WHAT FISHERY MANAGERS SHOULD LEARN FROM THE PAST

 Sometimes, it seems like the same bad, worn-out joke that some people always find ways to tell.

One of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission management boards—often, but not always, the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board—will be holding a meeting, discussing the health of the stock, or a pending regulation, or other topic of import.  Commissioners will be arguing, pro and con, citing newly-received data, or stakeholder sentiment, or even personal bias, when one of their number will arise to discuss irrelevancies from the often distant past, and try to use them to block current progress.

Not all management board members do it, but those who do tend to look back often, and use their reminisces of how fisheries looked decades ago to derail efforts to shape how fisheries should look in the future. 

And, of course, it probably doesn’t help when much that they remember is wrong.

For an example of what I’m talking about, let’s go back to August 2013, after the striped bass management board was provided with preliminary information from a benchmark stock assessment which indicated that striped bass fishing mortality was rising too high, female spawning stock biomass was falling too low, and landings were going to have to be cut to address such issues. 

The management board began discussing a new addendum to the management plan that would reduce fishing mortality.

The idea of reducing recreational landings is anathema to some management measures, most particularly including Tom Fote, the current Governor’s Appointee from New Jersey.  So lacking any current data that contradicted what the management board had been told, he reached into the past.

“It seems like this is a lot of déjà vu.  I’ve gone through this process I guess in the last 20 years.  We’ve gone to striped bass and basically prepared an addendum about four or five times; and then basically because of what the stock assessment says, we didn’t do it and put a lot of time and a lot of effort into going on…

“What I’m going to be looking at is the long-term average of where we are with striped bass under all of the factors that are going on and not doing another knee-jerk reaction as we’ve done four times.  New Jersey has changed its regulation because of knee-jerk reactions twice, and I don’t want to do it again.”

Granted, such comment isn’t particularly coherent, and the numbers thrown out don’t seem to be in complete accord; in the first paragraph, addendums were prepared “four or five times,” while in the second, one paragraph mentions four “knee-jerk reactions” in the first sentence and two in the second. 

Fote’s intent seems to be alleging that the management board had prepared some number of addendums that weren’t adequately supported by science, and were rendered moot by later stock assessments.  But given that the addendum proposed in August 2013 was based on preliminary information from a stock assessment, it’s hard to understand what relevance such allegation might have had.

Things get a little clearer at the next meeting, in October 2013, after the benchmark stock assessment has been released and shows that the striped bass is indeed facing a combination of excess harvest and declining female spawning stock biomass.  At that point, there’s no issue about the management board beginning an addendum that will subsequently be rendered moot by a stock assessment.  The benchmark assessment has been peer reviewed and released, and shows that the addendum is needed.

So it’s time to reach into the past again, and try a new tack:  Instead of arguing that the next stock assessment will render an addendum unnecessary, Fote tries to attack the assessment itself, saying

“It seems I’ve been here over the years doing the same thing.  We have been looking at some figures for a period of time and then decided we’re going to do a drastic cut.  Two years later they’re finding out that we didn’t need the drastic cuts and had to change the regulations in New Jersey again…

“We’re not going to do anything that is going to hurt the stock.  What we are looking at is what is the necessary knee-jerk reactions that we have taken over the years just to come back two years later and redo it.  I can remember being forced to put a slot fish limit in New Jersey because basically the board forced us to do it…

“Again, that’s what I’m looking at; because I know two or three years down the road when we do another retrospective analysis these figures are going to be different from what they are now, and that is where I’m concerned…”

At that point, the particulars of the story have changed; no longer do the supposed lessons of the past warn us to wait for a stock assessment before taking action.  Now, the supposed lesson is to question the stock assessment, because the “figures for a period of time” don’t really support harvest reductions; Fote tries to reinforce his “lesson” by citing a time when New Jersey was forced to take unnecessarily restrictive management action.

But did that really happen?

Not if we believe the transcripts of the meeting in question.

To understand the issue, it’s necessary to remember that Amendment 5 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which first declared the stock to be fully rebuilt, divided the fishery into a “coastal” fishery, and a “producer area” fishery, including the Chesapeake Bay, Hudson River, Delaware Bay, and Albemarle Sound/Roanoke River, where fish spawned and there was a traditional small-fish fishery; a 28-inch minimum size was established for the former, and a 20-inch minimum for the latter.  Eight years later, Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass did away with the coastal/producer distinction, but did contemplate special regulations solely for the Chesapeake Bay and the Albemarle Sound/Roanoke River.

