BLACK SEA BASS MANAGEMENT: WHY BOTHER TO COMMENT?

 

On April 3^rd, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the National Marine Fisheries Service, published a notice in the Federal Register announcing 2025 recreational management measures for the northern stock of black sea bass.

The notice notes that

“The [Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management] Council and the [Atlantic States Marine Fisheries] Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board (Board) meet jointly each year to recommend recreational management measures for all three species, generally set for two years, so that recreational harvest achieves, but does not exceed, the recreational harvest targets specified by the Percent Change Approach adopted in the Harvest Control Rule Framework…Black sea bass recreational management measures were previously only set for 2024 due to a delayed stock assessment.  This action proposes the recreational management measures for only black sea bass and for only the 2025 fishing year.

“…The Council and Board recommend status quo recreational black sea bass measures for 2025, including the continued use of conservation equivalency, with regional measures expected to achieve, but not exceed, the harvest target.  A status quo approach for 2025 complies with Framework 17 [the Percent Change Approach] given that the 2025 catch and landings limit were not set “in response to updated stock assessment information” and instead were left unchanged…According to the most recent stock assessment, the biomass of black sea bass remains well above the target and overfishing is not occurring.  Black sea bass measures are being set for only one year as an updated management track assessment is expected to be available later this year and will be used to inform specifications and recreational measures for 2026 and beyond.  Therefore, the Council and Board recommended that recreational measures remain unchanged in 2025.  [citations omitted]”

While those paragraphs pretty well outline what NMFS, and more particularly NMFS’ Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, plans to do, it leaves much unsaid and, when all the facts are considered, seems almost intended to conceal relevant facts, rather than to reveal them.  

While the first paragraph was fairly straightforward, the second was, in many ways, not at all forthcoming.

Take, for example, the statement that “A status quo approach for 2025 complies with Framework 17 given that the 2025 catch and landings limit were not set “in response to updated stock assessment information.”

That statement is objectively true, but…

Why wasn’t the 2025 catch and landings limit not set “in response to updated stock assessment information”?

It wasn’t because either the Council of NMFS lacked a stock assessment to respond to.  In fact, they had two stock assessments available.  One was a so-called research track stock assessment, which employed a new population model that could better incorporate some of the more challenging characteristics of the black sea bass stock.  The other was a management track stock assessment, based on the methodology used in the research-track assessment.  

After reviewing the management-track assessment, a peer-review panel wrote

“The Panel concluded that the [Terms of Reference] had been met and the assessment is sufficient for providing catch advice.  This assessment is the first to implement the many changes in the recently completed Research Track.  Changes include the use of a single model that allows for migration between northern and southern areas, estimation of fleet specific fishing mortality in both areas, and use of an integrated measure for relative abundance from the VAST model.  The new projection methodology I [the Woods Hole Assessment Model used in the assessment]…is thought to provide a more valid characterization of future uncertainty…” 

The peer-review panel also explicitly stated that

“The assessment represents Best Scientific Information Available (BSIA) for this stock for management purposes.”

So the Council and Management Board were given a bright, shiny new tool to use to manage black sea bass.  According to the peer-review panel, that tool could do things that the tools used before just couldn’t do, and it also constituted the best scientific information available, which was a very important consideration, because National Standard 2, a critical part of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, requires that

“Conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available.”

The only thing is, neither the Council nor NMFS nor the regional office nor the Management Board wanted to use it. 

Despite the peer-review panel’s favorable review, despite the likelihood that the new assessment was more accurate than those that went before, due to how it addressed severable variables, and despite the fact that the new management track assessment represented the best available scientific information,the Management Board and the Council and NMFS chose to ignore it, and instead rely on an older assessment that gave rise to the existing regulations.

Why would they do that?

Apparently, because the new stock assessment would have required a reduction in black sea bass landings.  (Although it probably should be noted that, in issuing the 2025 management measures, NMFS and the Greater Atlantic regional office didn’t completely ignore the latest stock assessment; they were more than willing and happy to note that “According to the most recent stock assessment, the biomass of black sea bass remains well above the target and overfishing is not occurring,” which was true.  NMFS and the regional office only chose to ignore those parts of the new assessment that didn’t support their preferred narrative, that previous harvest levels should remain unchanged.)

Yes, there were various state managers who did not understand why the new assessment projected a decline in recruitment, when recruitment had been consistently robust in recent years.  That issue certainly merits investigation.

But what no one—no one at all—questioned was the new assessment’s calculation of the target biomass—that is, the biomass needed to support maximum sustainable yield—was about 11,225 metric tons, roughly 20 percent smaller than the 14,092 metric ton biomass calculated by the older assessment.

Nor did they question the new assessment’s conclusion that the maximum sustainable yield for the black sea bass stock—the level of landings that the stock could produce over an extended period—was just 3,649 metric tons, nearly 24 percent below the 4,773 metric tons previously calculated.

