MALIGNING MRIP FOR FUN AND PROFIT PART II: FOR PROFIT, FULL COOLERS, AND POLITICAL GAINS

Last Thursday, I described how the Marine Recreational Information Program, which the National Marine Fisheries Service uses to estimate recreational effort, catch, and landings, has become the favorite punching bag for anglers, the angling industry, and the angling press, who blame it for every tightening of recreational fishing regulations, without ever bothering to take the time to figure out how MRIP actually works.

Today, we’ll look at a more cynical group of MRIP critics, the organizations, industry spokesmen, and politicians who have at least a basic understanding of MRIP’s workings, yet continue to pour out unjustified criticisms in an effort to undermine the federal fishery management system and so generate higher recreational landings, greater short-term profits, and more political support.

The situation has existed for quite a while, well before MRIP even existed.  Back then, recreational data was generated by something called the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistical Survey, or “MRFSS,” which really was badly flawed; MRIP was only developed after a National Academy of Sciences report revealed how bad MRFSS actually was.

MRIP, on the other hand, received a mostly favorable review from a similar National Academy of Sciences panel before it was adopted as NMFS' standard data-gathering tool.

That doesn’t mean that MRIP doesn’t have flaws.  There is unavoidable uncertainty in every estimate that MRIP produces, with such uncertainty higher in estimates based on a smaller number of samples.  And last year, NMFS did discover that anglers were unintentionally entering inaccurate data into the Fishing Effort Survey, which has probably inflated effort estimates, and so estimates of catch and landings.

But those problems are being addressed, the former with guidelines for the proper use of MRIP data, particularly data derived from very limited samples, the latter with a multi-year program that will determine the extent of the issue and develop a workable fix.

However, entities seeking to undercut the the fishery management system for their own gain are always quick to jump on any real or imagined flaw in order to advance their arguments that they system is  broken.  Thus, it was hardly surprising to see Ted Venker, Vice President of the Coastal Conservation Association, perhaps the largest “anglers’ rights” group in the country, place an article on the Sport Fishing website which began,

“When NOAA Fisheries announced that yet another major flaw had been discovered in its recreational data collection program, called the Marine Recreational Information Program—Fishing Effort Survey (MRIP—FES), it didn’t come entirely as a shock.  After all, this data system that NOAA uses to estimate recreational (rec) catch and effort on various species has been reworked three times in the last 13 years and has been labeled ‘fatally flawed’ by the National Academies of Sciences.  It is known for producing results that leave rational people scratching their heads.”

Such comments are dishonest and intentionally deceiving on multiple levels.  They conflate MRFSS and MRIP, implying that there is no difference between the two when, as noted above, MRIP was designed as a replacement for MRFSS that addressed the older survey’s shortcomings and represented a substantial improvement over its predecessor.  It was MRFFS, not MRIP, that was deemed ‘fatally flawed.”  MRIP estimates were first used in 2017, and so clearly could not have been “reworked three times in the last 13 years.”  And it was particularly misleading to start off with the statement that “yet another major flaw has been discovered [emphasis added],” in MRIP, since the issue with the Fishing Effort Survey represents the first time that MRIP has run into any sort of systemic hitch.

But such misstatements are to be expected in an opinion piece that is intended not to enlighten, but to misdirect readers into taking the author’s preferred political path.

Why would the representative of a major anglers’ rights group provide such less-than-forthright information?  For those attuned to fisheries politics, the answer is right in the accompanying photo, which shows six presumably recreational fishermen posing with a bunch of dead red snapper.

For at least the past 15 years, the Coastal Conservation Association and allied industry groups, currently gathered together under the umbrella of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, have defended anglers’ chronic overfishing of red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, demanded a larger share of the overall landings, and attacked federal fishery managers and the management system for denying their demands.

Their ultimate goal is to replace MRIP with state data-gathering systems, which often return lower landings estimates and thus allow managers adopt more liberal recreational regulations.  The Sport Fishing article, which concludes that

“This latest break in the federal fisheries management system offers a brief window of opportunity to et out of this repeating, dysfunctional cycle, and it is up to anglers to motivate their states agencies [sic] and elected officials to seize it,”

makes that goal perfectly clear.

At the same time, when it comes to MRIP, the anglers’ rights crowd finds itself whipsawed.  It’s easy for them to criticize MRIP when estimates of high landings lead to more restrictive regulations.  But in many cases, not only in the Gulf of Mexico, but also in management actions like the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Commercial/Recreational Allocation Amendment, the higher MRIP landings estimates resulted in fishery managers increasing recreational allocations while reducing the commercial sector’s share of fish landings.

When that happens, you never hear spokesmen for the recreational fishing industry or the anglers’ rights groups saying that the MRIP numbers are wrong.  Instead, they defend the reallocation, even if that means going to court, as it did in the case of red grouper in the Gulf of Mexico.

Thus, even in the midst of Venker’s screed against MRIP, we find the following:

“The agency confessed a couple of months ago in a series of dramatic conference calls with Congress, Councils and stakeholders that its data program is overstating recreational effort by 30 to 40 percent, and the more cynical among us were somewhat expecting it.  As the latest iteration of the rec data system, the MRIP-FES was driving corrections in the allocation of allowable catch to the rec sector in some prized fisheries.  NOAA Fisheries is loath to reallocate fisheries under any circumstances, and being forced to correct its allocation in favor of the rec sector because of its own data system was undoubtedly a bitter pill for a commercially oriented agency to swallow.”

Thus, at the same time that he was blasting NMFS for maintaining MRIP, and blasting MRIP for overstating recreational effort, Venker was hinting that NMFS’ announcement of errors in MRIP estimates was a predictable effort by the agency to minimize reallocations of fish to the recreational sector, intimating that NMFS might have either fabricated, or overstated the extent of, the alleged error in order aid the commercial fishing sector.

