STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7: WILL WE BE THE VICTIMS OF BAIT-AND-SWITCH?

When the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board voted to leave the biological reference points used to manage the stock unchanged at last May’s meeting, anglers justifiably felt that they had been heard.  A number of state fishery managers and other Management Board members made strong statements favoring effective striped bass management.

The meeting’s outcome was only clouded by the Management Board’s decision to include the management triggers—the provisions that determine when the Management Board must act when fishing mortality rises too high or female spawning stock biomass falls to low—in the list of items to be considered in the draft Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.

There are currently five management triggers listed in Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass:

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 [ten years or less].

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 [ten years or less].

5)      The Management Board shall annually examine trends in all required Juvenile Abundance Index surveys.  If any JAI shows recruitment failure (i.e., JAI is lower than 75% of all other values in the dataset) for three consecutive years, then the Management Board will review the cause of the recruitment failure (e.g. fishing mortality, environmental conditions, disease, etc.) and determine the appropriate management action.  The Management Board shall be the final arbiter in all management decisions.

While there are five management triggers, this discussion will be limited to the first four, as they are directly related to the current biological reference points, which will not be changed in the Amendment 7 process.

The existing management triggers demonstrate why the biological reference points matter as much as they do.  If fishing mortality gets too high, or spawning stock biomass gets too low, compared to such reference points, managers “must” take action to correct the problem within a clearly defined time period.  

In response to the Public Information Document to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, stakeholders submitted 2,668 written comments in favor of maintaining the current biological reference points, as opposed to only 10 suggesting that they be changed.  While oral testimony at the public hearings/webinars was not quite so supportive, 78 out of 86 people who commented on the issue—over 90%--also opposed any change.

That’s because stakeholders understand just how important it is to maintain striped bass abundance and constrain fishing mortality to a level low enough that it will not cause such abundance to decline.

In May, it appeared that the Management Board understood that, too.

But maybe what we were seeing didn’t reflect what was actually going on.  Maybe stakeholders were being dazzled with a classic bait-and-switch:  We saw the Management Board approve the reference points that stakeholders wanted, but what didn't we see?  

When they approved the reference points, was the Management Board already planning to change the management triggers, in a way that allows them to put off taking management action for an even longer time than they are allowed to delay today?

Were they even planning to eliminate some of the management triggers, and make one or more reference points completely irrelevant to the management process?

I hope not.  

There are a number of people on the Management Board whom I know and respect, and more whom, because of their words and their actions, I hold in high regard.  I don't think they'd do that sort of thing.

And yet...

 I'm not engaging in mere  mere supposition.  Last Thursday I listened in on a Plan Development Team meeting, where potential options for new management triggers were being discussed.  While there were some good ideas, for the most part, I wasn’t particularly happy with what I heard.

To put things in context, let’s go back to the stakeholders’ comments made earlier this spring.

Fewer written comments were submitted on the reference point issue, but of those that were, 394 out of 407—nearly 97%--asked that the reference point-related triggers remain unchanged.  At the hearings, 37 out of 42 speakers who addressed the issue—88%--also supported the status quo.

There was clearly not a lot of desire for change.

In the comment summary provided to the Management Board, ASMFC staff noted that

“Many commenters expressed a need for urgency to implement a rebuilding plan and take action in response to management triggers.  [emphasis added]”

Stakeholders’ view that the Management Board takes too long before acting emerged in many of the written comments submitted.  One Maine angler complained that

“Besides delaying on rebuilding the stock, new loopholes have emerged,”

a comment similar to the one made by a fisherman who lives on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod,

“Retain the current targets and schedule and reduce loopholes potentially delaying the rebuilding.”

A recreational fisherman from New York stated that

“There is no compelling, or even legitimate, justification for delay,”

while a New Jersey angler observed that

“The longer we delay, the greater the chances that we will see radical negative outcomes for the species…The longer we delay, the more challenging [the] recovery will be.”

That view was echoed in the comments of an angler from the North Fork of New York’s Long Island, who said,

“More delay is going to prolong the problem and take longer for the stock to recover.”

A Connecticut fisherman begged,                                                       

“let’s not come up with more reasons to delay remedial action,”

and an angler, state of residence unknown, noted that

“The Commission has consistently ignored its own mandates and management triggers, instead favoring what they call ‘flexibility,’ which is an uncreative way of maintaining the economic status quo while delaying any real action that could help a diminishing resource.”

One Massachusetts stakeholder, more colorful than the rest, told the ASMFC that

“You should move as quickly and expeditiously as possible as soon as there is any indication of overfishing, and not fart around or delay your responses!...Of course you need to rebuild the stock as quickly as possible.  You have a long history of NOT rebuilding quickly—or at all—to early signals of declining fisheries.  This has to change…Rebuild the stock quickly, impose conservation measures right away.”

while former Maryland Senator Gerald W. Winegrad, who was very involved in state legislation aimed at reversing the striped bass stock collapse of the late 1970s and early 1980s, put the same thought in more genteel words, saying

“The appropriate timeframe to respond to overfishing or an overfished determination is as quickly as possible.  Delay can lead to accelerating declines in the population of rockfish as has been the case in the past and of late.  [emphasis added]”

Former Senator Winegrad has had far more experience than most—including most on the Plan Development Team and Management Board—in dealing with a troubled, and indeed a collapsed, striped bass stock, and certainly doesn't want to see the stock collapse again.  His thoughts ought to be given real deference.

On the other hand, one could scroll through the thousand or so pages of comments, and not find a single one waxing poetic about the beauties of delay.

However, when the Plan Development Team met last Thursday, their discussion wasn’t about changing the management triggers in a way that eliminated impediments to a rapid and effective management response when threats to the stock loomed.

