REGIONAL FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCILS: "A FAIR AND BALANCED APPORTIONMENT"

 

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act states that

“it is therefore declared to be the purposes of the Congress in this Act…to establish Regional Fishery Management Councils to exercise sound judgment in the stewardship of fishery resources through the stewardship of fishery resources through the preparation, monitoring, and revision of [fishery management] plans under circumstances (A) which will enable the States, the fishing industry, consumer and environmental organizations, and other interested persons to participate in, and advise on, the establishment and administration of such plans, and (B) which take into account the social and economic needs of the States.  [formatting omitted]”

To help achieve that purpose, Magnuson-Stevens further provides,

“The Secretary [of Commerce], in making appointments [to the regional fishery management councils], shall, to the extent practicable, ensure a fair and balanced apportionment, on a rotating or other basis, of the active participants (or their representatives) in the commercial and recreational fisheries under the jurisdiction of the Council…[T]he Secretary shall submit to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries of the House of Representatives [an annual] report on the actions taken by the Secretary to ensure that such fair and balanced apportionment is achieved.  The report shall (i) list the fisheries under the jurisdiction of each Council, outlining for each fishery the type and quantity of fish harvested, fishing and processing methods employed, the number of participants, the duration and range of the fishery, and other distinguishing characteristics; (ii) assess the membership of each Council in terms of the apportionment of the active participants in each fishery; and (iii) state the Secretary’s plans and schedule for actions to achieve a fair and balanced apportionment on the Council for the active participants in any such fishery.  [emphasis added, formatting omitted]”

It is a requirement that often seems to be honored more in the breach than in practice.  Few regional fishery management councils have a truly “fair and balanced apportionment” of council seats among the various subsectors of the commercial and recreational fisheries, although the nature of the imbalance is different on different councils.

Thus, in the House of Representatives, Congressman Nick Begich (R-AK) recently introduced H.R. 8598, the “North Pacific Fishery Management Council Representation Enhancement Act of 2026.”  He explained,

“The North Pacific Fishery Management Council was established to advance policies in the interest of all user groups across our fisheries.  In Alaska, many different user groups rely on the same resource, and we need to make sure every one of them has a seat at the table.  Ensuring balanced representation is critical to addressing broader challenges facing Alaskan fisheries, including declining abundance.  This bill is about restoring balance, strengthening accountability, and making sure fisheries management works for all Alaskans.”

 A press release announcing the legislation’s introduction stated that

“The bill amends…Magnuson-Stevens…to require that Alaska’s appointments to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) include representation from recreational fishing, small-scale commercial fishing, and subsistence user groups.

“The NPFMC plays a central role in managing fisheries in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska.  However, concerns have grown that current council composition does not adequately reflect the full scale of Alaska’s fishing communities, including subsistence users, small boat fishermen, and recreational stakeholders…

“The bill directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…to develop guidelines to verify representation and implement the changes, with new requirements taking effect for future council appointments.”

The motivation for the new bill was undoubtedly the ongoing debate over the bycatch and resultant dead discards of salmon, halibut, various crabs, and other living marine resources by large factory trawlers that target walleye pollock in a high-volume but low-value (per pound) fishery that is the largest commercial fishery in the nation.  As reported by National Fishermen in a 2023 article,

“Amid widespread consternation about the incidental numbers of halibut, crab, salmon, and other species that trawlers haul up in the Bering Sea, state and federal management regimes have come under increasing fire.

“To some, inaction by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to impose trawl bycatch caps on salmon and crab demands an overhaul of the 11-member panel that votes on management strategies submitted to the Department of Commerce…

“David Bayes, a charter boat operator out of Homer [Alaska] and the Facebook administrator of STOP Trawling Now, says that it wasn’t the original plan of the council’s founders to stack the panel with members whose conflicts of interest could undermine other facets of fisheries management.  But he adds that it evolved quickly as various sectors in the industry scrambled for representation and votes in key fisheries issues.

“’If one looks back at the verbiage and intent when the regional councils were formed through the Magnuson-Stevens Act, once sees that the lawmakers at the time had the forward thinking to realize that in order for dynamic and ever-changing fisheries to be regulated, they would need to be regulated by the fishermen themselves.’