Thus, the reader is led to Venker’s preferred conclusion that no matter what NMFS does, if its actions lead to either more restrictive recreational regulations or reduced recreational landings, such actions can only be based on bad data, bad intentions, or both.

Thus, the effort to undermine federal fisheries management proceeds.

The recreational fishing industry, represented by the Center for Sportfishing Policy, the American Sportfishing Association, and the National Marine Manufacturers Association, has also used the error discovered in the Fishing Effort Survey to seek alternatives to MRIP.  As part of such criticism, such organizations reveal the reasons for their concerns, noting that

“using incorrect recreational estimates to inform the status of fisheries and make management decisions could have severe implications for fish stocks, anglers, businesses, communities and the economy.”

There’s little doubt that, in their eyes, the implications for “businesses…and the economy” prevail, as along with endorsing the strategy of replacing MRIP with state data programs, such organizations endorse “alternative management” which will

“(1) provide stability in the recreational bag, size, and season limits; (2) develop strategies to increase management flexibility; and (3) achieve accessibility aligned with availability/stock status.”

It’s significant to note that all three points enhance anglers’ ability to keep and kill fish; none prioritize maintaining fish stocks at healthy and sustainable levels.

That emphasis also comes through loud and clear in legislators’ criticisms of MRIP and the federal management system.

Last month, 24 federallegislators, led by Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) senta letter to NMFS complaining about the agency’s continued use of MRIP and itsfailure to adopt the data developed by state fisheries agencies and other non-federal sources.  Not surprisingly, given that both legislators come from states bordering the Gulf of Mexico and frequently work with and receive meaningful support from the Center for Sportfishing Policy, it’s hardly surprising that they repeat the same arguments made by that organization and its affiliates, and provide the same lack of objective support for their claims, and use some of the same misleading arguments.

For example, the letter complains that

“MRIP-FES estimated that recreational anglers landed a staggering 1.6 million pounds of gag grouper in the Gulf of Mexico in 2023, prompting concerns that reactionary management measures will follow.”

Yet that’s just not true. 

A quick look at NMFS’ “Recreational Fisheries Statistics Queries” website will show that anglers landed an estimated 954,650 pounds of gag in 2023, not 1.6 million.  The only way that the estimate might be inflated to something close to 1.6 million pounds is to consider the uncertainty inherent in the estimate, and assume that landings were at the upper extreme of the possible range.  Even that only gets you to 1.5 million pounds, not 1.6.  Andd if the legislators want to argue that the landings could have been as high as 1.5 million pounds, they should also admit that, given the lower end of the confidence interval, landings may also have been as low as 380,000 pounds.

Similarly, the letter states that

“This fishery exists almost exclusively in Florida in the Gulf, and thus can reasonably be compared to the Florida State Reef Fish Survey—which estimated only one-seventh, or about 15 percent, of the federal estimate.  Notably, the percent standard error (PSE) for the MRIP FES surveys ranged from thirty-three to ninety-eight percent.  By NMFS own admission, data sets with PSEs beyond 30 percent should only be used with caution.  Said another way, these data from MRIP-FES are worthless and should not be used to inform management decisions.”

That argument is flawed from more than one perspective.

First, the key MRIP datum used to set regulations would be the point estimate of 954,650 pounds (readers should note that a recent change to the fishery management plan will require the use of Florida’s State Reef Fish Survey data to gauge private vessel landings, rather than MRIP, going forward, although NMFS’s data will still be used for shore-based anglers and for-hire vessels), which had a percent standard error of 30.7, very slightly over the level subject to NMFS’ cautionary warning.

One only begins to see excessively high PSEs when the data is broken down by mode (e.g., shore, charter, etc.), state, and 2-month “wave,” at which point the percent standard error for data relating to shore anglers in Florida during September and October is, in fact, 98, while the PSE for Alabama charter boats during the same period is 83.1.  With respect to such high PSEs, NMFS advises

“MRIP does not support the use of estimates with a percent standard error above 50 and in those instances, recommends considering higher levels of aggregation (e.g., across states, geographic regions, or fishing modes).”

Thus, the letter’s reference to a PSE of 98, while technically true, is also a red herring, as using such estimate would constitute a misuse of MRIP data.  Using the MRIP data properly, which would mean basing management measures on the aggregate estimate of 954,650 pounds, and perhaps adding a buffer for management uncertainty, in case the actuallandings were substantially higher.  When used in that manner, the MRIP data would be far from “worthless.”

Perhaps more to the point, while the legislators’ letter and associated press release were quick to criticize the use of data with a PSE in the low 30s, and repeatedly referred to state data surveys as

“more exact,”

“better and more precise,”

“the best availabler science,”

and

“more precise, accurate, and timely”

(the “timely” comment is undoubtedly true), nowhere do the legislators provide the PSEs associated with state landings estimates to support their claims.  Instead, like the various organizations that such legislators consult with and represent, they present naked claims of state superiority but provide no objective evidence to support their claims.

Instead, it would appear that, like the various industry organizations, the legislators prefer state data because state estimates tend to be lower and allow more relaxed regulations.  Such motivations are made clear in statements made by both Sen. Wicker and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), with the former stating that

“It’s up to the federal government to listen, incorporate states’ data, and, in turn, give Mississippi anglers more chances to catch red snapper [emphasis added],”

while the latter commented that

“Not utilizing state-led fish surveys…hampers both economic and recreational opportunities for Texas fishermen and the entire nation.  [emphasis added]”

It’s probably notable that neither senator asserted that using state data would reduce the likelihood of overfishing, make it easier to rebuild overfished stocks, or better maintain healthy, sustainable fish stocks in the long term, since it’s likely that, for such legislators no less than for the various industry and anglers’ rights organizations that they represent, such considerations are not among their highest priorities, if in fact they are priorities at all.

