THE TRIALS OF A FISHERIES MANAGER: AN INSIDER'S ACCOUNT

 

I recently came across a piece on fisheries management—more specifically, Gulf of Maine cod management—that was written by a former National Marine Fisheries Service biologist, who spent a decade of his life as the lead scientist performing the assessment of Gulf of Maine cod, which might just be one of the most frustrating and thankless jobs on the East Coast.

The piece, titled "Bankers’ Hours to Bankruptcy:  The Collapse of Gulf of Maine Cod,” appeared in an unusual place, the blog of a business that calls itself the Waquoit Bay Fish Company, which sells fish-related art rather than fish, and is owned by Michael Palmer—the former NMFS scientist who wrote the piece, and also seems to be an accomplished artist inspired by his time at sea.

I have been involved in the fisheries management process and conservation advocacy for a very long time, and I’m not sure that I have ever before read anything that engaged me in the same way that “Bankers’ Hours to Bankruptcy” did, for it speaks with the voice of someone who labored within the management system for a very long time, someone who cared very much about getting things right for both fish and fishermen, and who touches on just about every aspect of why fisheries management efforts, and particularly efforts to manage cod, so often go wrong.

He begins with describing how surface appearances can often be deceiving.

“Boats [from Massachusetts and New Hampshire] were sailing at reasonable hours, towing close to home, coming back with what, on the surface, looked like solid trips.  The joke among Gloucester fishermen was that cod fishing had turned into “bankers’ hours”; no more brutal all-nighters chasing scattered fish over the horizon.  Cod seemed thick near the western Gulf of Maine ports, and for a little while the mood—if not jubilant—was at least cautiously hopeful…

“In 2008, a federal stock assessment…concluded that Gulf of Maine cod had rebuilt to about 58 percent of its target spawning biomass, with projections that the stock might be fully rebuilt by 2010.  After decades of decline and increasingly strict regulations, it was the storyline everyone wanted: sacrifice, recovery, vindication.”

But there was a problem.  Many of the assumptions underlying the 2008 assessment were too optimistic.  Thus, when Michael Palmer became the lead scientist for the 2011 stock assessment, the underlying assumptions were revisited.

“Much of what we changed would have sounded like housekeeping to anyone outside the room.  We fixed how we converted between estimated fish numbers and weights—reshaping our picture of how much cod biomass we thought was out there.  We stopped pretending every survey number was equally solid; some estimates were clearly noisier than others, so the model let them tug less on the final answer.  And we gave the model a bit more room in how it followed the catch history.  On paper, it was just a different way of reading the same history—in practice, it was better science.”

Such changes, which occur in many stock assessments, not just Gulf of Maine cod, are largely unseen by the public, although the recent Atlantic menhaden stock assessment, which corrected a previous error in the calculation of natural mortality and, as a result, reduced the size estimate of the menhaden stock by about 37%, was a well-publicized exception.

The changes included in the 2011 assessment reduced the estimated size of the Gulf of Maine cod stock, too, and by a far greater percentage, for

“once the new model was fully wired up and the data was pushed through, the stock we thought was more than halfway rebuilt suddenly shrank.  Cohorts we’d been counting on all but vanished, and historical biomass estimates fell by more than 70 percent.  The recovery narrative that had been built over the previous decade—sacrifice, rebound, vindication—collapsed in a few pages of output.”

At that point, the scientists had done their job.  They had improved the model used to estimate Gulf of Maine cod abundance, and they had developed a more accurate stock assessment as a result.  But what the scientists couldn’t do—what no fisheries scientist can do, regardless of the species involved—is translate the stock assessment into effective regulations.  That job falls to the regional fishery management councils, to NMFS and, in the case of many species (but not in the case of cod), to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and/or state regulators.

And the regulatory folks weren’t very happy with the results of the 2011 stock assessment.

“My lane in all this was narrow but well defined: assemble and vet the data, choose and run the models, and explain what the results did and didn’t mean.  I didn’t vote on quotas; I handed managers the best picture we could produce, uncertainty and all, and they decided what to do with it.

“The people holding the levers of management didn’t like what they saw.  Neither did much of the industry.  The assessment was criticized from every angle—data inputs, model choice and structure, reference points.  Under that pressure, the big cuts implied by the 2011 results were softened and delayed, and instead of fully acting on them, the system asked for a do-over.”

Because there’s a funny thing about stock assessments:  If an assessment comes out that requires a reduction in landings—and often, the reduction doesn’t have to be all that large—we hear members of the commercial, for-hire, and, more and more in recent years, the recreational fishing industries complain about “bad science,” and allege that “the numbers are wrong,” but if the assessment allows landings to increase, no one questions the science or the data at all.

It's all good if it allows them to bring home more fish, and all bad if it restricts their landings.

