On Wednesday, August 14, the Atlantic States Marine
Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass
Management Board voted to ignore the results of the Black
Sea Bass 2024 Management Track Stock Assessment Report (Management
Track Assessment), and leave the acceptable biological catch (ABC) and annual
catch limit (ACL) for 2025 unchanged from those set in 2024.
A New, Improved Stock Assessment
The Management Track Assessment represents a significant
improvement over the Black
Sea Bass Operational Assessment for 2021 (Operational Assessment)
that was previously used to gauge the health of the stock. It utilizes a new
population modeling approach first described in the peer-reviewed Report
of the Black Sea Bass (Centropristis striata) Research Track Stock Assessment
Working Group (Research Track Assessment), which was released by
the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) Northeast Fisheries Science
Center in November 2023.
At the August 14 meeting, the science center’s Dr. Jon Hare
explained to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the management
board that the methodology used in the Management Track Assessment has
eliminated much of the uncertainty inherent in the Operational Assessment’s
estimates. Unlike the Operational Assessment, it considers age- and
time-dependent variability in black sea bass survival and the size selectivity
of the black sea bass fishery, the latter consideration being particularly important
in the recreational fishery in New York and New England, which has seen
significant changes in the minimum size of the fish that may legally be
retained. It also reduces estimates of the number of young sea bass that have
recruited into the population in recent years.
The Management Track Assessment found that spawning stock
biomass was 24,572 metric tons (mt), 20 percent below the 30,774 mt estimate of
the Operational Assessment. The Management Track Assessment also determined
that maximum sustainable yield for the black sea bass stock was about 24
percent below, and target biomass about 23 percent below, the Operational
Assessment’s estimates.
Dr. Hare assured the managers at the meeting that the
Management Track Assessment represented a “significant improvement” over the
Operational Assessment and other previous attempts to gauge the health of the
black sea bass stock.
In accordance with established council procedure, the
Management Track Assessment, once released, was reviewed by the council’s
Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC), which determined that it represents
the best scientific information available regarding the black sea bass
resource. In accordance with the Management Track Assessment’s findings, the
SSC then recommended that the
ABC be reduced by 20 percent, from 7,557 mt in 2024 to 6,027 mt in
2025.
Neither the Management Track Assessment’s findings nor the
SSC’s recommendation went over well with stakeholders or with state fishery
managers.
The Science, Rejected
A summary
of comments made at the August 5, 2024 meeting of the Summer Flounder,
Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel, which was provided to the council and
management board, noted that “Advisors were very frustrated with the 20%
decline in the 2025 black sea bass acceptable biological catch (ABC) limit
recommended by the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC),
compared to the 2024 ABC. Advisors did not understand the need for a decrease
in the catch limits when the most recent assessment shows biomass is 219% of
the target level.”
In making their comments, the advisors also did not seem
(or, perhaps, just did not want) to understand that, because the Management
Track Assessment’s estimates of spawning stock biomass, target biomass, and
maximum sustainable yield were somewhere between 20 and 24 percent below the
Operational Assessment’s estimates, the SSC’s decision to reduce the ABC by 20
percent was perfectly in line with the updated data.
But the advisory panel is composed of laymen, not
scientists, and many are members of the fishing industry. Thus, their dismay at
the new ABC, and their rejection of the SSC’s findings, are arguably
understandable. The reaction of the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass
Monitoring Committee, which is made up of state, ASMFC, and federal fisheries
professionals, was somewhat more surprising.
A
summary of the monitoring committee’s August 1, 2024 meeting, which
was also provided to the council and management board, reported that
Six MC members expressed concern with the 20% decline in
the 2025 ABC compared to 2024 as there was not a clear explanation for
why biomass was projected to decline so sharply. Four of these six MC
members said they could not endorse the use of the SSC’s recommended 2025 ABC…
The four MC members who could not endorse the 2025 ABC said a
decrease in the ABC is not justifiable given that biomass is so far above the
target level. One MC member noted that the most recent stock assessment shows a
consistently increasing biomass trend during many years when recruitment was
variable and catch exceeded the SSC’s recommended ABC. The noteworthy decline
is only in the projection years…
While it is true that, despite earlier projections, black
sea bass abundance continued to increase despite high levels of removals, and
the reason for such seemingly anomalous behavior deserves further attention,
the monitoring committee, like the advisory panel, seemed to overlook the fact
that the 20 percent reduction in the ABC reflected a similar reduction in the
estimate of current spawning stock biomass and the related reference points.
