DO WE REALLY WANT POLITICIANS TO MANAGE OUR FISHERIES?

 

Many years ago, all fish were managed by politicians.  The basic rule was that you could catch whatever you wanted, in whatever numbers that you wanted, of whatever size that you wanted, and you could do what you wanted with the fish—eat them, sell them, give them away, feed them to the tomatoes, or dump them back in the bay—because no law said otherwise.

Sometimes, someone would start to worry that a stock of fish wasn’t doing too well, or decided that some sort of net was killing too many fish (or, perhaps, interfering with another sort of net), or maybe one group of people decided that another group of people were killing fish that the first group wanted for themselves.  Whatever the issue, and whoever the concerned group might be, the only way to change the status quo was to go to the state (or very, very rarely federal) legislature, and convince the politicians to pass a law imposing a bag limit and/or a minimum size, or outlawing a particular gear, or to have a species declared a “gamefish” so that commercial fishermen couldn’t kill any of them anymore, and anglers could kill all of them instead.

It was a difficult, time-consuming process, and the results often weren’t very good, because laws were too often passed based on emotion, or because a particular group of fishermen wanted all of the fish for themselves, rather than being based on sound science and a coherent fisheries management policy.

Even the legislators eventually recognized that, although they held the ultimate management authority, they generally didn’t know all that much about fish, and both the public and the resource were usually better off if they delegated management authority to fisheries professionals who had the expertise needed to conserve and manage fish stocks.

That didn’t mean that the politicians were completely out of the picture—they still could legislate management measures if they wanted to—but it did mean that fisheries management measures were generally based on something more than largely uninformed opinion, and that any regulations that were put in place had to be based on facts, and were not merely “arbitrary and capricious” actions based on some people’s whim.

For the most part, and for most people, the administrative approach to fisheries management works a lot better than the legislative one, but for those who are trying to do something that’s a little outside the mainstream, and maybe unsupported by any sort of data or objective facts, management by politician rather than by professional fisheries experts is still the preferred way to go.

One of the latest examples of that is a proposed executiveorder that’s being shopped around the White House, largely by a coalition of anglingorganizations which want to shut down the menhaden reduction fishery but,perhaps due to the input of some environmental organizations, is also seekingto sharply restrict that harvest of some forage fish, and so, in one broadaction, would harshly regulate, and in some cases shut down, fisheries foreverything from menhaden off Louisiana to squid off New England.

From a biological perspective, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, as the affected species are, in large part, unrelated, and have very different life histories that should be considered in the management process.

From a management perspective, it doesn’t make much sense either, as some of the impacted fish stocks are already very healthy, some are overfished, and others are somewhere in between those extremes.

Trying to cram them all into a one-size-fits-all executive order doesn’t make very much sense, which is why the proponents are seeking a purely political solution, knowing that professional fisheries managers wouldn’t give such a scattershot approach even passing consideration. 

The executive order that they’re seeking would reportedly 1) ban the use of midwater trawls for forage fish species, 2) end the reduction fishery for menhaden and other forage fish, 3) direct the National Marine Fisheries Service to manage forage fish for ecosystem health, and 4) set science based catch targets for forage fish to protect predator species.  Forage fish would have to be managed to a biomass target that is 75% of the unfished biomass for each managed species.

Not surprisingly, the commercial fishing industry is taking exception to the proposed executive order.  It is asking fishermen to write a letter to President Donald Trump, members of his cabinet, and the fishermen’s members of Congress, opposing the issuance of the executive order.  While there is certainly a big dose of self-interest in that industry opposition, the commercial industry isn’t wrong when it argues that the proponents of the executive order

“misrepresent the science and seek to shut down menhaden harvests through lawsuits, media pressure, and unilateral federal action—bypassing the state and interstate regulatory bodies that have successfully managed the fishery for decades.

“These efforts are often driven by ideology or competing commercial interests, not by genuine concerns for science-based conservation.  Our fisheries are sustainable, with robust management frameworks ensuring ecological balance and long-term viability.”

A look at the fisheries potentially affected by the requested executive order demonstrates where it parts from good science and good management principles—and sometimes from reality as well.

