STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT: WE ARE NOT APRIL'S FOOLS

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has recently completed its full round of hearings on the Public Information Document For Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan For Atlantic Striped Bass.  

I listened in on one hearing, and heard quite a bit of feedback on most of the others.  The good news is that, as far as I can tell, anglers were generally united on the need to maintain current biological reference points, promptly rebuild the striped bass stock, and manage the stock for abundance, not yield.

The only place that deviated a bit from that norm was New Jersey, where angling sentiment was apparently split, with some calling out for a healthy, rebuilt stock, while others said that the bass was doing just fine, despite the findings of the most recent, peer-reviewed stock assessment’s findings that striped bass were overfished.  But down in New Jersey, where a substantial part of the recreational fishing community rarely, if ever, lets good science get in the way of uninformed opinion, you expect that sort of thing.

What I also heard, and understand occurred at just about every state’s hearing, was the ASMFC coming under a lot of criticism for its failure to quickly respond to problems with the striped bass stock, its failure to implement seemingly mandatory provisions of its own striped bass management plan, and its general failure to conserve, rebuild, and maintain coastal fish stocks.

At the New York hearing, the criticism was harsh enough that I felt sorry for the ASMFC staffers who were catching the brunt of it.  Such staffers are generally dedicated and capable people who try to do the right thing, but they have relatively little impact on the ASMFC’s fishery management actions.  That responsibility falls on the various species management boards, who are dominated by legislative appointees, governors’ appointees, and their proxies, people who, for the most part, have no formal fisheries training, often have little regard for good science, and far too often have a financial or other interest in the fisheries that they’re supposed to regulate.

So when concerned anglers take shots at ASMFC staff, they’re often shooting at folks who are more-or-less on their side, something that's often not true in the case of the management boards, who make all the decisions and control whaat the staff is tasked to do.

We heard staff gently referring to that at the New York hearing when, after being asked why the ASMFC took a particular action, one said something like “We don’t know what’s in the Commissioners’ minds.”

At the same time, the staff does work for the ASMFC, and can get understandably defensive when the criticism begins.  And between what I heard at the New York hearing, and what I understand was said elsewhere, they did say a few things that served more to obscure, rather than to reveal, the truth.

In particular, I understand that, at the Rhode Island hearing, an ASMFC rep denied that the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board ignored management triggers in its own management plan, because it adopted Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, which was intended to reduce fishing mortality; at the New York hearing, I heard a staffer say that the Management Board had acted to reduce fishing mortality, which was a “first step” in rebuilding the stock.

Such statements are at odds with the plain language of the management plan.

There are four relevant management triggers in Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (a fifth management trigger, related to recruitment, is not relevant here).  Those triggers are:

“1)  If the Management Board determines that the fishing mortality threshold is exceeded in any year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to reduce the fishing mortality rate to a level that is at or below the target within one year.

2)  If the Management Board determines that the biomass has fallen below the threshold in any given year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to the target level within the timeframe established in Section 2.6.2.

3)  If the Management Board determines that the fishing mortality target is exceeded in two consecutive years and the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target within either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to reduce the fishing mortality rate to a level that is at or below the target within one year.

4)  If the Management Board determines that the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target for two consecutive years and the fishing mortality rate exceeds the target in either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above the target within the timeframe established in Section 2.6.2.  [emphasis added]”

Section 2.6.2 of Amendment 6, referenced in Management Triggers 2 and 4, reads

“If at anytime the Atlantic striped bass population is declared overfished and rebuilding needs to occur, the Management Board will determine the rebuilding schedule at that time.  The only limitation imposed under Amendment 6 is that the rebuilding schedule is not to exceed 10 years.  [emphasis added]”

Thus, when the Management Board adopted Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Management Plan in 2014, which reduced fishing mortality to the target level, and when it adopted Addendum VI in 2019, it addressed Management Triggers 1 and 3, which are meant to address excessive levels of fishing mortality (although one could argue that, due to excessively generous conservation equivalencymeasures creating a 58 percent probability that Addendum VI will fail to reducefishing mortality to target, the requirements of Management Trigger 1 weren’t fulfilled, and also argue that, because the Management Board recognized that its decision to allow the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions to reduce their fishing mortality by only 20.5 percent, instead of 25 percent, in Addendum VI would mean that reducing fishing mortality to target would take more than one year, the strict requirements of Management Trigger 3 wasn’t really met either, even though it ultimately turned out that fishing mortality was slightly below target in 2015).

However, Addendum IV failed to address Management Trigger 4, which had been tripped by the 2013 benchmark stock assessment, and Addendum VI failed to address Management Trigger 2, which was tripped when the 2018 benchmarkassessment found the stock to be overfished.

