FALSE ALBACORE: GETTING AHEAD OF THE PROBLEMS

 

Far too often, fisheries management is a reactive process, which only sees managers act to conserve a stock after it is already in some kind of trouble.  And even then, managers are often reluctant to take the sort of decisive action needed to halt a stock’s decline and begin rebuilding.

We saw that happen with striped bass in the late 1970s, when managers kept reassuring us that a declining stock would turn itself around, took no remedial action, and allowed that stock to collapse instead.  We saw it with Atlantic cod, with thesouthern New England stock of winter flounder, and with striped bass again adecade ago, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s AtlanticStriped Bass Management Board ignored a tripped trigger in their managementplan that required them to initiate a 10-year rebuilding plan, and allowed the striped bass stock to become overfished once more.

Earlier this month, we saw the ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board ignore the findings of the most recent stock assessment, and set black sea bass catch limits over 20 percent above the overfishing limit, rather than irk stakeholders with a round of harvest reductions.

So when we see fisheries managers considering proactive management measures with respect to any fish stock, and making efforts to provide needed protections while the stock is still healthy, it’s always good news.

And right now, it looks like that’s happening with respect to little tunny—the fish that we know as “false albacore” in the north, and “bonita” well below the Mason-Dixon line.

False albacore might seem like an unlikely candidate for such protections.  They remain abundant, appearing anywhere between the beaches and the edge of the continental shelf, from southern New England around Florida, and into the Gulf as far as the Texas/Mexico border.  

Because they’re not a popular food fish—most people are turned off by the strong-tasting, bloody meat, although if the fish is bled properly, immediately iced down, and eaten within 24 hours or so, it makes a very good sashimi—commercial landings are relatively low, with a little over 500,000 pounds landed in 2022, a figure somewhat less than the 20-year average.  However, because false albacore aren’t governed by any sort of fishery management plan, there are real questions about how much of the catch is being reported, particularly because one of the primary uses for the fish is as bait for grouper, swordfish, and other, more popular species.

But even if false albacore don’t support an important commercial fishery, they do support a vital recreational fishery, particularly in southern New England and the mid-Atlantic region, which over the past decade has seen between 2 million and 3.5 million fish caught by anglers each year.  While most anglers, aware of the species’ dubious reputation as food, think that catch-and-release anglers dominate the recreational fishery, that is not necessarily true; roughly two decades ago—the five-year period between 2004 and 2008—the recreational harvest averaged a little over 450,000 per year, about 21  percent of overall recreational landings.  But in the most recent five-year period, 2019-2023, recreational landings more than doubled to an average of almost 950,000 fish per year, just about 40 percent of anglers’ total catch.

At the same time, given the depleted state of both striped bass and bluefish populations, false albacore are becoming a more important recreational target, often proving to be “season savers” for for-hire captains who cater to fly and light-tackle fishermen.

Thus, it makes sense to consider managing false albacore now, while the stock is still perfectly healthy and has not felt the effects of steadily increasing fishing pressure.

The effort to manage the species began slowly.

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council once included little tunny in its Coastal Migratory Pelagics Fishery Management Plan, but deleted them from that plan in 2012.

More than a decade later, when the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council was drafting its Unmanaged Forage Omnibus Amendment, some council members, as well as some members of the public, suggested including false albacore as an unmanaged forage species.  However, because the predators that fed on the fish—things like blue marlin and shortfin mako sharks—were not among the species managed by the Council, such suggestion was ultimately rejected when the amendment was finalized in 2017.

After that, false albacore were largely ignored by fishery managers.  Federal managers didn’t believe that the false albacore stock “requires of conservation and management,” the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act’s criterion for initiating a management plan, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission never thought to pay the fish any attention.

Finally, in December 2022, the South Atlantic Council took a tentative step toward conserving false albacore when it directed its Mackerel and Cobia Advisory Panel to prepare fishery performance reports for little tunny, which will track catch and landings, at regular, three-year intervals.

At that point, it became clear that if any management action was going to happen, it was going to be taken by the states.  Such action wasn’t likely to be prescriptive, and it didn’t have to be.  It merely had to set triggers that, if tripped, would lead to some sort of management measures being put in place.

North Carolina was the first state to consider false albacore management.  There, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission, encouraged by 170 written comments sent in by concerned anglers, voted 5 to 4 to move forward with what the American Saltwater Guides Association calls “guardrail management,” which provides that if, in any year, false albacore landings exceed 200 percent of the five-year average, the state would impose a 3,500 pound trip limit on the commercial fishery, and establish a 10-fish bag limit for individuals and a 30-fish bag limit for recreational vessels.

Later, at its August meeting, the same Marine Fisheries Commission voted 9-0 to approve the financial analysis associated with the proposed management measure, and to continue to move toward “guardrail management.”  A final vote on the issue will occur later this year, and it is expected to approve the management process.

Now, the focus is shifting to Massachusetts where, on Tuesday, September 17, the state’s fisheries managers will be taking public comments with respect to possible management measures for false albacore and Atlantic bonito.  The meeting will be the very first step in what could easily be a long process of adopting management measures, but the very fact that Massachusetts is considering such measures is a step in the right direction.

It should be noted that the steps being taken toward false albacore management are not happening in a vacuum, but are instead the results of a lot of hard work being done by the American Saltwater Guides Association which, understanding the importance of the species to its members’ businesses, is putting in a lot of effort to sponsor research on what is very much a data-poor species, and to get precautionary management measures in place before the fish runs into any sort of problems.

If the rest of the recreational fishing industry understood the connection between healthy fish stocks and healthy fishing businesses, everyone—including the fish—would be far better off than we are today,.