NMFS GETS SERIOUS ABOUT CALIBRATING RED SNAPPER DATA--AND GETS FLAK FOR DOING ITS JOB

 

For people who write about fishery conservation issues, the recreational red snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico is the gift that just keeps on giving. 

Fishery managers keep coming up with new strategies to end overfishing.  Recreational private boat fishermen keep finding new and creative ways to defeat those strategies and increase the rancor directed at fishery managers.  And the whole situation has become so filled with trouble and turmoil that even when the recreational folks come up with an idea that looks like it should finally make everyone happy, they find a way to torpedo their own plan, and launch an attack on the very program that they created.

Anyone who believes that’s an exaggeration need only look at the short but controversial history of Amendment 50A to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico.

For many years, recreational fishing organizations, which primarily represented the private boat sub-sector, chafed against the science-based red snapper catch limits imposed by NMFS, railed against both the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the federal managers who had to abide by its terms, and generally kicked their feet and screamed like petulant children every time they were asked to do their part to help conserve and rebuild the red snapper stock.

State fishery managers weren’t bound by the provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, so the Gulf’s red snapper anglers then tried to take management responsibility for the species away from the feds, and hand it over to the states, where regulations could, and often were, based as much on political considerations than on scientific advice.  

When politics dictated that states go out of compliance with federal red snapper regulations, and to allow excessively high recreational landings in state waters, federal managershad to compensate by imposing more restrictive regulations offshore. 

Recreational fishermen responded bydemonizing NMFS, even though it was the anglers’ placing incessant political pressure on states to break with federal managers that was the real cause of the restrictive NMFS rules.

After Wilbur Ross became the Secretary of Commerce in the Trump Administration, and was given the ultimate say over NMFS policy, politics carried more weight than science at the agency, too.  The recreational fishing groups hailed a decision to extend the federal red snapper season, even though overfishing would certainly ensue, as a win for private boat anglers.  Only a legal action brought by the conservation community led the Trump-era NMFS to back down.

And that’s when Amendment 50 came along.

Amendment 50, as finally adopted by the Gulf Council, was largely the brainchild of the recreational fishing industry and recreational fishing organizations.  It represented a sort of compromise between the militant red snapper anglers, who liked the idea of having the snapper managed by politically-influenced state management bodies, and federal fishery managers bound by the provisions of Magnuson-Stevens.  Pursuant to the amendment, which was adopted in 2020, federal fisheries managers would, based on the best available scientific information, set the overall red snapper catch limit. 

That limit would then be allocated among the five Gulf Coast states, based on their historical landings.  The states, in turn, would be allowed to set their own seasons for both state and federal waters and, within certain specified limits, their own size and bag limits as well, provided that such state regulations would successfully constrain recreational limits to each state’s quota.  In that way, each state would be able to tailor its recreational red snapper rules to the needs of its particular fishery, rather than be forced into a one-size-fits-all management measure that might not fit any state’s needs particularly well.

Amendment 50 seemed like a good idea, and it probably was.

Jeff Angers, President of the Center for SportfishingPolicy, an umbrella group that includes some of the most militant recreationalfishing groups in the Gulf, hailed adoption of the amendment, saying

“We have reason to celebrate today thanks to the willingness of the state fish and wildlife agencies of the Gulf Coast and the leadership of Secretary Ross and congressional champions like Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala) and Representatives Garrett Graves (R-La.), Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Austin Scott (R-Ga.).  Over the past two years, private recreational red snapper anglers in the Gulf have become more active partners in the states’ data collection systems and enjoyed much longer red snapper seasons than the federal system was able to provide.”

The problem was, no one seemed to stop and think that, if red snapper seasons were longer, and if anglers could fish in deeper, snapper-rich federal waters during that season, recreational landings were likely to spike.

At first, it was hard to tell, because all of the Gulf states had developed their own ways to count anglers’ landings.  The state data programs ranged from the technically advanced Tails ‘N Scales in Mississippi to an archaic system in Texas that predated the obsolete Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey that NMFS abandoned a few years ago. 

While NMFS helped the states develop their individual data programs, and eventually certified all of them, other than the old Texas system, for use with the federal Marine Recreational Information Program, each program uses a slightly different methodology from those used by other states.  Thus, their results can’t be directly compared with one another, but must be converted into a “common currency,” that is, the data across the array of surveys must be calibrated in a way that accounts for each program’s differences.

When the first rough estimates of the calibration results came out, it appeared that the data collection programs utilized by two neighboring Gulf states, Alabama and Mississippi, grossly underestimated recreational landings.  Managers believed that anglers in those states overfished so badly that their landings would have to be reduced by roughly 60% to keep them within their state quotas.

That’s not something that such states’ anglers wanted to hear, particularly because if they did overfish their quotas, such overages would have to be remedied with pound-for-pound paybacks in subsequent years.  