We saw that sort of thing happen at the recent Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel meeting, where Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council staff informed the AP that, if the usual 80% confidence interval—what a non-statistician might characterize as the margin for error—around estimates of 2026 recreational black sea bass landings was used, the 2026 landings target would remain unchanged, but if the confidence interval was reduced just a little, to 75%, to accommodate the high degree of uncertainty in the landings estimate, the landings target could be increased by 39%.  Faced with the possibility of significantly relaxed regulations, almost all of the advisors who spoke on the issue—advisors who generally represented the for-hire fishing industry—opined that using the 75% confidence interval was the right way to go, solely because it would provide the results, in the form of higher landings, that they preferred.

There was almost no discussion of what would make the most sense from a policy or management perspective.

And then there are the politicians who get involved.  In the case of the Gulf of Maine cod, Michael Perry wrote,

“Years earlier, Congress had written the law that said we would base catch limits on science and rebuild depleted stocks.  We were just doing the work the statute required.  But when the results pointed toward painful cuts, some of the same elected officials who had helped pass that framework into law turned around and attacked the science and the policies that flowed from it.

“As Senator John Kerry wrote to the Secretary of Commerce on December 14, 2011: ‘This GOM cod situation is further proof that the entire research and data process needs to be completely overhauled.  Therefore, in conjunction with the new assessment for GOM cod, I ask that you undertake an end to end review of the stock assessment process that includes the analysis and recommendation of outside parties.’”

That was not a unique occasion.  It is routine for politicians, who might have, at best, a rudimentary understanding of fisheries management, to try to undercut the fishery management process and impeach fisheries scientists just so their constituents can kill more fish than science or good judgment would allow. 

That sort of political interference may have reached its peak in the recreational red snapper fishery in both the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic where, a decade ago, we saw former Congressman Garret Graves (R-LA) introduce H.R. 3094, the Gulf States Red Snapper Management Authority Act which, although never passed, would have stripped NMFS of its authority to manage Gulf of Mexico red snapper, and vested that authority in a new management body composed of fisheries managers from the five Gulf states, after “anglers’ rights” organizations headquartered in the region actively opposed the science-based measures needed to rebuild the red snapper stock. 

Today, something somewhat similar is going on in the South Atlantic, where H.R. 470, the Red Snapper Act, introduced by Congressman John Rutherford (R-FL), would prevent NMFS from implementing a closed season on all recreational bottom fishing in the South Atlantic in order to reduce the level of recreational red snapper bycatch.

In both instances, the goal was to block science-based efforts to manage the recreational red snapper fishery.

Not surprisingly, in the case of Gulf of Maine cod, the fishing industry worked hard to impeach the science. 

“For years, some in the industry argued that the surveys were simply missing cod.  Their skepticism was understandable.  If you can still fill your hold in your best spots but the survey index is falling, it’s tempting—almost irresistible—to believe the survey must be wrong.

“And there were, to be fair, plenty of technical questions to point to.  The survey trawls weren’t the same as commercial gear.  Their doors spread differently; their nets fished a little higher or lower; their tows were shorter, slower, more standardized…

“Those were real, worthwhile scientific questions.  The problem is how they were used.

“A small but influential set of voices in the management process—industry representatives, academic consultants, and a few advisors—leaned hard on those uncertainties.  They highlighted every potential bias that might make the surveys look too pessimistic and treated them as proof that the stock was healthier than the assessments suggested.  Questions about gear efficiency, selectivity, calibration coefficients, and survey design became a kind of fog.  Whether intentionally or not, the effect was to keep attention focused on what might be wrong with the warning lights, rather than on the very real possibility that the engine itself was failing.”

When merely questioning the methodologies used in the cod assessment failed to impeach its conclusions, the fishing industry went a step further.

“When official assessments warned that cod were in deep trouble, segments of the industry increasingly responded by commissioning their own analyses.  Outside consultants—often respected quantitative academic scientists—were hired to critique government models, reanalyze data, or generate alternative population estimates.

“Sometimes those critiques caught real problems.  No assessment is perfect; outside eyes can be invaluable.  But over time, a pattern emerged that was hard to ignore: industry-funded science almost always bent in one direction.  It emphasized uncertainties and alternate interpretations that could justify higher catches or delay cuts, rarely the reverse.

“In public debates, phrases like ‘science for hire’ started to surface.  In council meetings, dueling narratives about stock status became weapons rather than tools.

“The erosion of precaution wasn’t abstract.  You could see it in the model choices.  Industry consultants often pressed for strongly domed selectivity in the assessment models—telling the models that mid-sized cod were easy to catch while the biggest, oldest fish mostly slipped through.  On paper, it turned the absence of large fish into ‘cryptic biomass’ lurking just out of view…

“You could see it again in the population projections built off those consultant runs.  The rebuilding deadline stayed the same on paper, but the bar for what counted as ‘rebuilt’ moved.  By swapping in different recruitment assumptions that said cod could hit peak production of young fish at a smaller stock size, it made it easier to claim we were on track without actually putting more cod in the water.