Instead, it was about creating greater impediments to management action.

Understand, I don’t blame the Plan Development Team for that.  Unlike the federal fishery management councils, where the scientific and statistical committees have a very substantial influence on how management plans turn out, at the ASMFC, scientists like those on the PDT take their marching orders from the Management Board, and must do what such Board asks regardless of whether the ask is in accord with their professional views of how the stock should be managed.  Those views, they have to keep to themselves.

And there is no doubt that some members of the Management Board, particularly those who had a hand in producing the Public Information Document, and decided that the “guiding themes” of Amendment 7 should be the bureaucratic concerns of

“management stability, flexibility, and regulatory consistency,”

rather than, say, developing effective means to rebuild the striped bass stock, and then maintain it at a high level of abundance for the long term, have been hounding the Plan Development Team with new and creative ways to subvert the good outcome of the May Management Board meeting in the draft Amendment 7.

Plus, we all should remember that keeping the current triggers remains an option, and that there is only one way to say “status quo.”  The PDT has been tasked with coming up with alternatives to the current triggers, and they are merely doing what they’ve been asked to do.

Still, some of the things that they’ve come up with are, to be kind, alarming, and would allow years to elapse before known threats to the striped bass stock are addressed.

Currently, when overfishing occurs, Management Trigger 1 requires the Management Board to reduce fishing mortality to or below the target level within one year.  But options proposed by the Plan Development Team, which may well appear in the draft Amendment 7, include dragging out the reduction over a two-year period.

An even worse idea, also on the table, would create a trigger that only tripped if a 3-year average of fishing mortality exceeded the threshold; a five-year average was even briefly discussed.  Either option could allow overfishing to occur, and abundance to decline, for two or three years before action is taken or, perhaps worse, allow the fishing mortality rate to flicker around the threshold for an indefinite time, never quite high enough, for long enough, to trigger the 3-year average, but never close to low enough to allow the stock to approach the spawning stock biomass target.

Under such an arrangement, a generation could pass without seeing a fully rebuilt, and fully healthy, striped bass stock.

As bad as that might be, one proposal for Management Trigger 2, which requires rebuilding within ten years if the stock becomes overfished, is far, far worse.  

It would completely remove the Management Board's obligation to rebuild an overfished stock.

In other words:  Congratulations, you won.  The Management Board maintained the status quo biomass reference points last May.  But since we eliminated Management Trigger 2, those reference points now have no meaning.

If such proposal was adopted by the Management Board, it would constitute the ultimate bait-and-switch.

Proposed alternatives to the current Management Trigger 3, which is now tripped when fishing mortality rises above target and biomass falls below target for a specified time, track the changes to Management Trigger 1, with longer rebuilding times and perhaps multi-year averaging before the trigger is tripped, although another alternative would eliminate the trigger completely.

A longer rebuilding time, or multi-year averaging, for this management trigger could almost be justified, as it addresses the fishing mortality target, not overfishing, so the threat to the stock is less dire.  So long as Management Trigger 1 wasn’t changed, and the Management Board was still required to return fishing mortality to target within one year, such change would be marginally tolerable.

At the same time, it’s hard to understand why a responsible Management Board wouldn’t want an effective circuit breaker in place, instead of constantly engaging in crisis management.

The likely Management Trigger 4 options get a little more interesting, because one of the proposals would require the Management Board to implement remedial action if the female spawning stock biomass was below target, and the latest stock assessment projected that the stock would become overfished within three years if no changes were made. 

Such a trigger would actually be somewhat more proactive than the language of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and ManagementAct, which only requires federal fishery managers to implement a rebuildingplan if a stock is projected to become overfished within two years.

So yes, I like that idea.

Unfortunately, another proposals would eliminate Management Trigger 4 altogether, just as an earlier proposal would eliminate Management Trigger 2, and thus make the spawning stock biomass reference points completely irrelevant.

I don’t like that idea at all.

But what I like or dislike isn’t the issue.  What matters are the proposals that appeal to the Management Board.

And quite honestly, I don’t know what those proposals will be.

Given the many Management Board members who spoke out for striped bass conservation in May, the members who were clearly trying to respond to stakeholder comments, the members who seemed clearly concerned with rebuilding and properly managing the stock, I have hopes that the worst of the proposals put on the table last Thursday will fail—if they even make it into the draft Amendment.

On the other hand, I have little doubt that many, if not all, of the Management Board members who have fought for higher landings, and have been obstacles to conservation efforts for the past five or six years—particularly fishery managers from Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey, and some other members of those states' delegations, too—have been actively contacting both the Plan Development Team and their colleagues on the Management Board, doing their best to undo the progress that was made in May.

Thus, I’m reminded of the written comments submitted by one New York angler, who has both a degree in fisheries science and a very clear understanding of the fishery management process.

“It is understood ASMFC is not legally bound to the management and legal standards that one might expect within the Regional Fisheries Management Councils.  There appears to be little appetite to bring this body up to that type of a standard.  Instead, we see Commissioners regularly looking to exploit loopholes in management plans (in the name of ‘flexibility’), and ignoring stock assessments.  This only delays or defers rebuilding plans.  A strong case can be made that the Commission should stop moving forward with any new Management Plans.  Instead, it should be completely restructured to work more like a Council, or be absorbed by a Council in the name of regulatory streamlining.”

Because yes, if the Management Board pulls a bait-and-switch, and instead of taking up the banner of effective striped bass conservation, provides itself with a greater ability to delay, or indefinitely defer, actions need to restore the stock to health, Congress may well decide to completely restructure the ASMFC, so that it works more like a federal fishery management council. 

It would be an action that's long overdue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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