STRIPED BASS ADDENDUM III CONTINUING TO TAKE SHAPE

 

This morning, the Plan Development Team charged with drafting the proposed Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan met for over three and a half hours, and made some important decisions on what the initial draft addendum will look like.

To get the big question out of the way first, if we keep regulations just the way that they are, and don’t touch the commercial quota, the stock may not fully rebuild by 2029, although it will probably come close. 

If the fishing mortality rate for the years 2026-2029 averages out at 0.122, the rate needed to provide a 50% chance that the stock is fully rebuilt, that’s exactly what we end up with—a 50% chance of rebuilding.

On the other hand, if the fishing mortality rate for those years averages out just a hair higher, to 0.123, the actual fishing mortality rate for 2024, it is slightly more likely than not that the stock won’t fully rebuild, with only a 48.7% chance of rebuilding (that calculation assumes a “normal distribution” of statistical values, while another calculation using a “skewed distribution” only finds a 43.6% likelihood of rebuilding; given that my degrees are in History, English, and Law, and that I avoided any class resembling math after freshman year Calculus, I have no idea what the technical differences between the two distributions are, and so can’t explain them to you, although the words “normal” and “skewed” seem to tell at least a small part of the story).

The Striped Bass Technical Committee recommended that the Plan Development Team use the assumption that the fishing mortality rate for 2026-2029 will be 0.123 when drafting Addendum III, so at least on paper, spawning stock biomass will probably fall a little short of its target by the end of 2029.  

I know a lot of folks won’t be happy with that—I know that I’m not particularly pleased—but the truth is that it’s impossible to craft meaningful management measures that will cut landings by just 1.3%--the data just isn’t that precise, and a 1% change would be lost in the statistical noise.

In fact, the Technical Committee said that any reduction of less than 10% would be “statistically indistinguishable from the status quo.” And that turned out to be an important statement, which I’ll discuss in a while.

But first, I need to point out that, in developing Addendum III, the Management Board doesn’t have to stick with its usual 50% probability of successful rebuilding.  At the last Management Board meeting, Chris Batsavage, a North Carolina fishery manager, asked that the Technical Committee also come up with management measures that have a 60% chance of fully rebuilding the stock by the end of 2029.  Using the same set of assumptions that led to the conclusion that the stock would not quite rebuild if no management measures were changed, the Technical Committee found that removals would have to be reduced by 7% to have a 60% probability of rebuilding by 2029.

The Plan Development Team will be including management options that will achieve that 7% reduction in its first draft of Addendum III.

But…  Remember the Technical Committee comment that anything less than a 10% reduction will be “indistinguishable from the status quo?”

The Plan Development Team will also develop management options that will reduce removals by 10%, and have a greater than 60% probability of rebuilding by the end of 2029.  Because the Management Board didn’t ask the PDT to do so, the 10% reductions won’t be included in the initial draft of Addendum III, but will instead be presented to the Management Board in a separate memorandum.  That way, if the Management Board wants to consider a 10% reduction, it only needs to instruct the Plan Development Team to include the already-prepared 10% options into the draft addendum when the Board meets again in May.

We don’t know what measures to reduce removals by 10% might look like, but this morning’s meeting provided some clues about what those attaining a 7% reduction might be.

The first question is who would have to take the reductions. 

For many years, the Management Board imposed seemingly symmetrical reductions on both the recreational and commercial sectors, which required the same percentage reductions of both.  In reality, the reduction’s weren’t symmetrical, as the recreational cuts were from actual landings, while the commercial cuts were from quota, and since commercial landings often fell far below state quotas, the cuts to cuts landings were far less; sometimes, a state's commercial landings were  not cut at all.

That all changed with Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which called for anglers to cut their landings by 14%, but only required a 7% cut in commercial quotas, a reduction so small that Maryland commercial fishermen could have actually increased their landings in 2024, because they were so far below quota the year before.