It's all about increasing harvest and economic gain (and, most likely, the votes and campaign contributions that might be engendered should such increases occur).

But all that is typical of MRIP critics, whenever and wherever they might make themselves heard. 

Instead of seeking to improve a valuable fishery management tool that, if used correctly, could help managers to maintain the healthy fish stocks that are essential to maintaining sustainable fisheries in the long term, they seek to discredit MRIP and federal fishery managers, in favor of state programs of uncertain—and certainly unspecified—precision, in order to increase landings and profit regardless of how that might impact the stock.

MRIP is imperfect, and still needs some work, yet it nonetheless comes closer to perfection than do its usual critics, who seem driven by little more than the chance to kill more fish, make more money, or enjoy other, similar personal gains.

MALIGNING MRIP FOR FUN AND PROFIT PART I: FOR THE SHEER JOY OF BEING WRONG--LOUDLY

 

There is no such thing as the typical angler.  Some fish for food, some fish for fun, most seek a little of both.  Some anglers fish only lures, some stick with bait, some use whatever works at the time.  Some fish offshore.  Some stay in the bays.  Some fish despite rain and wind, some wait for fair weather.  

Some…

But that’s enough.  I've hopefully already made the point that even anglers fishing in the same place can be very different; anglers fishing for different species, along different parts of the coast are likely to be even less alike.

Yet despite all those differences, there seems to be one common thread connecting them all.  Just about no one has anything good to say about the Marine Recreational Information Program, the survey that the National Marine Fisheries Service uses to estimate recreational effort, catch, and landings.

The hostility toward MRIP is, in many ways, understandable.

After all, MRIP is the tool that both NMFS and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission use to set recreational fishing regulations, and people usually dislike anything that restricts or regulates their actions.  Speed limits, customs inspections, and MRIP all attract the same sort of disdain.

That’s particularly obvious when it comes to MRIP, because every time a bag limit or season is cut, or a size limit upped, as the result of MRIP data, you hear all sorts of folks crying that MRIP is flawed, that “the numbers are bad” or that, for some other reason, MRIP data is faulty and should not be used.  But when the opposite happens, and the MRIP data allows managers to increase a bag limit, lengthen a season, or let anglers take home smaller fish, you never hear a single angler complain that such data is wrong and should not be believed, or that regulations should remain more restrictive.

It is almost a cliche that "bad data" reduces landings, while "good numbers" let anglers kill more fish.

Which is enough to tell you where a lot of the hostility toward MRIP comes from.

But then, it comes from other places, too.

People tend to distrust the unfamiliar, and things that they don’t understand, and the fact is that MRIP is a complex construct involving multiple surveys and intricate statistical calculations.  Most anglers don’t really understand how MRIP works, and few in the angling community (myself very much included) have the mathematical background needed to understand its statistical basis.

So they fall back on arguments like “No one ever asked me what I caught” and “I don’t know anyone who was surveyed,” write off the math as the next thing to witchcraft, and label MRIP a fraud.

Unfortunately, the angling press is often complicit in such misdeeds.  One of the most recent examples of that appeared in an article in Delaware’s Cape Gazette, titled “The problems with the Marine Recreational Information Program.”

There, the author, a local outdoor writer, led off with the somewhat remarkable statement that

“The Marine Recreational Information Program is the basis of all regulations made by federal and state agencies, and these regulations are what we have to live with.  The regulations are formed by scientists, many of whom do not know a striped bass from a sea bass, and then these regulations are reviewed by the Scientific and Statistical Committee that is made up of people who are supposed to know what’s going on in the field.  But after looking at the numbers, I must conclude they do not.”

He then goes on to pick a few specific estimates which, in his view, demonstrate that MRIP is badly flawed.

In reality, he only demonstrated his own ignorance about MRIP and about the greater management process.

It would be easy to write off the first line—that the biologists who manage East Coast fisheries “do not know as striped bass from as sea bass”—as mere hyperbole, and not something that readers were meant to believe, if we didn't hear something very similar at most management meetings, where someone from the recreational or commercial fishing industry will get up and announce that the scientists are mere pencil-pushers who only view fisheries through their data sets, and have no idea of “what’s really going on out on the water.” 

There are far too many people, including those who ought to know better, trying to convince us that such things are true.

The problem is that such folks, to the extent that they actually believe what they're saying, likely just don’t know enough fisheries scientists.

Over the course of my life, I’ve had the privilege of knowing, conversing with, and even fishing with, quite a few fisheries scientists, people who range from fledgling biologists still working on their graduate degrees to experienced researchers who have been in the field for decades, and can assure anyone reading this that every one of them can tell the difference between a striped bass and a sea bass—and distinguish between the various species of skates, herrings, and hakes, too, which is something that I doubt the author of the piece in question could manage.

The plain truth is that many fisheries scientists are attracted to the career because of their early appreciation of the outdoors, whether as anglers, scuba divers, or members of a commercial fishing family.  Even as students, they participate in trawl surveys and other activities that require them to sort, count, and identify a host of fish species as part of their day-to-day activities.  Suggesting that they can’t tell common fish apart is absurd.

Yet the writer’s comment does more than demean fishery scientists; it demonstrates his ignorance of the fisheries management system.  

Regulations and underlying fishery management measures, at least at the federal level, where MRIP plays the greatest role, are not determined by scientists, but by regional fisheries management councils dominated by members of the fishing community.  While such councils are guided by scientific advice, the management measures themselves are determined by council vote; by law, NMFS may only approve, disapprove, or partially approve such council actions.  Except under very unusual circumstances, the agency itself is not authorized to initiate management actions.

And when regulations/management measures are adopted, they are not “reviewed by the Scientific and Statistical Committee," for that’s not the SSC’s role.  Instead, Magnuson-Stevens states that

“Each scientific and statistical committee shall provide its Council ongoing scientific advice for fishery management decisions, including recommendations for acceptable biological catch, preventing overfishing, maximum sustainable yield, and achieving rebuilding targets, and reports on stock status and health, bycatch, habitat status, social and economic impacts of management measures, and sustainability of fishing practices.”

