Twenty or so years ago, one of the “lunatic fringe” organizations
that sprout out of the sportfishing community every now and then came up with a
bumper sticker that simply said,
“Fish are political animals.”
It may be the only thing that organization ever got
right.
We like to think of fishery management as driven by science,
a process in which capable biologists provide critical data to managers, who use
that information to craft regulations designed to assure the long-term health of the stock. And sometimes, that really happens.
More often, fishery management is driven by the same sort of
politics that govern everything from climate debates to foreign policy. Somebody with political influence wants something
done, and works to make it happen.
Often, somebody else with political influence holds a different opinion, at which point the two sides clash in the
press, in social media, and in the halls of government, as each side starts spending cash on lobbyists, public relations, and campaign contributions,
a situation which provides great benefits for those who make their livings
feeding out of those particular troughs, but usually does neither the fish nor
the public interest very much good.
The political fisheries management game is so
well-established that when I sat on the executive board of a national anglers’
rights group some years ago (it was actually a legitimate conservation
organization back then, but times and motivations, unfortunately, change), the
organization’s federal lobbyist actually handed out a sort of shopping list to
all of us, listing which federal legislators ought to receive contributions
and, based on each legislator’s position and influence, how much cash each should receive.
In New York, we were fortunate, because the only item on our
list was a first-term congressman on the House Natural Resources Committee, who
was priced at a very reasonable $500. Long-serving
senators who held committee chairs were priced in the thousands.
Of course, inflation has made everything a lot more
expensive since then.
As the shopping list was handed out, we were assured that there
was nothing improper about making such contributions, and that nothing carried even the faintest wisp of corruption. We weren’t making the political contributions
as any sort of bribe, to assure a particular political outcome. Instead, such contributions were merely a way
to gain better “access” to the legislators who sat on key committees and made
key decisions with respect to fisheries law.
But even if you take that statement at face value, it still
means that if we wanted to play, we first had to pay.
That’s why you’ll see a lot of the anglers’ rights folks saying
that fishery management decisions should be made at the lowest possible
political level. It’s kind of like
owning a AAA ball team, as opposed to a major league club; while AAA baseball
players might be skilled professionals, they still come a lot cheaper than even
the humblest major leaguer, and when you start talking about the stars…
So long as you have the right connections, it's always easier and less expensive to amass the political influence needed to get something done at the state level than it is to accomplish a
similar task on Capitol Hill.
When dealing with fisheries issues, there are even more reasons
to stick to the states if you can. The
first is the
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which sets minimum
standards for fishery management measures, prohibits overfishing, and requires
timely rebuilding of overfished stocks. Magnuson-Stevens
is an important fishery management tool, but with a few exceptions, it’s
provisions only apply in federal waters.
So if you want to be able to overfish, or avoid rebuilding a troubled
stock, having that stock managed by the states makes life a lot easier.
The other reason is that, pursuant to Magnuson-Stevens, most
important fishery management decisions are made by regional fishery management
councils. The law gives the National
Marine Fisheries Service very limited authority with respect to such decisions; about all it can do is approve a regional fishery management
council’s management action, disapprove such management action, or approve such
action in part while disapproving other provisions.
The members of each regional fishery management council,
other than those held by each state’s fishery management agency, are
appointed by such member states’ governors.
So once again, being politically well-connected at the state level better
assures that your representitives get named to the councils. Just as important, it
helps to assure that other folks, who might be more concerned with maintaining
healthy fish stocks or protecting the public interest, instead of protecting your particular sector or industry, are not nominated to the councils, where they
might manage to frustrate your industry's efforts.
Maintaining close political ties at the state level also makes it
easier to convince governors to direct their agency heads, whether they sit on
regional fishery management councils or similar multi-state bodies, to vote in
support of the folks who support the political status quo.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t good legislators who try
to do the right thing, protect the public interest and support sustainable
fisheries. In my years as a fisheries advocate, I’ve met a number of state and federal officeholders who
have had a real interest in protecting marine resources. But the simple truth is that everyone, even
the good guys, face a political contest every few years, and running the sort
of media-intensive campaign that it takes to win is not inexpensive.