“Bayes adds that conflict of interest was acceptable at the time the councils were founded, ‘because that was the only way to have fishermen regulating fishermen.’

“But competition for representation among Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, and conflicts among gear types quickly changed who was placed in the seats and left the fishermen behind.

“’They’re bringing the heaviest hitters they can find, which are often government officials, CEOs, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-political staff, etcetera,’ says Bayes.”

Similar appointment and representation problems exist on every state, although the precise form that they take can differ.

In New England, for example, the appointed members of the New England Fishery Management Council include seven who are either commercial fishermen or closely allied with the commercial fishing industry, three charter boat operators, and two members of the marine conservation community.  There are no private anglers (that is, anglers who fish solely for recreation and/or personal use, and have no business connection to the fishery) at all.  Commercial fishermen, provided that they have the support of just half of the state and federal government seats, can dictate the outcome of any vote.

Along the Gulf of Mexico, the eleven appointed members of the Gulf Fishery Management Council have a very different look.  There, six members are recreational fishermen or closely tied to the recreational fishing industry (including one legislative affairs specialist who serves as a consultant for the Center for Sportfishing Policy and an academic who sits on the Coastal Conservation Association’s Board of Directors), just two are commercial fishermen, two are academics (one of whom describes himself as a “lifelong recreational fisherman” while the other is “an avid recreational fisherman, licensed captain, and co-owner of a seafood market), and one member is both a recreational for-hire captain and a commercial fishermen.

It’s thus probably not surprising that most votes at the Gulf Council tend to favor the recreational sector.

Here in New York, we have a very active recreational fishery, with four important recreational species—bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass—managed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, acting cooperatively with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.  Over the past five years—2021 through 2025—New York anglers have actively pursued all four species, taking an estimated total of 6,398,348 trips primarily targeting bluefish, 13,495,821 targeting summer flounder, 6,696,384 targeting scup, and 2,108,877 targeting black sea bass.  The fishery has been dominated by private anglers, fishing either from shore or from their own vessels, who were responsible for 99.8% of all bluefish trips, 96.8% of all trips primarily targeting summer flounder, 96.3% of all trips targeting scup, and 92.9% of all trips targeting black sea bass.

Yet, since I stepped down from my at-large seat on the Mid-Atlantic Council in 2005, New York has not had a single private angler hold a Council seat.  In over two decades, the recreational seats have been held either by for-hire operators or by individuals closely allied with the for-hire industry or, in one instance, by a former state fisheries manager.

While I can’t say that New York’s private anglers—who unquestionably dominate its recreational fishery—have been completely unrepresented on the Mid-Atlantic Council, as the state’s fisheries managers have always done a reasonably good job of representing everyone’s interests, the lack of private anglers on the Mid-Atlantic Council representing New York, or any other Mid-Atlantic state, hardly represents the kind of “fair and balanced apportionment” of seats, either from New York or on the Mid-Atlantic Council as a whole, contemplated by Magnuson-Stevens.

When the people holding the recreational seats from any given state, or on the Council as a whole, only represent those making—to be very generous—5% of the recreational trips for Council-managed species, something is definitely very, very wrong.

And we should never pretend that the interests and the objectives of the private anglers and the for-hire fleet is the same. 

In the Mid-Atlantic, we only need to look at the current efforts to draft a “Recreational Sector Separation Amendment, that

“may consider managing for-hire recreational fisheries separately from other recreational fishing modes.”

That’s carefully worded language that doesn’t assume any particular outcome should the proposed amendment be adopted, but anyone following the process knows that the for-hire operators are looking for special privileges for their customers, that will allow them to take more and/or smaller fish, perhaps during a longer season, than those allowed to the private anglers that make up most of the fishery.

Since there is only a single recreational allocation, and both private and for-hire anglers take their fish out of the same allotted pool—at various meetings, the for-hire members sitting on the Council have made it abundantly clear that they don’t want a fixed quota for their sector alone— if the for-hire fleet is gifted with regulations that allow their customers to take more fish home, everyone else in the fishery are going to have to get a little less, for fishery management is, in the end, a zero-sum game; when someone wins, by getting more fish, someone else must lose and give up some part of their share.