The SSC might play many roles, but reviewing regulations is definitely not one of them.

Having said those things, MRIP is far from perfect.  All of its estimates are just that—estimates—and all include some degree of uncertainty.  Sometimes the degree of uncertainty can be very large.  And sometimes, as in the case of the recent discovery of error generated in the Fishing Effort Survey, there can be flaws in its methodology that need to be fixed.

But that doesn’t mean that MRIP is as badly flawed as its detractors insist.  Often, the biggest flaws are in its detractors’ notions of how MRIP ought to be used.

The Cape Gazette article illustrates that very clearly, when it makes statements that intend to impeach the overall accuracy of MRIP by citing particular estimates, limited to a single state and a single sector, which may seem to be wildly inaccurate, when MRIP already warns users about such estimates' their flaws.

MRIP is no different than any other statistical survey, in that the probable level of error is reduced when the number of samples is increased.  Estimates that, by their nature, reflect very few samples are likely to include a high degree of uncertainty.  Thus, when the author of the Cape Gazette article questions the data related to summer flounder landings by party boats based in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, he reveals his ignorance about how the survey actually works.

Uncertainty in MRIP estimates is calculated by a statistical measure called “percent standard error.” The percent standard error in the estimates of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia party boat landings of summer flounder in 2022 are 89.3, 57.8, and 91.9, respectively; the NMFS website on which such estimates appear warns, in bold red type, that

“MRIP does not support the use of estimates with a percent standard error above 50 and in those instances, recommends considering higher levels of aggregation (e.g., across states, geographic regions, or fishing modes)."

The website also warns that because of the estimates’ high percent standard error, such estimates are not significantly different from zero, effectively warning that they are meaningless.  In answer to the question

“Does Harvest…Total Weight (lbs) Meet MRIP Standard,”

States “NO” on all three occasions.

Yet the author of the Cape Gazette article, who has been warned by NMFS that the MRIP estimates he cites are not accurate enough for management use, nonetheless uses them as examples of why MRIP ought not to be trusted.

In view of such clear misrepresentation of MRIP's precision, it could be easily argued that it isn't MRIP, but the author, that ought not to be trusted.

Yet such misrepresentation of MRIP data, and how it ought to be used, often occurs in the angling press, in articles and editorials that either reflect the ignorance of their authors or, more darkly, seek to impugn MRIP as part of a greater effort to undermine the federal fishery management system, in an effort to increase landings beyond prudent levels in order to increase short-term economic benefits.

Next Sunday, we'll look into the latter situation in greater detail in "Maligning MRIP for Fun and Profit Part II:  For Profit, Full Coolers and Political Gains."

STRIPED BASS: A TIME OF UNCERTAINTY

 

Over the past twenty years, striped bass have arguably been the single most important recreational species in the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions.  While there are different ways to measure a fishery’s importance, using what may be the simplest gauge, pounds landed, shows that striped bass led all other species harvested by recreational fishermen 13 out of the last 20 years in New England, and 19 out of the last 20 in the mid-Atlantic.

Some might object, arguing that pounds landed isn’t the correct gauge of importance for recreational species, but given that anglers have released about 90% of the bass that they caught over the last two decades, the striped bass is also a very important species for those who don’t necessarily bring fish home.

Unfortunately, the last benchmark stock assessment found striped bass to be both overfished and subject to overfishing.  While fishery managers have managed to get overfishing under control—although fishing mortality may still be somewhat above its target level—the stock remains overfished, and rebuilding efforts still have a long way to go.

The fishery management plan developed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board calls for the stock to be rebuilt by 2029, which may very well be possible, but five consecutive years of very low recruitment in the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay, three years of poor recruitment in Virginia’s portion of the Chesapeake and in the Delaware River, and what has probably been average recruitment over the past five years in the Hudson River is causing many anglers to wonder what will happen in 2030 and beyond, even if the stock is successfully rebuilt by the 2029 deadline.

Some fishermen have convinced themselves that a stock collapse is at hand, and have asked regulators to impose a moratorium that would shut down the fishery until the stock rebuilds.  Others are whistling past the graveyard, telling all who will listen that the stock is doing fine and no further management measures are needed.

The truth is that no one—not even the fishery managers themselves—know exactly what’s going on or what the future will look like.  Thus, there are a lot of people looking forward to the stock assessment update that will come out this fall, and even to the next benchmark assessment, which is currently scheduled for 2027, hoping that the facts that they reveal will banish some of the current uncertainty.

By the time the ASMFC’s Annual Meeting, which will include the October meeting of the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, rolls around, we should have the answers to two important questions:  We should know what it will take to fully rebuild the spawning stock biomass by the 2029 deadline, and we will know whether the striped bass finally managed to break the chain of poor spawns in the Maryland tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay.

It’s virtually certain that some sort of additional management measures are going to be needed to rebuild the stock by 2029.  After the 2021 season, which saw fishing mortality drop slightly below the fishing mortality target, it looked very likely that such rebuilding would occur.  However, recreational landings spiked in 2022, as much of the large 2015 year class grew into the 28- to 35-inch slot that was in place at the time, and dropped the probability of timely rebuilding to somewhere around 15 percent.  

To help get rebuilding back on track, in 2023 the Management Board adopted an emergency measure that capped the maximum size in the recreational ocean fishery at 31 inches, effectively creating a 28- to 31-inch slot.  While that did prevent recreational landings from reaching 2022 levels, 2023 landings were only reduced to about 2.6 million fish, a figure halfway between the 1.8 million landed in 2021 and the 3.5 million landed in 2022.