Thus, “paying for access” will never go away.
About ten years ago, Jeff Angers, president of the group
that now calls itself the Center for Sportfishing Policy, wrote a piece for Sport
Fishing magazine titled “The Politics of Fish,” which explained,
“Fish are the most political of all animals. Commercial fishermen want to make a living
harvesting them. Recreational fishermen
want to enjoy time on the water pursuing them.
And even if they’ve never been fishing themselves, environmentalists
want to guarantee that there will be fish for everyone…
“Congressmen hear from commercial fishermen that regulations
are strangling their business, from anglers that management uncertainty is
strangling their recreational opportunity, and from some environmentalists that
there are no fish left so all fishermen should get off the water.
“Then the members of Congress call fishery managers and
administrative officials to Capitol Hill to explain why. Why are fisheries allocated between the
commercial and recreational sectors as they are? Why are seasons so short? So unequal?
So unpredictable? Why do some
regions spend so much money on fisheries science but others so little?”
The introduction to Angers’ piece is a pretty good summary
of federal fishery politics, but it’s somewhat disingenuous, too. While he mentions anglers, environmentalists,
and commercial fishermen as groups which affect fisheries policy, he leaves out two of the most politically influential groups of all, the recreational fishing
tackle industry and the marine manufacturing industry.
That was a pretty remarkable error, given that five
of the Center for Sportfishing Policy’s six officers—the only exception is Angers
himself—are current or past members of those two industries, as are 22 of the
organization’s 30 directors.
The Center for
Sportfishing Policy’s stated purpose is
“to affect public policy related to the conservation of
marine resources with broad abilities to pursue political solutions. The organization is non-partisan and focuses
on having an impact in the national political arena, principally Congress and
federal regulatory agencies,”
so it's pretty clear that both the fishing tackle and boating industries want to be a big part of the managment process.
That’s a lot of purchased “access” for the industries to have.
In the current, 2021-2022 cycle,
the PAC has spent $38,500 through June 30, 2022, almost equally divided between
Democrats (49.35%) and Republicans (50.65%), perhaps suggesting that they want
to figure out who is going to win the closer races so they'll know where to best focus their donations. But one way or another, given
the composition of the Center’s Board and roster of officers, should the
interests of the public and industry diverge, we can have a pretty good idea of
whose interests are going to be represented when that access takes place.
Which, finally, brings us to red snapper
in the Gulf of Mexico.
By and large, recent federal
management of Gulf of Mexico red snapper has been a success story. As
a result of overfishing, exacerbated by the destruction of too many juvenile
snapper incidentally caught in the shrimp fishery's trawls, the stock entered
a long, steep decline in the 1950s and ‘60s, finally bottoming out around 1990. It remained at low but slightly increasing
abundance for the next two decades, until actions taken by the National Marine
Fisheries Service spurred a more rapid expansion of the stock.
Although the stock never reached
its biomass target—a level of abundance it last attained around 1962—increasing
numbers of red snapper led to increasing angling effort, as recreational
fishermen overfished their allocation every year, leading to ever more
restrictive management measures. That opened
the door for angling industry/anglers’ rights organizations to exert their
political influence on the
states, most of which had historically adopted the same red snapper regulations
that were set by NMFS, convincing them to go out of compliance with the federal regulations,
and set longer red snapper seasons in state waters.
The longer state seasons made many
recreational fishermen happy, but didn’t do much for the red snapper
themselves, as anglers chronically overfished their allocations. Since fishery managers currently only
recognize a single red snapper stock in the United States’ portion of the Gulf,
both state and federal landings were used to calculate the following year’s federal red
snapper season, which became shorter and shorter due to the recreational
overages.