When the August 14 meeting began, council and management
board members raised the same questions, and the same objections, raised by the
monitoring committee and advisory panel. In response, Dr. Paul Rago, who serves
as chairman of the SSC, reminded everyone in the room that the Management Track
Assessment reduced the biomass target by 23 percent and the estimate of maximum
sustainable yield by 24 percent, and told them that those were “really
important pieces to keep in mind when considering the proper changes” to the
2025 black sea bass specifications.
However, management board members seemed more concerned with
placating stakeholders than with following scientific advice and, realizing
that there would be stakeholder pushback if the recreational landings limit was
reduced, gave little heed to Dr. Rago’s advice.
Such pushback was evident in comments made by Michael Wayne,
an advisory panel member who is on the payroll of the American Sportfishing
Association, the angling industry’s biggest trade organization, when he asked
that additional analysis be conducted, which might alter the findings of the
Management Track Assessment. After being told that such assessment, having been
completed, having passed peer review, and having been accepted by the SSC,
would not be reopened due to other scheduled demands on the science center’s
time, Wayne responded that it was “difficult to carry that message back to the
industry…It’s just an unacceptable answer.”
Management board members clearly wanted to avoid provoking
the angling industry. Emerson Hasbrouck, New York’s legislative appointee,
asked how managers could go back to stakeholders and tell them that their
landings would be cut, when the monitoring committee couldn’t understand why
such cuts were necessary. John Manascalco, a New York fishery manager,
expressed concern that managers were “at great risk of alienating our many
stakeholders.” Other managers representing New Jersey and Maryland expressed concern
that more restrictive regulations would result in more dead discards.
Federal Managers’ Strict Discipline
Yet, regardless of advisory panel, monitoring committee, and
stakeholder discontent, the course that the council had to take was clear.
The Magnuson-Stevens
Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens) requires
that each regional fishery management council “develop annual catch limits for
each of its managed fisheries that may not exceed the fishing level
recommendations of its scientific and statistical committee.”
Michael Pentony, NMFS regional administrator for the Greater
Atlantic Region Fisheries Office, which includes the mid-Atlantic, read that
provision to the council and warned that if the council took any action
inconsistent with the dictates of Magnuson-Stevens, such action would be
rejected by the regional office.
Thus, the council had no choice but to adopt the SSC’s
recommended ABC, and adopt corresponding ACLs, commercial quotas, and
recreational harvest limits for the 2025 season. Such actions illustrated the
greatest strengths of the federal fishery management system, where
Magnuson-Stevens legally obligates fisheries managers to adopt management
measures based on the best available science, which are unlikely to lead to
overfishing.
The ASMFC’s Broad Discretion
However, the ASMFC isn’t governed by Magnuson-Stevens; there
is no federal statute to impose the same level of discipline on the management
board. Although the ASMFC’s Interstate
Fisheries Management Program Charter (Charter) clearly states that
“Conservation programs and management measures shall be based on the best
scientific information available,” such Charter also states that “an effective
fishery management program must be carefully designed in order to reflect the
varying values and other considerations that are important to the various
interest groups that are involved in coastal fisheries. Social and economic
impacts and benefits must be taken into account.”
Thus, the management board is effectively in the same place
as federal managers were prior to the passage of the Sustainable
Fisheries Act of 1996; they are free to exercise virtually unlimited
discretion, which allows them to adopt management measures based not on
science, but on short-term economic, social, and political concerns, even if
such regulations lead to, and effectively condone, overfishing.
For many years, such imprudent management measures were
never adopted, because the council and the ASMFC’s various management boards
held joint meetings, and agreed that neither management body would adopt
measures inconsistent with those adopted by the other. Because the council was
obligated to adhere to the provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, that arrangement
effectively, if unofficially, bound the management board to adhere to such
provisions as well. It also assured that, whether anglers and commercial fishermen
fished in state or federal waters, they would be governed by a consistent set
of rules.