No one appeared to doubt that the black sea bass stock was less productive than previously believed.

But they just chose to ignore the fact, because black sea bass remained abundant, and many state managers just seemed afraid of the public reaction if they followed the scientific advice and reduced the acceptable biological catch, and thus the various catch limits, by 20 percent.  That fear was conveyed in the ASMFC’s summary of an August management meeting, which noted that

“With biomass currently more than double the target level and overfishing not occurring, it is challenging to communicate the conservation need for a 20% reduction in the [acceptable biological catch]”

And thus they didn’t even try.

After all, why try to engage in a challenging conversation, just because the best scientific information available strongly suggests that it’s the right thing to do?  

Instead, various state fisheries managers fretted about upsetting stakeholders, asking “how do we go back to stakeholders” with news of a landings reduction, worried that they were “at great risk of alienating our many stakeholders,” and declaring, despite the findings of the most recent stock assessment, that “this one [landings reduction] doesn’t make any sense.  The tone, if not the precise language, were reminiscent of parents worried about how to tell their spoiled child that he could not have any ice cream for breakfast.

The Management Board led the charge to ignore the scientific advice.  They can do that sort of thing, and have done it before, because the ASMFC has absolutely no legal obligations when managing fish stocks.  It can allow overfishing to continue unabated, it can allow overfished stocks to languish, and it can ignore the most compelling scientific information, and have no accountability at all.  Thus, when a motion was made to keep the 2024 black sea bass management measures in place throughout 2025 was made and seconded, it passed with few dissenting votes.

The Council dutifully made the 20 percent cuts, as Magnuson-Stevens required, but NMFS Greater Atlantic regional office would soon willingly undercut that statute with some active bootstrapping and some creative interpretations of the law.

NMFS and the regional office cited a regulation that reads,

“If the total catch, allowable landings, commercial quotas, and/or RHL measures adopted by the ASMFC Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board and the [Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council] differ for a given fishing year, administrative action will be taken as soon as possible to revisit the respective recommendations of the two groups.  The intent of the action shall be to achieve alignment through consistent state and Federal measures such that no differential effects occur to Federal permit holders,”

to justify the decision to violate National Standard 2 and ignore the best scientific information available, and instead conform its decision to that of the Management Board, and argued that the regulation

“require the Regional Administrator to take administrative action to align measures to prevent differential effects on Federal permit holders.”

But that is an apparent overstatement of what the regulation requires, as various sources define “revisit” as

“to consider or take up again” (Merriam-Webster),

“to talk or think about something again, with the intention of improving it or changing it” (Cambridge Dictionary),

or

“to return to an idea or a subject and discuss it again” (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries).

The one common theme in all of those definitions of the verb “revisit” is that they all embrace the concept of returning to a topic, and reconsidering it, perhaps with the hope of improving or changing a preexisting condition, but none of those definitions suggest in any way that “revisiting” a previous decision or action requires that, after due consideration, any changes must be made.

Thus, NMFS’ and the regional office’s suggestion that the agency was required to conform its regulations to the Management Board action, and in so doing violate a very clearly stated provision of Magnuson-Stevens, is on as shaky factual ground as are a number of their other statements regarding black sea bass management.  

Similarly, NMFS’ and the regional office have taken the position that language in Magnuson-Stevens which requires “Each Council” to set annual catch limits no higher than the level recommended by that Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee only binds the regional fishery management councils, and does not prevent NMFS from ignoring the Committee’s advice and setting an acceptable biological catch higher than the SSC recommendation (in the case of black sea bass, the Council’s SSC recommended setting the ABC 20 percent below what it had been in 2024, but NMFS and the regional office ignored that advice and maintained the ABC at its 2024 level, apparently believing that, while the Council cannot ignore the best scientific information available, the agency and its regional office may do so with impunity).

The end result is that the 2025 acceptable biological catch, annual catch limit, and related specifications (e.g., sector annual catch limits, commercial quota, recreational harvest limit, etc.) are all substantially higher than they should be, and higher than they would be had the advice in the latest stock assessment been followed.

Which leads us back to the initial question:  Why bother to comment on proposed management measures that NMFS and the regional office seem Hell-bent on adopting, regardless of what anyone else might believe?

Although I hate to say this, because I am a firm believer in participating in the management process and making everyone’s views known, in the case of black sea bass, I believe that there is no point in commenting at all.  Fisheries managers in most states, at the ASMFC, and at NMFS and the regional office seem determined to maximize landings, regardless of whether that is consistent with the best scientific advice.

Why?

I can only speculate that, at this point, fisheries managers have been so beat up by the constant whining and complaints, and just plain frequent bullying from representatives of the for-hire fleet and others in the recreational fishing industry that they’ve developed a sort of Stockholm syndrome with respect to the black sea bass fishery.