Pursuant to Amendment 6, New Jersey’s recreational fishermen, like all recreational fishermen outside of the Chesapeake Bay, were permitted to retain two striped bass per day, provided that they were at least 28 inches in length.  Amendment 6 did not impose a closed season.

Thus, the management board did not “force” New Jersey to adopt a slot limit; instead, New Jersey chose to do so because it wanted to allow its anglers to be able to keep killing smaller striped bass.  That fact becomes clearly evident in the transcript of the March 2004 management board meeting, where then-New Jersey fishery manager Bruce Freeman says,

“this issue, as I indicated originally, was brought about by the approval of Amendment 6 in the plan, and I just want to give an example of what Amendment 6 has done, particularly as it impacts a major spawning area in New Jersey, which is shared with both Delaware and Pennsylvania, and that is Delaware Bay…

“Under Amendment 6, fish less than 28 inches cannot be harvested relative to Delaware Bay unless some conservation penalty is paid.  That does not apply to other spawning areas, principally the Chesapeake Bay and the North Carolina spawning in the Roanoke River.

“The size frequency that we have from our ongoing tagging indicates that if we could fish under a producer area or a spawning area under Amendment 5, that is a fish from 20 to 28 inches, we could take between 15 and 20 percent of our total harvest from Delaware Bay.  As you recognize, other jurisdictions are fishing in their area, particularly the Chesapeake and North Carolina…”

In the end, Bruce Freeman made the motion that

“the Striped Bass Board approve a daily bag limit of one fish from 24 to 28 inches and one fish from 28 inches and larger for the 2004 season in New Jersey; that during the same time, New Jersey will close its spawning areas during May and June, close its estuarine waters for taking striped bass during January and February when juveniles are most vulnerable; and forgo using 100,000 pounds of its bonus fish program (that would equal 30,000 striped bass).”

When your own state’s fishery manager makes the motion to impose a slot limit on your state’s anglers, it’s awfully hard to make a believable claim that such slot was “forced” upon the state by the management board.

Yet we heard Fote making the same claim, that

“I’ve been down this road before; as you made me change my slot limit years ago, when I basically go for a regulation and four years down the road, three years we found out we were not in as bad shape as we thought we were,”

as recently as the April 2019 management board meeting, which took place after the 2018 benchmark stock assessment revealed that the striped bass was both overfished and experiencing overfishing.

And that’s the problem with living in the past.

Not only does the world keep moving steadfastly into the future, posing new problems in need of new situations that can only come from innovation, not mere repetition; people who keep looking backward tend to dwell in the past and remember it fondly even if, in order to do so, they must change some of the past's harsh realities in order to make it serve a more convenient purpose today.

But that doesn’t mean that the past doesn’t offer valuable lessons.

Perhaps the most important of those is that the best time to act is when a problem that threatens a fishery arises, a point when the threat is still small and decisive management measures can put things right with a minimum of pain to either the fish or the fishermen.

We should have learned that back in the late 1970s, when it became clear that striped bass were headed for a serious decline, with harvest too high and recruitment dwindling.  But big bass were still abundant back then, and fishery managers were unwilling, and for political reasons, often unable, to take the actions needed to halt the decline and begin rebuilding the stock.

As a result, the striped bass stock collapsed.

It was rebuilt through effort, sacrifice, and perhaps some luck, and one would have expected managers to keep it from declining again.  But after a 2011 stock assessment update warned that the stock would become overfished within six years, the management board declared striped bass to be a “green light” fishery, and took no action to stem the decline, with Fote declaring that

“I also look at the fact that we’re dealing with a species that is not being overfished and overfishing is not taking place…

“…how can I be a hypocrite and go out to my public in New Jersey and basically say, oh, by the way, we’ve been doing great with striped bass and there really is no—we haven’t hit any of the triggers and now I’m going to reduce your catch by 40 percent…”

Because so many of those who fondly look back at the past have real trouble contemplating how to properly address the future.

Yet in both past and future, one thing remains constant:  Little problems, unless addressed, can quickly grow into crisis.