So long as that joint management policy remained in effect,
there was no chance that mid-Atlantic fisheries would experience the sort
of chaos
that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery after states
bowed to angling industry-imposed pressure and went go out of compliance with
federal fisheries managers, adopting regulations that were less restrictive
than those that prevailed in federal waters. Such concessions on the part of
the five Gulf states ultimately led to severe recreational overfishing, very
restrictive federal regulations on anglers, and a bitter dispute that has
continued for well over a decade.
But joint management of mid-Atlantic black sea bass ended on
August 14th when James Gilmore, New York’s legislative proxy, rose to “move to
suspend the joint management process rules for the Board to take action on the
2025 black sea bass regulations.” John Clark, the Delaware fishery manager,
seconded the motion.
It was clear from the outset that most, if not all, of the
people sitting around the management table were expecting the motion, and that
most of them, particularly the state fisheries managers, lent it their strong
support, for it allowed them to keep their constituents happy while remaining
within the letter, if perhaps not the spirit, of the law.
There was only one strong objection, which came from Chris
Batsavage, North Carolina’s fishery manager, who recognized that abandoning the
joint management process was risky, and “we need to be careful when we take
[such action] and not make a habit of it.” He acknowledged that “Jon Hare and
Paul Rago did an excellent job of” explaining the Management Track Assessment,
and was one of the few people at the meeting, perhaps the only one on the
council or management board, who publicly recognized that the reduced ABC was a
direct result of the “rescaled biomass estimate,” and did not try to find ways
to undermine the SSC’s decision. While he said that “I understand that the
advice coming from the assessment is a tough sell for the stakeholders and the
managers,” he also made it clear that such difficulty did not justify ignoring
the scientific advice.
In the end, the motion to abandon joint management passed in
a lopsided vote, with only North Carolina in opposition and Michael Pentony, as
NMFS’ representative, abstaining.
At that point, Gilmore and Clark teamed up on a new motion,
this one to maintain status quo black sea bass specifications in 2025.
Although Michael Pentony abstained on the motion to suspend
joint management, he was not as indifferent to the motion for status quo,
saying, “I do caution the Board that I will vote against it for the agency.” He
was concerned that, by adopting specifications different from those adopted by
the council and NMFS, the management board would set the stage for divergent
quotas in state and federal waters, and noted that existing regulations
governing the black sea bass fishery authorized his office to take administrative
action to prevent such divergence, although he wasn’t quite certain what such
action might be.
Otherwise, there was little debate, and the motion passed
with broad support, although North Carolina, Rhode Island, and NMFS did vote
against.
The Consequences of Doing Nothing
In adopting the motion for status quo, the management board
created a rift between the specifications that will govern black sea bass
fishing in federal waters, more than three miles from shore, and those that
will govern fishing in inshore waters that are under the jurisdiction of the
states.
It’s difficult to predict exactly where that rift will lead.
Absent some sort of remedial action by the regional office,
it will almost certainly force federally-permitted commercial fishermen to fish
under smaller quotas than those enjoyed by their state-licensed counterparts,
but the impact on the recreational fishery is less clear.
In recent years, the council has adopted a “non-preferred”
set of coastwide recreational regulations, then granted the ASMFC the authority
to manage each state’s recreational fishery by using regulations that might be
different, but still have the same conservation impact, as the coastwide rules.
For the 2024 season, the council carried forward the non-preferred
measures from 2023, which included a 15-inch minimum size, 5-fish bag
limit, and a season that ran from May 15 through September 8.
However, after the management board applied its policy
of “conservation equivalency,” the final
state rules looked much different. States between New York and New
Hampshire adopted 16 or 16 ½-inch size limits; bag limits that varied by state
and season, but ran somewhere between two and seven fish; and, with the
exception of Massachusetts, seasons that began sometime in May or June and ran
through the end of the year. New Jersey adopted a 12 ½-inch minimum size, a
patchwork of open and closed seasons that began on May 17 and ended on December
31, and a bag limit of between one and 15 fish, which changed with each open
season. Between Delaware and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, a 13-inch size
limit and 15-inch minimum size prevailed, along with seasons that began in
mid-May and ended on December 31, but generally included a brief mid-season
hiatus.