It is very unlikely that reduction will be enough to make timely rebuilding likely, particularly given that the somewhat above-average 2017 and 2018 year classes are now entering the current 28- to 31-inch slot and will serve to keep landings relatively high.  More will almost certainly have to be done.

What we won’t know until the assessment update comes out is how much more fishing mortality must be cut to achieve a timely rebuilding.  We also don’t know exactly how the Management Board will choose to achieve the needed reduction.

What we do know is that the current one-fish bag limit, and the narrow slots that prevail in the ocean and Chesapeake Bay recreational fisheries, are not going to provide much opportunity for further harvest reductions.  As I’ve noted in earlier posts, the only effective tool left in the box is some sort of season, so the only big decision left is whether that season will merely prohibit harvest while allowing catch-and-release, or whether it will prohibit all targeting of striped bass.

As I also noted in a recent post, implementing a no-target season would be a mistake for a number of reasons.  Perhaps the most important of those is that it would not be enforceable.  

Except at the very start of the year, striped bass do not swim alone.  Depending on where an angler is fishing, the time of day, and the time of the year, it is very typical to have bluefish, weakfish, fluke, black sea bass, scup, speckled trout, Atlantic bonito, Spanish mackerel, red drum and/or other species hit baits and lures intended for striped bass.  That being the case, should a no-target closure be put in place, it would be very simple for anglers to claim that they were targeting other sorts of fish, but couldn’t help unintentionally catching the striped bass that “just happened” to end up on their lines. 

The many, many anglers who seek to evade the prohibition on striped bass fishing in federal waters by claiming to target bluefish are a good example of how that would work.

Beyond that, a no-target closure makes little sense from an economic standpoint. 

Last year, anglers in the New England/mid-Atlantic region made slightly over 62.6 million salt water fishing trips.  Nearly 17.8 million of those trips—a little over 28 percent—primarily targeted striped bass.  So the question is, if managers impose a no-target closure on the striped bass fishery, where is that displaced effort going to go?

At one time, displaced striped bass anglers might have shifted over to bluefish, but these days, bluefishing tends to be spotty, with fish abundant in some places and completely absent in others, not an unusual situation when a population is only at about 60 percent of its biomass target.  At other times, weakfish might have absorbed some of the effort, but that population is badly depleted, in far worse shape than the bluefish, and offers even less opportunity to accommodate effort formerly expended on striped bass.

Bottom fish also fail to offer realistic opportunities for displaced striped bass anglers.  Overfishing has already forced a 28 percent reduction in summer flounder landings this year, anglers are chronically exceeding their scup landing limits, and the most recent stock assessment suggests that black sea bass may be experiencing overfishing.

That being the case, there is a very good chance that many, and very possibly most, of the striped bass anglers displaced by a no-target closure would merely stop fishing until the striped bass season reopened (assuming that they didn’t decide to just keep on fishing for bass and, if stopped by enforcement personnel, claim that they were actually targeting something else), which would result in an economic hardship for tackle shops, marinas, gas docks, for-hire operators, and other businesses serving the striped bass fishing community.

Nonetheless, many on the Management Board are singling out catch-and-release fishing, and the resultant release mortality, as a particular problem in the fishery.  At its last meeting, the Management Board authorized the creation of a special work group to look into the issue.  While it’s not at all certain what action such work group will recommend, we should note that a memorandum from ASMFC staff, sent to inform the Management Board on the release mortality issue, advised that

“it is assumed that maximum reduction of effort, and thus maximum reduction in number of releases, would be achieved with no-targeting closures.”

Why the memo emphasized a “maximum reduction in number of releases,” rather than the overall reduction in fishing mortality, regardless of source, is not clear. 

Aside from rebuilding issues, the results of this year’s spawn, and particularly that part of the spawn which takes place in Maryland’s waters, is also unclear.  Water temperatures and water flows look far more favorable than they have in the recent past, so there is reason to hope that we will see an improvement in the generally dismal recruitment of the past five years.  

Speaking just for myself, based on the very limited information that I have obtained and the opinions of professional fishery managers whom I respect, I expect that the Maryland juvenile abundance index will, at worst, be close to the long-term average of 11.2, is more likely to be somewhere in the high teens, and could realistically exceed 20.

But some experienced fisheries professionals are reportedly doubtful, and think it more likely that the index will be below average once again.

That low recruitment will have only a limited impact on striped bass rebuilding, as significant numbers of bass don’t become sexually mature until they’re between five and six years old.  However, continued low recruitment would inevitably have a big impact on the striped bass’ future.  Even if a strong year class is produced this year, its affect on the future of the striped bass stock will depend on what comes after.  If recruitment in 2025 and beyond falls back to the levels of the last five years, a strong 2024 year class would provide only a temporary reprieve.  On the other hand, if recruitment returns to more typical levels in 2025 and beyond, a strong 2024 year class could act like the strong year class of 1989, jump-starting a recovery that is then sustained by future spawning success.

That doesn’t mean that the following year classes all have to be big.  If we look at spawning patterns prior to 1970—that is, prior to the big 1970 year class that ushered in the boom-or-bust era that has prevailed for the past 50 years—we find a fishery that has its smaller peaks and valleys, with above-average year classes, including one that reached 23.5, in 1958, 1961, 1962, 1964, and 1966, and severely below-average year classes in 1957 (2.89), 1959 (1.38), and 1963 (4.03).  While that early period didn’t see any year classes as large as some of those of the late 1990s and early 2000s, what it did see was reliably mediocre production—that is, a lot of year classes that were neither above-average nor notably below average, but instead fell between 7 and 8 and, combined with the stronger years, were enough to maintain the female spawning stock.

A similar string of mediocrity, with a strong year class popping up every third or fourth or fifth year, would certainly be an improvement over what we have now and, if coupled with responsible management, would probably be all we need to maintain a sustainable, quality striped bass fishery.