“From my seat at the science table, I watched the uncertainties I saw as reasons for caution repurposed as excuses for inaction.  If surveys might be missing cod, if models might be biased low, if a consultant could spin up an alternative set of numbers with a higher biomass line—there was always an argument for waiting one more year before making the really hard cuts.”

And once again, such industry actions were not unique to Gulf of Maine cod. 

Those who follow fisheries management in the mid-Atlantic can probably recall a group that called itself the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund, which tried very hard for a number of years to impeach NMFS recreational catch and landings data, hired consultants, and went to great lengths to convince fishery managers to reduce the minimum size for summer flounder because, they argued (unsuccessfully), higher size limits forced anglers land mostly female fish, and so negatively impacted the stock’s spawning potential.

In the Gulf of Mexico, there was the so-called Great Red Snapper Count, an effort to impeach NMFS’ red snapper data through what was touted as an “independent” study not conducted by federal fisheries scientists, although funded with about ten million taxpayer dollars.  Although the Count did find far more red snapper in the Gulf than NMFS believed were there—primarily fish widely scattered over low-profile bottom, where surveys didn’t expect the structure-loving snapper to be—when biologists considered that data, it didn’t lead to a large increase in the total allowable catch, largely because of the high level of uncertainty surrounding the Count’s findings.  One conservation group, The Ocean Conservancy, noted that

“Invited reviewers from the Center for Independent Experts, who performed the first external peer review of the Great Red Snapper Count, identified issues around methodology, calibration, sample sizes and uncertainty that warrant further review, particularly given the magnitude of changes to red snapper management being considered.”

The Coastal Conservation Association, which despite its name is, in reality, the largest anglers’ rights group in the country, complained,

“NOAA pledged to take the findings of [the Great Red Snapper Count] and incorporate them into its next assessment of red snapper which was scheduled to begin in 2021.  While it would have been reasonable to expect the results of the [Great Red Snapper Count] to simply become the new benchmark, NOAA insisted that those findings would have to be calibrated and synched up with the data streams and techniques it had used in the past.  The same data streams and techniques that the [Great Red Snapper Count] had shown to be inaccurate by a factor of at least three.”

Because in its efforts to impeach federal fisheries science, the Coastal Conservation Association, which wants to see an increase in recreational red snapper landings, naturally wants to see its preferred studies prevail, regardless of the true accuracy of their conclusions.

Now, in the South Atlantic, something called the South Atlantic Red Snapper Research Program, utilizing scientists from various universities, is conducting a similar “independent” study, which will almost certainly be used by various recreational fishing organizations to challenge federal scientists’ findings IF it develops data that seems more favorable to the recreational fishing industry.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy to come out of the whole Gulf of Maine cod affair wasn’t the failure to rebuild the cod stock, but rather that the constant battle to develop and present the best possible science ultimately wore down Michael Palmer and, despite his dedication to the effort, convinced him to give up his scientific career.

“I never stopped believing in the work itself.  I trusted the science, respected the skill and hard-won knowledge of working fishermen, and believed in the colleagues in the trenches with me—survey technicians, modelers, analysts, port samplers, observers—doing their best to wrestle meaning from noisy data, not script a convenient answer.  What wore me down wasn’t some grand conspiracy; it was seeing how, when uncomfortable results landed, uncertainty could be amplified while what we did know slipped into the background.  Support from senior leadership often felt thin, and the hardest conversations fell to the people closest to the work.  In that kind of environment, the science often felt like background noise instead of the basis for decisions.”

We can only surmise how many other scientists, dedicated to the truth as Michael Palmer was, have chosen the same route rather than see their work constantly derided by industry spokesmen who, seeking to put more dead fish on the dock regardless of the long-term cost to the public and to the resource, claim that the science-based federal fishery management system is “broken” and needs to be replaced by state fishery managers, knowing that such state managers are much more susceptible to political pressure and, unlike federal fishery managers, are generally not legally bound to prevent overfishing or to rebuild overfished stocks.

We can only guess how many stocks of fish—not only Gulf of Maine cod, but winter flounder, striped bass, red snapper, and others—have fallen victim to the sort of obstructionism that hindered the implementation of effective, science-based rebuilding plans, became overfished or, in the case of winter flounder, collapsed altogether.

Michael Palmer’s writing gives us a look into the real world of the professional fishery manager, a world where scientists are castigated, rather than rewarded, for doing their jobs well, and where science is too often shunted aside when political and industry forces combine to suppress what should be the guiding principle of fisheries management.

In this blog, I often make special efforts to recognize, and offer special respect toward, the fisheries scientists who seek to rebuild and maintain healthy fish stocks.  Michael Palmer’s story helps to explain why.