points may be unobtainable given
current objectives for fishery performance,”
“Yes, this was Delaware made the request. It is pretty widely accepted that the stock
was at an all-time high level during the early 2000s. This led to the huge changes in other
fisheries within Delaware Bay. As was pointed
out earlier in the public comments by Dr. Kahn, the Delaware went from not
producing striped bass to being a striped bass production dynamo, and
responsible for upwards of 20 percent of the coastal stock, and yet we have a
huge resident population now in the Bay.
“As I said, this was still not hitting the [spawning stock
biomass] target. You can talk to anybody
that saw the Bay during those years. I
just think these, and not just me, but I think that it’s pretty well accepted
in our area that to reach some of these target levels, would just mean that there
would be nothing in Delaware Bay except for striped bass, and they would be emaciated
at that, because the population would have to be so high. [emphasis added]”
There was plenty wrong with that statement. Calling striped bass abundance in the early
2000s “an all-time high level” was fairly audacious, given that
the striped bass have been running the coast since shortly after the retreat of
the last glacier, and it’s not too unlikely that they reached higher levels of
abundance somewhere along the way; it’s not even clear that they weren’t at
similar levels of abundance at some point between 1950 and the early
1970s. So “all-time” was clearly
hyperbole.
And the Delaware estuary was known to produce striped bass for much of the past; while industrial development did lead to hypoxia, which interrupted such production, today’s striped bass abundance in the Delaware represents a return to the long-term norm, not something new.
Finally, Clark fails to explain how the Delaware’s
stripers avoided eating themselves out of house and home for most of the past
15,000 years, before Europeans came from across the sea maybe four centuries
ago, to help keep their population in check and protect the other residents of Delaware Bay.
The fact that no one on the Management Board joined Capt.
McMurray to challenge such points didn’t bode well for the bass.
But then the public got their chance to speak, and it turned
out that they weren’t buying Clark’s fable.
And now, the Advisory Panel, heeding the public, made it clear that it
wasn’t buying the story, either.
While it recognized that rebuilding the stock won’t be a
cakewalk, and
“noted the importance of communicating to the public the recognition
that the [spawning stock biomass] target may be difficult to attain but it is
the target we want to strive for in rebuilding the stock,”
it still advised against any change to the reference points.
While that was its most significant recommendation, it made
many other conservation-oriented suggestions.
With respect to the goal and objectives of the management plan, its
recommendations included advice that
“A stricter objective to address declining stock trends could
be considered since the stock has been declining to its current state under the
existing objectives,”
and
“The existing objective that addresses state flexibility may
need to be modified or addressed in some way given the public’s concerns about
conservation equivalency.”
The advisors also recommended that any change in the management
triggers addressing excessive fishing mortality or a falling spawning stock
biomass be removed from further consideration, along with any consideration of
extending the 10-year rebuilding deadline, and
“recognized commenters at public hearings expressed concerns
that the Board did not respond quickly enough to the management triggers that
initiate a rebuilding plan.”
The Panel also recommended that the Management Board take a
long, hard look at the use of conservation equivalency when managing striped
bass, to assure that the process is not abused and that it is supported by
adequate data.
Finally, the Advisory Panel looked at an issue that has been
largely ignored in recent discussions, the need to protect the large 2015 year
class, which may offer managers their last, best opportunity to reverse the
decline in the striped bass stock. The
2015s will be entering the lower end of the 28 to 35-inch slot limit this
season, and so will be the focus of every angler who wants to keep a striped
bass. With respect to keep[ing them alive in sufficient numbers to make a difference, the Advisory
Panel said
“This is critically important to rebuild the stock. The 2015 year class is coming into the slot
and the slot needs to be changed or moved to a minimum size limit to protect
this year class. There should be
discussion about measures to protect this year class. Regarding slot limits, one [Advisory Panel] member noted there needs to be discussion about potential increased discard mortality
associated with using a slot limit to protect a year class.”
Unfortunately, with seasons already underway up and down the coast, it’s probably impossible to act on that recommendation in time to protect the 2015s from being hit hard in 2021, and probably in 2022 as well.
This is an issue that the Management
Board should have considered two years ago, before jumping into the slot limit
feet-first, without thoroughly examining it implications for rebuilding (the right thing to do would have been adopting a 35-inch minimum size,
and then, perhaps in 2024 or 2025, when the 2015s were approaching that length,
switch to the current slot so that the 2015s again escaped being targeted, and
could maximize their contribution to the spawning stock; unfortunately, that
sort of thinking is probably alien to the Management Board).
There is no question that the Advisory Panel’s contribution to the debate was
significant. We now have two different
sets of voices—the general population of stakeholders, and the presumably
better-informed members of the Panel—arriving at the same conclusion: It’s time
for the Management Board to get down to its primary duty of restoring and
conserving the striped bass stock, and managing the stock for long-term abundance.
If the Management Board doesn’t heed those voices, it will
be very clear that it cares about no one’s agenda except its own.
Appreeciate this blog post
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