Whether we are likely to see that sort of sustainable fishery, or whether the stock might be headed for long-term trouble, is something that might be revealed in the 2027 benchmark assessment, which will take an in-depth look at the state of the stock and might even adopt a new and different approach to evaluating the stock’s health and sustainability.  Until that assessment is completed, our thoughts about the future of the striped bass will necessarily include a large amount of speculation.

Thus, this is neither a time for despair nor for undue optimism.  Until we receive more information including, at a minimum, an updated stock assessment and juvenile abundance indices for Maryland and, ideally, the other three major spawning areas, it is instead a time for precaution.  It is a time for acting conservatively, and for resolving any ambiguities in the data or outlook in favor of the striped bass.

But we should never overlook the fact that it is also a time for hope, for while the new information might bring bad news, it may also tell us that rebuilding can occur by 2029, and that an end to the recruitment drought could promise a better future.

 

 

FISHERIES ADVOCACY: CREDIBILITY IS CRUCIAL

 

When I look back at my earliest days advocating for fisheries conservation, in the late 1970s when the striped bass were collapsing and almost no one seemed to care, I get a little embarrassed at how little I knew and how much I was willing to believe.

I clung to one truth, that the Maryland juvenile abundance index was in the tank, and the stock was headed for trouble, but other than that I had no idea what was going on. 

Depending on who was talking, I was told that the bass’ problems stemmed from some chemical—maybe PCBs, maybe the insecticide kepone, maybe dioxins, no one was quite sure—depressing reproductive capacity, or I was told that the problem stemmed from an active sunspot cycle, or from too many pollutants of various sorts being washed into the spawning rivers. 

I was told that commercial fishermen were the problem, particularly the ocean haul seiners who operated from eastern Long Island beaches and could wipe out entire schools of bass with a single set of their nets.

I was told that larval and juvenile striped bass were being entrained in the cooling systems of power plants, or impinged by the screens that guarded such systems’ intakes, and were thus removed from the population nearly as soon as their lives had begun.

I was told a lot of things and, trusting the messenger not to bear a false message, naively believed them all and faithrully repeated them to fisheries managers who, to be completely honest, didn’t know much more about why the stock collapsed than I did.

But the striped bass collapse left a scar, and like a few other anglers, I got involved in fisheries management for the long term.  So through the 1980s and most of the ‘90s, I dutifully attended fisheries meetings that addressed everything from striped bass to sharks, winter flounder to bluefin tuna, and said the things that I thought to be true.

Looking back, the state and federal managers were probably amused, and probably a little annoyed, at the things that I said, because in those days, I was much like the other anglers who showed up.  We all repeated the things that just about all recreational fishermen took as gospel at the time:  Commercial fishermen caused most of the problems, anglers wanted to do the right thing, and “gamefish status,” which prohibited the sale of certain species of fish, was the panacea that cured all of a fishery’s ills.

As I said, looking back, it’s kind of embarrassing.

Fortunately, in the late 1990s, I got involved with the Coastal Conservation Association which, back then, was a legitimate conservation advocacy group that wasn’t ashamed to say that it put the fishes’ interests first, even ahead of those of the anglers.  While CCA still had a decidedly anti-commercial bent, and worked tirelessly to outlaw gill nets and other commercial gear while placing red drum, speckled trout and other species off-limits to commercial fishermen, the organization at least recognized (back then; times have since, regrettably, changed) that recreational fishing could also pose a threat to fish stocks and needed to be constrained by appropriately precautionary regulation.

Perhaps more importantly, the CCA of days gone by emphasized the importance of science-based management, regardless of what that science might say.  The first time that I attended a board meeting at the association's Houston headquarters, all Friday—morning and afternoon—was spent sitting in a big room listening to CCA leadership explain the details of fishery management, including its legalunderpinnings in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the need for sound science, and the elements of effective advocacy.

As activve members of CCA, we were never allowed to forget that an advocate’s most important asset was his or her credibility.

I still recall the late Walter Fondren, the organization’s founding Chairman, repeatedly emphasizing how important it was to get the scientific facts right when speaking with regulators or legislative staff.  Get the science wrong even once, he told us, when advocating for a particular action, and we could very easily lose whatever credibility we might have had with a particular regulator or legislative office.

And once credibility is lost, we were told, it would take us a very, very long time to get it back again—if we ever did.

Such advice amounted to little more than common sense, as no policymaker really has the time or the inclination to listen to someone who either misrepresents the relevant facts or never bothers to take the time to learn what such facts might be, yet when people are passionate about a particular issue or their particular point of view, common sense often falls by the wayside.

There is little doubt that the advocate who has a good working knowledge of both the science and the law is in a far better position than those who ignore the facts and make purely emotional pleas.

Yet when I peruse fisheries-related content on various websites, attend fisheries hearings, or read the comments submitted on various management issues, I’m still taken aback by the number of people who ignore the basic tenet that one should discern the facts before forming or advancing an opinion, and instead first form an opinion, and then advance only those facts that might provide support.

That is particularly true in fisheries that kindle either substantial passion or substantial controversy, and often ignite both.  Striped bass may be the best East Coast example.

The species supports both recreational and commercial fisheries, although the recreational fishery is, by far, the larger of the two.  The most recent benchmark stock assessment found that in 2017, the assessment’s terminal year, the recreational fishery was responsible for 90% of overall striped bass fishing mortality (42% taking the form of harvest, and 48% due to release mortality), while the commercial fishery was responsible for the remaining 10% (8% landings, 2% discards).  Yet when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission solicited public comments on its proposed Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass in 2022, many anglers concerned about the health of the stock suggested that a prohibition on commercial harvest would be an important step toward sustainability, even though recreational fishing had a far greater impact on the striped bass population.

Such unfounded comments aren’t the sole province of recreational fishermen.