But when private anglers have no effective representation on the Council, there’s nobody to object when they end up on the losing end.

In the Gulf of Mexico, we see something happening that is the mirror image of what’s going on in the Mid-Atlantic.

Sector separation already exists in the Gulf red snapper fishery.  It was adopted a number of years ago in response to chronic overfishing by private red snapper anglers, who exerted enough political pressure on their states to extend state-waters red snapper seasons, and so reduce the federal waters season to just three days—remember, it is a zero-sum game—which would be the kiss of death for the federally permitted for-hire fleet.  In order to protect the for-hires from the excesses of the private boats, the Gulf Fisheries Management Council (then called the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council, although that name has since been changed for political reasons) established a separate sub-quota for the for-hire industry.

Since then, the Council adopted Amendment 50 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico, which allows states limited flexibility to set regulations for their private boat recreational red snapper fishery, so long as those regulations constrain each state to its federally-established recreational quota.  But the for-hire red snapper fishery remained the exclusive domain of federal fisheries managers.

Now, the private angler-dominated Gulf Council is considering a new Amendment 64:  Delegation of the Federal For-Hire Management Authority for Red Snapper to the Gulf States, which would allocate the for-hire red snapper quota among the states, and allow states the same sort of limited regulatory flexibility that they currently have in the private boat fishery.

While that might seem benign on its face, for-hire operators are concerned that it will both allow some states to take advantage of others, stealing a portion of their for-hire quota, and possibly even provide a means for states to give some of what are now for-hire fish to private boat anglers.  As explained by long-time for-hire operator Gary Jarvis, of Destin, Florida,

“It became abundantly clear that this was about a fish grab.  The draft document provided alternatives for how the allocation would disseminate to each state’s for-hire fleet, and was determined on EACH STATE’S OWN REPORTED LANDINGS.

“The state of Louisiana was not satisfied with this breakdown, so they proposed a new methodology.  The new methodology would move fish from the eastern gulf into the western gulf.  It would reduce Florida’s fleet percentage from over 48% of the federal for-hire allocation to over 38%.  This literally shows they want to control the federal for-hire fleet but it would not be enough fish for what they want out of the document or…they did not report the correct amount of fish in the first place.  That is the reality of this document…

“When it came to public testimony, to call it anything less than ass whipping would be an understatement.  Federally permitted for-hire fishermen and women from Florida (Ft. Myers, Tampa, Big Bend, Panama City, and Destin), Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas all gave public comment stating they wanted nothing to do with state management of the Gulf federally permitted fleet.  The only person who gave testimony in favor of it was the executive director of the Louisiana Charter Boat Association.

“This association is funded by the State of Louisiana, through a percentage of every fishing license sale in the state, via a department which is tremendously influenced by CCA.  The executive director could not get a single one of their members to give testimony in favor of this, despite never having fished professionally or in control of any federal permits…”

Given the antipathy the for-hire fleet seems to have for the proposed amendment, it’s pretty clear that the amendment is being shoved down their throats by representatives of the private boat fishery.

So, while the precise details differ from council to council, the underlying theme remains the same—Magnuson-Stevens’ requirement for “fair and balanced apportionment” of council seats is being ignored just about everywhere when appointments to the regional fishery management councils.

Although there might be a handful of exceptions, council seats are typically awarded to those who are supported by organizations that have the right political connections and make the right contributions to the right parties and elected officials at the right time.  Experience in and knowledge of the fishery means far less than experience in and knowledge of how to bend the political process to a sector’s or subsector’s advantage.  Depending on the council involved, small-boat commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, for-hire operators, subsistence fishermen, conservation interests, and others who lack the needed political clout in a particular region might all find themselves marginalized and their concerns ignored by representatives of more powerful special interests.

Whether one is dealing with the North Pacific, New England, Mid-Atlantic, Gulf, or any other regional fisheries management council, the situation remains the same..

Thus, Congressmen Begich’s bill makes a lot of sense.  But assuring fair and balanced apportionment shouldn’t be limited to Alaska and the North Pacific Council.

What we really need is legislation that will make it a reality on every coast of the United States.