Perhaps hoping to find a way to avoid such remedial action, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council delayed the data calibration process, ignoring NMFS’ warnings that basing management actions on uncalibrated data represented a failure to employ the best scientific information available.  NMFS allowed the Gulf Council to get away with such delay, and not use calibrated data until 2023.

At the same time, “anglers’ rights” organizations allied with the recreational fishing industry continued their cynical campaign intended to undercut recreational fishermen’s faith in the Marine Recreational Information Program and the federal management system.  They repeatedly claim that state landings data need not be adjusted, and repeatedly attack the accuracy of federal landings estimates.

Such organizations, which were so willing to extol the virtues of Amendment 50 just a couple of years ago, were no longer so enamored of the red snapper management program that they, themselves, had created.  While Amendment 50 might have been praiseworthy when it led to longer seasons and bigger red snapper kills, it suddenly looked far less attractive when it held anglers, and those anglers’ states, accountable for their red snapper overages.

Calibration of the state data, or at least any calibration that would result in reduced harvests for one or more states, became a hot issue, as the organized Gulf angling community did what it could to assure that no such calibration took place.

Amendment 50, after all, wasn’t supposed to be about managing and conserving red snapper, it was about creating a longer fishing season for red snapper anglers, and allowing those anglers to take more snapper home.

At least, that’s how the various recreational fishing advocacy groups viewed—and still view—the amendment.

However, NMFS sees things a little differently.  On its website, it notes

“some constituents believe the agency is forcing states to modify their red snapper data to match federal data.  That is incorrect.  Fishery managers need to compare red snapper catches to established landing limits to understand if the catch limits were met or exceeded.

“Red snapper catch limits were developed using state and federal data that included inputs from NOAA’s Marine Recreational Information Program.  Red snapper landings are being estimated using state landings data using multiple and differing state surveys.  The data behind the red snapper catch limits and the states’ landings estimates are collected in different ways and rely on different calculations.  The data have to be standardized, meaning converted to a standard set of units.  This ensures that catch limits are set in units that are consistent across states, monitor catches, and allows managers to see apples-to-apples results…”

This week, NMFS took a big step toward achieving that goal, issuing proposed regulations that would establish calibration criteria for recreational red snapper landings.  Such criteria, designed to standardize all of the state and federal landings data, establishes ratios that make the state and federal data directly comparable and compatible.  Two states, Florida and Louisiana, are thought to slightly overestimate their recreational landings; to compensate for such overestimation, federal data will be multiplied by 1.602 and 1.600, respectively, to translate it into a common standard for such states.

On the other hand, to account for underestimated landings in Alabama and Mississippi, federal data, including state quotas, will be multiplied by 0.4875 and 0.3840, respectively, to achieve a similar translation.

Since data from the questionable Texas system can’t be directly translated into or made comparable with the more contemporary surveys, no adjustment ratio will be applied to its estimates, which will be assumed equivalent to the federal data.

Needless to say, red snapper anglers in Alabama and Mississippi aren’t happy with the proposed rule. 

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), representing the desires of Mississippi’s recreational fishermen, released a press release in which he stated that

“NOAA’s proposed rule on red snapper represents a gross failure by the agency to improve the quality of data it uses to manage federal fisheries.  Mississippi’s recreational anglers are tired of seeing their seasons cut short unnecessarily based on faulty data.  The Tales ‘n Scales program run by Mississippi produces far more accurate data that should be used.  I will keep fighting for the Department of Commerce to develop a higher quality data collection process for recreational fishing.”

There is some irony in the senator’s statement, as recalibration would go a long way toward providing “higher quality data” for recreational fishermen, and yet Sen. Wicker seems to be trying to frustrate the calibration process.  

In addition, he seems to be missing one of the most important points about the calibration issue:  That all data created by the states or by NMFS must be converted into a single standard form. 

Tails ‘n Scales may well be a state of the art program, but it is only used in Mississippi.  Adopting Tails ‘n Scales as the quality standard for red snapper data might benefit Mississippi, but it will do nothing for data from Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, or Texas, nor for federal managers, who must utilize the data from every state to establish the Gulf-wide annual catch limit, that is then broken down to set the individual state quotas.

In order to set a Gulf-wide catch limit, fishery managers need a Gulf-wide data standard, which is precisely why NMFS’ recently proposed rule makes a lot of sense.  Anything less will make it far more difficult to protect the long-term health of the red snapper stock.

Of course, “the long term” means somewhat different things to different people.

When Amendment 50 was finalized, the Center for Sportfishing Policy celebrated, hailing it in a press release issued on February 6, 2020.  Yet by September 29 of the same year, the Center was complaining that if the Gulf states had to calibrate their data, and put it into a standardized, statistically useful form,

“it puts us right back to where we were before Amendment 50 was adopted.”

For some folks, even just seven months can be a very long time.