When New York hosted a hearing on the ASMFC’s Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass last December, the for-hire fleet was virtually united in arguing that the striped bass stock was healthy, that no further harvest restrictions were needed (and that the size limit, at least for anglers fishing from for-hire boats, could safely be increased from 28 to 31 inches to 28 to 33), and that managers need not be worried about recent poor recruitment in Maryland, because the bass were now merely spawning farther north, particularly in the Hudson and Housatonic rivers, even though the 2023 spawn in the Hudson was the worst since 1985, dams prevent any striped bass spawning in the Housatonic, and the science indicates that the production of other New England rivers, if it occurs at all, is trivial.

Such claims did little to promote the commenters’ credibility.

Pair a traditionally controversial fish like striped bass with a “political fish”—that is, a fish that has, for some reason, caught the popular imagination and has become a cause celebre for various organizations—and credibility slips further downhill.

Atlantic menhaden have become such a political fish.  Thus, in other comments submitted on Addendum II to the striped bass management plan, many commenters stated that one of—if not the—major cause of the striped bass’ current decline is a lack of menhaden, even though the reference points used to assess the Atlantic menhaden stock are directly related to the amount of menhaden needed to support the striped bass stock when spawning stock biomass is at its target level, and the most recent stock assessment clearly indicated that menhaden spawning stock biomass was over the biomass target, meaning that there was no menhaden shortage at all, and certainly enough fish available to support the currently depleted stock of striped bass.

Again, that can only hurt the commenters credibility.

But perhaps the worst credibility loss occurred at a recent meeting of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which saw one organization,  the Chesapeake Legal Alliance, petition for additional restrictions on commercial menhaden harvest.  In response to some of the petitioners claims, Shanna Madsen, deputy chief of Virginia’s marine fisheries division, stated

“I do want to point out that there is very limited science to support the suggested regulatory changes, and only for some of the regulatory changes.  The petition lacks scientific validity.  It cherry-picks fragments from scientific papers to try to support subjective and often misleading statements.  Several statements in the petition made references to papers that my colleagues and myself have written.  I consulted with several of those authors cited in this petition and I can say with certainty that these are at best misrepresentations and at the worst purposeful deceptions.” 

Needless to say, after receiving such criticism, the petitioner’s credibility was completely shot, and the Virginia Marine Fisheries Commission, which was probably already disinclined to credit the petitioner’s claims, refused to take any action.

Because in the end, credibility matters.

Anyone who comes to the management table without understanding the relevant facts and applicable law is not only embarked on a fool’s errand, but will also face a forum prejudiced against them when they return again in the future. 

In any given fisheries debate, even a full command of the facts may not trump political considerations.  But in the long run, understanding the facts and presenting them honestly and without guile, is the surest way to prevail.

 

FISHERIES MANAGEMENT: THE PROBLEM OF PERCEPTION

One of the most frustrating aspects of fisheries management is the fact that two people—or, more often, two groups of people—can look at the same set of facts and come to two very different conclusions.

It’s not unusual for scientists who manage fish stocks to look at a particular population of flounder or snapper or cod, compare its current condition to the population’s historical state, and decide that it’s badly depleted, while fishermen look at the same population and insist that it’s doing well.

Such divergent opinions often lead to bitter conflicts at meetings of regional fishery management councils and other management bodies, as fishermen feel themselves wrongly burdened by unnecessary regulations, while fishery managers insist that additional restrictions are needed to ensure the health of the stock.

Looking at such conflicts from the outside, it can be difficult to understand how two groups of people, both intimately familiar with the fish stock in question, can reach such different conclusions. Recently, a team of researchers conducted a study to determine what underlies such very different perceptions. The results of that study were included in a paper titled “Lost in translation: understanding divergent perspectives on a depleted fish stock,” which was published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

The researchers found that while scientists and fishermen might look at the same population of fish, they are seeing it through very different lenses.

Their findings evoke memories of the ancient Indian parable of the blind men describing an elephant:

 

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said, “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable.” So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, “This being is like a thick snake.” For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, “is a wall.” Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

In the same way, the researchers found, scientists and fishermen don’t share the same sources of information, and so come away with differing perceptions of the state of the stock.

Fishery scientists tend to rely on stock assessments, which are generally derived from complex population models, and supported by surveys such as the Northeast Fishery Science Center’s trawl surveys or the industry-based trawl survey conducted by the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries.

 

Fishermen are most likely to gauge stock health by the number of fish landed, and perhaps more particularly on the number of fish landed compared to the amount of effort expended (landings per unit effort).

The conclusions drawn by both scientists and fishermen are not unreasonable given the information that underlies them, even though they may be substantially different. As the researchers observed, although the fishermen’s perspective “may be subject to significant biases, the scientific community cannot claim ownership of the truth when assessment models provide catch advice that persistently results in overfishing, despite the reported catch remaining within assessment-based catch limits.”

To demonstrate how differing perceptions can affect fishery management, the researchers used the example of Gulf of Maine cod, noting that,

The assessment perspective depicts a stock that has declined for several decades and is currently at 5% of its target population size…Fishery managers have attempted to constrain [fishing mortality] using various regulations, including area closures (1998-present), effort restrictions and trip limits (1997-2009), and annual quotas (2010-present). Unfortunately, these management actions have failed to prevent overfishing every year since 1981, even though the fishery routinely harvests within the limits set by stock assessments…Increasingly restrictive regulations and stock rebuilding failures have caused severe social, emotional, and economic harm among the fishing community. Fisher distrust in science-based fishery management is high, and industry groups routinely oppose any new conservation measures…The influence of constantly shifting regulations on catch rates has led to fishery-dependent indices being removed from the stock assessment, diminishing fishery confidence that they have a voice in the management process. Significant misreporting of catch has eroded trust in the primary assessment data sources. In short, both the biological and social capital of this system are severely depleted.