The council agreed that all such state regulations would
also govern anglers fishing in federal waters.
Such state regulations are probably going to remain
unchanged in 2025, although it is possible that when the council and management
board meet in December, the “Percent
Change Approach” used to set management measures will call for a small
adjustment.
But even if state angling regulations remain unchanged, the
20 percent reduction in the ABC makes it virtually certain that federal
recreational management measures will be more restrictive in 2025, while the
decision to abandon the joint management process probably means that
conservation equivalency is no longer an option, and that a single set of
coastwide management measures will govern the federal waters fishery.
Anglers would be bound to follow federal rules when fishing
more than three miles offshore, even if those rules were more restrictive than
those prevailing in state waters. (It’s probably important to note that in the
northern states, where very restrictive state regulations prevail, federal
regulations might be more lenient than the state rules.)
That will create a serious law enforcement problem. Poaching
has long been rife in the black sea bass fishery, particularly in the party
boat fleet, where captains and crew often turn a blind eye to illegal
activities.
For example, one notable incident that occurred off the New
Jersey coast saw fishermen retain hundreds of illegal black sea bass, but the
captain dismissed any obligation to police such conduct, saying “I’m
not getting paid by the state of New Jersey to take fish out of people’s
buckets.” In another
well-publicized case, customers of a Montauk, New York party boat were
cited for taking many illegal black sea bass, and about 1,800 additional fish
were left on board by customers who abandoned their loaded coolers rather than
face stiff fines for taking scores of fish above and beyond the 3-fish bag
limit.
Those incidents occurred a few years ago, but the September
2024 newsletter of the Suffolk
[County, New York] Alliance of Sportsman carried a report authored by
Capt. Tom Gadomski of the Department of Environmental Conservation’s police
unit, who described environmental conservation officers’ recent boarding of
another Montauk party boat, writing, “Once the officers started to board the
vessel, passengers started throwing illegal fish, from their coolers, into the
water. The officers ordered all the passengers to not dump their fish. The
officers observed many individuals in possession of mostly over limit and
undersized Black Sea Bass…Multiple tickets were issued, for unlawful take or
possession of fish not of legal size, unlawful take or possession of species
over limit and one individual was charged with dumping, upon signal to stop.”
Given the limited resources available to enforce fisheries
laws, and also given the lawless attitudes that prevail in some segments of the
angling community, it is all too easy to envision vessels sneaking across the
three-mile line into federal waters to take advantage of their abundance of
fish, landing many sea bass that don’t comply with federal regulations, and
then, if boarded back at the dock, claiming that all of the fish were taken
legally in state waters and in compliance with all applicable state rules.
Because black sea bass are managed as a single stock, with
no distinction made between state and federal waters landings, the disparate
regulations could see high landings in state waters resulting in extremely
restrictive federal waters regulations that place traditionally productive
offshore wrecks and rockpiles off-limits to anglers for almost all of the year.
But perhaps the greatest threat posed by the decision to
abandon joint management of the black sea bass resource is that it set a
precedent that the management board, or other ASMFC species management boards,
will fall back on in the future when confronted by a difficult and potentially
unpopular decision.
Many members of the management board were conscious of that
issue when they cast their votes, and made comments that expressed their
concern. Michael Luisi spoke about the importance of joint management, and
noted that “the outcome can be chaotic” if such management was abandoned, but
voted to suspend the joint management process anyway. Joseph Cimino, the New
Jersey fisheries manager, recognized the potential issues, but opined that “the
pros outweigh the cons.”
Even James Gilmore, who made the motion to abandon joint
management, acknowledged that “Our jobs are to serve the resource,” and
admitted that “If we don’t follow the rules…it would just be chaotic.” But in
the end, if a person tries hard enough, they can always find a good reason to
do the wrong thing and so, in reference to the stock assessment, the SSC’s
advice, or perhaps to both, he declared that “this one, it doesn’t make any
sense,” and moved to sever the skein of cooperation between the council and management
board, thus greasing an already slippery slope and making it that much easier
to do the wrong thing the next time a difficult decision looms.
Now, managers, stakeholders, and the black sea bass resource
can only wait to find out what long-term consequences his decision might bring.
-----
This essay originally appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the
blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/
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