Those failures were not mere oversights.  The record clearly shows that the Management Board was fully aware of its rebuilding obligations in both 2014 and 2019, but chose to ignore them.

At the August 2014 Management Board, Michael Waine, who was then the ASMFC’s Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for striped bass, advised the Management Board that

“Management Trigger 2 [sic] in Amendment 6 says that you need to rebuild the [spawning stock biomass] back to its target over a specified timeframe that should not exceed ten years.  I think there is sort of a combination of things happening.  The board is acting to reduce [fishing mortality].  Through that action we see the projections showing that [spawning stock biomass] will start increasing toward its target, but we’re uncomfortable with projecting out far enough to tell you when it will reach its target because the further on the projection we go the more uncertainty that is involved.  Therefore, I think the trend is to get back toward the target, but we can’t tell you how quickly that will happen.”

I’ll quickly pass over the propriety—or lack thereof—of an ASMFC staffer encouraging the Management Board to ignore a provision of its own management plan.  But even placing that issue aside, Waine's comments, and the Management Board’s willingness to accept them, were indefensible.  

It wasn’t the job of the ASMFC staff to “tell you when [spawning stock biomass] will reach its target;” their job was to tell the Management Board what it would take to rebuild the stock within 10 years, as the management plan required, and it was the Management Board’s job to put those measures in place.  The “must” language of Management Trigger 4 clearly mandates such action.

Yes, uncertainty increases over time, and there would be substantial uncertainty surrounding a 10-year rebuilding timeframe, but there are also ways to manage uncertainty that were available to the Management Board.  After all, federal fisheries managers have been legally obligated to address 10-year rebuilding timelines for twenty-plus years, and have generally dealt with the related uncertainty pretty well.

Increasing the probability of success is one way to start. 

Instead of taking the ASMFC’s typical approach, and adopting rebuilding measures with a mere 50 percent probability of success (and the concurrent 50 percent probability of failure), measures skewed toward the success side of the bell curve, with perhaps a 60 or 65 percent probability of achieving their goal, could have been adopted.  Then, after the usual mid-course stock assessment update, or even a benchmark assessment after five or so years, the Management Board would have had an opportunity to adopt additional measures if the stock had veered from the rebuilding track.  It might have required some unpopular actions, but it could have be done.

Rebuilding the stock within ten years was a very realistic objective.

So yes, the Management Board clearly was aware of, and intentionally ignored, a management trigger in 2014.

In 2019, the situation was a little different, but the result was the same.

At the August 2019 Management Board meeting, Max Appelman, who served as fishery management plan coordinator at that time, did his job, reminding the Management Board that

“the clock is sort of ticking, and the ten year clock [to rebuild the stock pursuant to Management Trigger 2] began in May when the information [that the stock was overfished] was presented to the Board.”

Later on in the meeting, in response to another question, he repeated that

“The ten year timeframe, the clock is ticking on that yes.”

Given those comments, the Management Board clearly knew about Management Trigger 2, and what that trigger required that it to do.  So once again, the record shows that the choice to ignore the 10-year rebuilding deadline was consciously and intentionally made.

And no, adopting Addendum VI, and its inadequate measures to return fishing mortality to the target level, does not constitute compliance with Management Trigger 2.  Given the most favorable assumptions—that is, prior to the approval of conservation equivalency measures that increased likely fishing mortality under Addendum VI—the Addendum would probably have resulted in the stock being rebuilt around 2033, or 14 years after Addendum VI was adopted.

Again, that’s not good enough.  The management plan requires rebuilding within ten years.  Even though I’ve been out of first grade for a very long time, I think I was taught, back then, that 14 is bigger than 10, and I don’t believe that’s changed in the intervening 60 years.

So when the management plan said that rebuilding times are “not to exceed 10 years,” a 10-year rebuilding plan would be OK.  A 7-year or 5-year rebuilding plan would be OK, too.  But 14 years—not to mention a situation where “the trend is to get back toward the target, but we can’t tell you how quickly that will happen,” does not make the grade.

Despite what was said at some meetings, the Management Board certainly did ignore two management triggers, and the striped bass has suffered as a result.  I’m a little disappointed that folks aren’t willing to admit that plain truth.

We do know how to read, so there’s little upside in saying something so easily disproved.

We can read the unambiguous language of the management plan, including the clearly-worded management triggers in Amendment 6.

We cam read words such as “must” and phrases such as “not to exceed 10 years,” and know what they mean.

And we can read the Proceedings of Management Board meetings, and so know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the Management Board understood its obligations under Management Triggers 2 and 4, and willfully chose to ignore them.

Our words stand as fact.  The Management Board did not do its job.  We are not April’s fools.