Their research is intended to determine why fishermen’s faith in the system has deteriorated so badly.

The researchers began by interviewing 130 commercial fishing boat captains and asking whether they believed that the Gulf of Maine cod population had increased, decreased, or remained the same over the past 10 years. Ninety-four of the captains contacted provided a response, with 63% of them saying that the cod population had increased, and 44% saying that the population had increased “a lot.” Only 24% said that the population had decreased, while 13% believed that it had remained the same.

Most of the captains’ responses conflicted with the findings of scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which has determined that the cod’s spawning stock biomass has been shrinking for decades. Massachusetts’ industry-based trawl survey essentially confirmed NMFS’ scientists’ findings.

That might not have surprised the researchers, who found that the captains who believed that the cod population was increasing had less faith in NMFS’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center and in local government than did those who felt that the population was declining or holding steady. Their paper noted that such distrust “could be the result of another unintended cognitive influence, known as confirmation bias, or the tendency to interpret new information in a way that supports previously held beliefs. In other words, distrust earned from several years of inconsistent and uncertain assessment results likely caused some fishermen to categorically disbelieve the repeated scientific determination of severe depletion, even as their own catch rates began to decline. [citations omitted]”

 

As the researchers began to investigate why fishermen’s perceptions of stock health differed so much from the scientific consensus, they found that the relationship between harvest limits and catch rates played a significant role. For example, during the years 1994 through 2010, regulators attempted to control fishermen’s landings by limiting the number of days on which they could fish. Landings were also constrained by limiting the amount of cod that fishermen could harvest each day, but that created another problem, as fishermen were being forced to discard some portion of their catch at sea to avoid exceeding the daily landings limit.

To minimize the number of dead discards at a time when the cod population continued to decline, regulators significantly reduced the number of days at sea allotted to each fishing vessel, but increased the daily trip limit, so that a greater percentage of each day’s catch could be landed. At the time that change was made, most of the remaining cod were found close to shore, and the price that fishermen received for their catch was increasing. The combination of increased daily limits, high market price, and cod being found close to shore made cod a desirable target for the commercial fleet, caused catch rates to increase at the same time that the overall cod population declined, and created a perception among many fishermen that cod were more plentiful than indicated by the stock assessments.

As the paper explained,

Fishers acquire extensive ecological knowledge through daily direct observations of catch rates, and they are often acutely aware of spawning grounds, trophic interactions, and shifting spatio-temporal distributions. Recognizing these patterns is essential to the success of a fishing captain, and the tactical decisions of where to deploy their gear integrates this ecological knowledge within the complex array of regulations. Fisher ecological knowledge also accumulates over generations…[and] is also what enables captains to target a species and fill their harvest limit (either daily or annual) even as the stock declines. [citations omitted]

Fishermen’s continuing ability to fill their harvest limits, even as daily landings limits increased, made it difficult for them to perceive that the stock was in any sort of trouble.

Such perceptions continued even after regulators adopted new rules in 2015, which cut the annual catch limit by 95% (compared to 2010) and caused the catch rate to sharply decline. That would seem contrary to the researchers’ hypothesis that catch rates drive fishermen’s perceptions, but they explain the seeming conflict by calling the regulations adopted in 2015 “the greatest disruption to fishing effort in the history of the fishery,” and by observing that

Captains had to adapt to fishing in new times/areas and transition away from targeting cod to avoiding the species. As such, it may have taken additional time for fishers to form new opinions on the cod population that differed from their previous experiences. Furthermore, a series of management actions…closed nearly all the known cod spawning ground to fishing, and the resultant redistribution of fishing effort shifted the size selectivity of the fishery toward smaller fish. Fishers generally recognize that their catch of large cod had been curtailed by these actions and likely do not appreciate the significant loss of older fish in the population. In addition, the decline in juvenile recruitment is essentially undetectable to the fishery, given the large regulated minimum mesh (16.5 cm) and hook (12/0 circle) sizes. The decline in medium-sized fish…has been less than for large and sub-legal cod, and a reduction in the minimum fish size…has allowed for more of these fish to be landed. These layers of fishing regulations influence how captains observe the fish population and should be acknowledged when interpreting fisher perspectives.

Thus, the regulations effectively isolated fishermen from the evidence most likely to convince them that such restrictive management measures were actually needed.

The researchers also found that fishermen who are in financial distress are more likely to perceive the cod population to be thriving, a phenomenon that is probably attributable to the current management plan, which assigns “catch shares,” or a unique annual quota, to each vessel in the fishery, and prohibits vessels from discarding any legal-sized cod. If a vessel exceeds its share of the catch, it must purchase enough quota from another fisherman to cover the overage, and the price for that extra quota is often more than the market price paid for the cod. Thus, as the researchers explained, “large catches of cod went from having positive associations (i.e., increased revenue) to negative associations (i.e., increased costs)…which likely affected perceptions of trend.”

Regardless of cause, it is clear that fishermen’s perspectives matter. The differing perspectives of fishermen and fisheries scientists create an obstacle to effective management. The researchers observed that “a discrepancy between stakeholder perspectives because of the lack of a shared knowledge base inhibits consensus building in management. Translating between the perspectives of the scientific and fishing communities helps both groups recognize the common signal that underlies these disparate sets of observations.”

The paper did not shield either the fishermen or the scientists from their share of the blame for the problems besetting Gulf of Maine cod, concluding that “divergent perspectives on stock status still represent a major challenge to fishery management. The management community should recognize that fishery misconceptions about population status are due in large part to the effect of regulations and a distrust of inconsistent assessment results.”

Still, the paper closed on a somewhat hopeful note, observing that, while divergent perspectives might always be a part of the fisheries management process, an understanding of why such divergence occurs may help to avoid stakeholder conflict.

And any avoidance of conflict can only help the process succeed.

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This essay first appeared in "From the Waterfront," the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/