In the case of Illex and longfin squid, both species have lifespans of less than one year, which exempts them from the annual catch limit and accountability measures requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.  The existing fishery management plan allows both species to be harvested at rates higher than those that would be permissible under the proposed executive order, while maintaining a sustainable fishery.  Reducing the fishing mortality rate in order to achieve a biomass at least 75% as large as an unfished stock would unnecessarily reduce landings without providing appreciable offsetting benefits.

In addition, squid are generally harvested with bottom trawls, not mid-water trawls, which renders the remainder of the executive order irrelevant to them.

Atlantic herring are overfished, but a rebuilding plan is in place.  Because there is regional variation in the stock, it isn’t managed as a monolith, as the proposed executive order would do.  Instead,

“The [annual catch limit] is divided into sub-[annual catch limits] for management areas in a manner to prevent overfishing on individual stock components,”

a smaller-scale management approach that it more sensitive to such regional differences.  

While Atlantic herring are caught in mid-water trawls, it’s not clear whether a court would support efforts to ban the trawl fishery, for after the New England Fishery Management Council adopted an amendment to the herring management plan that would ban mid-water trawling in some inshore areas to prevent alleged regional depletion of herring, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts invalidated the resulting regulation, finding that it was “arbitrary and capricious” because there was no evidence linking the mid-water trawls with localized depletion.

If a court found that there was no grounds for banning mid-water herring trawls in even a relatively small expanse of ocean, it is difficult to believe that there is any factual justification to ban them in all federal waters of the East Coast.

The story of Atlantic mackerel is similar.  The stock is overfished, but already subject to a rebuilding plan.  And the mackerel are often caught in mid-water trawls.  However, NMFS notes that

“The stock is overfished, but the fishing rate established under a rebuilding plan promotes population growth,”

“Fishing gears used to harvest Atlantic mackerel have minimal impacts on habitat,”

and

“Regulations are in place to minimize bycatch,”

which makes it appear that mackerel are being appropriately managed, and are in little need of the proposed executive order’s protections.

And, finally, we get to menhaden, the fish that was undoubtedly the primary driver behind the proposed executive order, and the fish that, more than the others, illustrates why the proposed executive order is more a bit of political theater than a legitimate management measure.

Taking the primary features of the proposed executive order, we find:

1)     The executive order would ban the use of mid-water trawls for forage fish.  But the largest percentage of menhaden, by far, are caught in purse seines, making that provision irrelevant.

2)     The executive order would ban the reduction fishery for menhaden.  This is a purely ideological issue.  Atlantic menhaden are neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.  If the stock is healthy and the fishery sustainable, why does it matter what vessels and gear catch the fish, and why does it matter what the fish are used for once they’ve been killed?  The next stock assessment could well tell us that menhaden need further management measures, but it may also tell us that the current fishery is completely sustainable.  So until the science tells us that new management measures are needed, the fact that someone doesn’t like the reduction industry is hardly a reason to end the fishery.

3)     The executive order would require NMFS to manage forage fish for ecosystem health.  But as Atlantic menhaden are managed by the ASMFC, this point would, like the first, be irrelevant.

4)     Finally, the executive order would require forage fish to be managed with science-based catch limits that protect predator species.  In the case of menhaden, that’s already done.  The ASMFC tells us that

 

“The [ecological reference point] assessment evaluates the health of the stock in an ecosystem context, and indicates that the fishing mortality (F) reference points for menhaden should be lower to account for menhaden’s role as a forage fish…[It uses] an ecosystem model that focuses on four key predator species (striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, and spiny dogfish) and three key prey species (Atlantic menhaden, Atlantic herring, and bay anchovy).”

Thus, it is clear that the proposed executive order constitutes a political statement rather than a bona fide fisheries management action.  It is an ideology-driven appeal to the politicians in the Executive Branch that would accomplish nothing that is not already being done, and done more efficiently, by means of conventional fisheries management—except, of course, shutting down the reduction fishery, which is the whole point of the exercise.

But that is hardly a management measure.  The menhaden stock seems to be doing just fine, even with that fishery in place.  And should the menhaden stock falter, a reduction in quota, rather than shutting down an entire fishery, would be a far more justifiable measure.

Because there’s a problem when you turn to politicians to shut down a fishery that you don’t like:  If you can use politics that way, other people can, too.

And the fishery that they don’t like might very well be yours.