Then, the
same organizations that supported the states’ noncompliance, and so were directly
responsible for the recreational overages, exploded into a concerted campaign
to blame federal fishery managers for short recreational seasons. The Center
for Sportfishing Policy (which, in its earlier years, was known as the Center
for Coastal Conservation) and its affiliated organizations prevailed on
politicians to introduce bills in
Congress that would take management authority for Gulf red snapper away from
NMFS and grant it to the five Gulf states.
State fishery managers would not
be constrained by the provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, so could allow the red
snapper stock to be overfished with impunity, making anglers temporarily happy
and conferring greater short-term economic benefits on the angling and
boatbuilding industries.
Fortunately, none of those red snapper bills
ever made it to the President’s desk, but the
Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council eventually adopted Amendment 50 to
its Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico,
which gave the states limited management authority over the private boat
recreational red snapper fishery. While
NMFS would still set the annual catch limit, each state would be given its own
sub-allocation of fish and, within carefully specified limits, the authority to
set the season and other regulations intended to keep anglers within each state’s
allocation. States, working with experts
at NMFS, developed their own systems to track recreational landings in
something approaching real time.
“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 Garret 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 produce.”
The only problem was, the state data collection systems
that Angers heralded were undercounting the number of red snapper that anglers
in some states were catching, and thus allowed overfishing to occur. Or, to be more precise, some of the state
data collection systems were collecting data differently than other states
were, and differently from the system used by NMFS as well. It wasn’t so much a matter of which system
counted fish better than the others, but instead a matter of which systems counted
fish in a way that was compatible with the data used to set the annual catch
limit.
Just as it can be necessary to convert ounces to milliliters,
or yards to meters, in order to use the measurements in a particular
calculation (you’d probably have a very rough time calculating how many cubic inches of water weighted exactly one
kilogram, unless such conversions were done), the state calculations need to be
calibrated with one another in order to properly evaluate and design
recreational red snapper measures.
So the political spin began.
“Federal Regulators Seek to Undermine State Management of Red
Snapper,”
and complaining that
“NOAA Fisheries intends to force the states to calibrate
their data back to the flawed federal system that caused significant turmoil in
the first place.”
And, of course, they also got the politicians involved.
“to use ‘common sense solutions’ and not a one-size-fits all
approach to fishing quotas called ‘calibration.’”
Apparently, Alabama’s federal legislators disagree with the scientific community, and believe that calibration's not needed. Perhaps, unlike the rest
of us, they can compute how many grams 42 cubic inches of water might weigh, without
first converting each unit of measurement into a common system--although I have my doubts.
Still, there are only two possibilities. Either they hold some secret key to manage across diffent measurement systems, or they just don’t care
what the right answer is, so long as their anglers can kill more red snapper
next year.
“The states have done a great job sustainably managing this
important resource. States have the best
available science and can make the best decisions for the species right off our
coast—not someone in Washington, D.C.”
Leaving aside the fact that federal red snapper management decisions are already being made by the local folks sitting on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, and are reviewed, for the most part, by the NMFS employees at the agency’s Southeast Regional Office in St. Petersburg, Florida, a Gulf Coast town, and not by anyone in Washington, one still how to ask how Rep. Graves' faith in state management remains unshaken given his home state’s continuing failure to address its badly overfished speckled trout population; despite clear signs that more conservative management is needed, Louisiana has stubbornly refused to increase its size limit from a meager 12 inches, or reduce its general speckled trout bag limit from an exceedingly generous 25 fish, far more speckled trout than is permitted by any other state on the Gulf.
The science has been ingnored for so many years that one might almost
suspect that state politics were blocking needed management action…
The bottom line is that something that should pose a purely
technical question—how to best calibrate and combine the data from five
different state systems and from that of the federal government—has somehow
become a political question. Instead of
allowing scientists to do their job, legislators are interrupting the process,
seeking to impose their—or their constituents’—preferred outcome on fishery
managers.
That’s no way to manage a rebuilding fishery, but it's been the way Gulf red snapper management has been politicized for years.
You can do the math...
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