“Stockholm syndrome,” you may recall, is a term used to describe a seemingly irrational affinity that captives sometimes feel for their captors.  It got its name from a 1973 incident in which a former convict took four persons hostage in an effort to use them as leverage to free a friend from prison, and held them captive in a bank vault for six days.  After their release, none of the hoastages would testify against their former captors, and instead raised money to aid in their captors’ defense.  The former hostages apparently felt that law enforcement took irrational actions that threatened the hostages’ well-being, while the captors, who ultimately chose to release the hostages, acted more rationally, and so earned the hostages support.

It's not hard to draw an analogy between the hostages and fisheries managers who, beset at meetings by hordes of fishing boat crew and other persons, when even the completely sober folks in the crowd (which description, unfortunately, does not apply to everyone who attends such events) jeered and catcalled and insulted the professional managers, who were forced to support regulatory actions that were mandated by Magnuson-Stevens, but did not seem completely necessary given the temporary abundance of the black sea bass resource.  

Under such circumstances, it might not be surprising that the mangers became willing to ignore the science and the law, and to side with their critics in the hope that the chronic complaints and criticism might be, if not ended completely, at least be substantially reduced.

Regardless of the reason, it is just about certain that NMFS is intent on maintaining status quo regulations in 2025, regardless of what comments the public might make, and that making any comments at all would be a waste of time. 

Accepting that, the question becomes:  Can we believe NMFS when it says that “an updated management track assessment is expected to be available later this year and will be used to inform specifications and recreational measures for 2026 and beyond”?

I wish I could believe that, but given the experience of the 2025 assessment, I have serious doubts.

After all, in December 2023, the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee advised the Council and Management Board against implementing the 10 percent reduction in recreational black sea bass landings supposedly mandated by the Percent Change Approach, because  that approach was designed to work with an updated stock assessment, and the planned 2023 management track assessment was never completed.  Instead, the Monitoring Committee recommended that status quo regulations be maintained, until the 2024 stock assessment provided a better idea of the stock’s status.

But when the 2024 stock assessment was completed, and seemed to require a 20 percent reduction in landings, a number of Monitoring Committee members recommended status quo once again, because they were unwilling to accept the assessment results.

So what does that bode for the 2025 management track assessment, once it is released?

If the results of the 2025 assessment rebut those of the 2024, there is little doubt that managers will take the new and better news as gospel, and after more than  a few “I told you so”s, will happily go about their business of maintaining high black sea bass landings.  And that scenario is certainly possible.

But it’s also possible that the 2025 assessment will tell a very different story.  After all, at least where I fish off Long Island (and from what people have told me, both north and south of Long Island as well), black sea bass numbers seemed to be down in 2024.  When we passed over a wreck, we no longer saw the towering schools of black sea bass rising from the ocean floor to 30 or more feet above the bottom, and most of the fish that we caught were disappointingly small, a continuation of the steadily shrinking size of the fish that we’re catching over the past decade or so.

Black sea bass benefit from a warm ocean, with the size of each year class determined not by the initial success of the spawn, but by the water temperature at the edge of the continental shelf, where young-of-the-year fish spend their first winter.  Warm, saline water tends to produce big year classes, while colder water reduces the young fish’s survival.

Last year, we observed water temperatures that were far lower than we normally see.  I had surface temperatures south of Fire Island in July that were six to eight degrees Fahrenheit cooler than what I typically see, and divers noted that bottom temperatures off Long Island were unusually cold this year.  I don’t know when the warm water started or when it ended, but it’s not at all impossible that black sea bass spawned in 2023 and/or in 2024 could have felt its effects.  If that happened, the worst case might be that we’re looking at a stock that has seen high fishing mortality removing most of the older, larger individuals, while cold water resulted in a smaller number of young fish recruiting into the population.

If the 2025 stock assessment reflects such a worst-case scenario, and shows a decline in the black sea bass population, will managers be willing to make the necessary cuts in recreational landings, which may at that point be well over 20 percent?

Or, assuming that the worst-case scenario doesn’t happen, and the 2025 stock assessment merely confirms the results of the 2024, and demonstrates that a 20 percent reduction really is needed, will managers finally concede and do what needs to be done?

I can’t confidently answer either of those questions in the affirmative.  

Black sea bass management no longer seems to have firm roots, whether those roots might take the form of a stock assessment or even just of a management plan.  Ever since 2019, black sea bass managers have, in every year but one, sought ways to avoid making the landings reductions called for by the standards and methodologies spelled out in their management plans.  Managers seem wedded to the status quo, regardless of what the data, the science, or the management plan might suggest.

I’ve already decided that they have no intention of considering public viewpoints that might differ from their own.

And I have a gnawing fear that they might not consider the findings of the 2025 assessment, either, if those findings contradict the status quo.