The initial draft of Addendum III will carry on that tradition, and offer three options:  Reducing both commercial quota and recreational removals by 7%, reducing recreational removals by 8% while leaving the commercial quota unchanged, and a third, bizarre option, which has appeared in previous draft management documents, that would multiply the necessary 7% commercial reduction by the commercial sector’s 11% share of overall fishing mortality, and so only cut the commercial quota by 0.8% while reducing recreational removals by 8%.

Although the Management Board still needs to decide, it’s probably a good bet that all three options will appear in the draft amendment that is finally released for public comment.

The next question is how any reductions will be achieved.

Commercial reductions are fairly straightforward, with the quota cut by the agreed-upon amount.  But when it comes to cutting recreational removals, things get complicated.

Given that anglers can already retain no more than one fish, the bag limit can’t go any lower, and certainly won't increase in Addendum III, so size limits and seasons will become the only available management tools.

In the ocean fishery, where the Management Board has already agreed not to consider the harvest of fish less than 28 inches long, or slot limits narrower than three inches, the size limit, too, is unlikely to change, as none of those considered would achieve even a 7% reduction in removals.  

That’s because the current spawning stock biomass is skewed heavily toward larger fish, with the 2018 year class, which will fill the slot this year, the last of the larger year classes; every subsequent year class has been far below average.  So the 36-inch minimum size that served so well a generation ago, and is supported by many anglers today, would actually increase removals by 10%.  

Of the five alternative size limits considered for the ocean fishery, only two would decrease 2026 removals.  A slot limiting harvest to 31- to 35-inch fish would lead to a trivial 1% reduction, while a 40-inch minimum size would reduce recreational removals by 5%; neither would achieve the minimum 7% reduction needed for a 60% probability of success.  While it’s possible that Addendum III might couple a new size limit with a season, the fact that the Management Board has decided that no closed season may be shorter than two weeks makes it likely that the 28- to 31-inch slot will remain in place, and seasons will be the only tool used to reduce ocean landings—although that’s only my opinion, and not the PDT’s.

The picture in the Chesapeake Bay is a little different.  There, changes to the size limit can achieve a 7% reduction.  Moving the bottom end of the slot up an inch, to 20 to 24 inches, would cut recreational removals by 8%, while taking two inches off the top end of the slot, resulting in a 19- to 22-inch size limit, would almost double that, and reduce recreational removals by 15%.  Adopting the 19- to 22-inch slot for private boat and shore-based anglers, while leaving the current 19- to 24-inch slot in place for those fishing from for-hire vessels, would yield a slightly smaller, 14% cut.  The only minimum-size option, 22 inches, would reduce recreational removals by 10%.  

Any one of those choices could allow the current seasons to remain unchanged.

As far as possible seasons go, none have yet been calculated, although they will be soon.  However, two related issues were discussed at today’s meeting.

One was whether the seasons will be of the traditional no-harvest sort, or whether they will also ban targeting striped bass.  While I suspect options for both will be included in the draft addendum, anyone calculating no-target options must consider whether people who would have fished for striped bass will merely stop fishing during any closure, or whether they will switch to other species, but might accidentally catch bass during that time (a third scenario, that people will keep fishing for bass, but say that they’re fishing for something else, was never explicitly discussed, although I have to believe that at least some people are thinking about it).

The other issue is whether, when establishing seasons, Addendum III ought to break the coast down into two or three regions, and what states such regions should include.  The ASMFC’s Law Enforcement Committee supported a two-region breakdown, with one region running from Maine to Massachusetts and the other from Rhode Island to North Carolina, as they felt it important to keep all of the states active in the Block Island fishery in a single region.  

However, the ocean fishery in the southern states can be very different from that on the rest of the coast, militating in favor of a three-region approach.  Should such an approach be adopted, the Law Enforcement Committee supported regions consisting of Maine through Massachusetts, Rhode Island through Delaware, and Maryland through North Carolina, for ease of enforcement in the Delaware Bay.

The Plan Development Team will also calculate how seasonal closures will impact the individual states in each region, to determine whether any one state shoulders a disproportionate share of the conservation burden.  While such action may seem reasonable on its face, it carries the risk that a state--say, perhaps, New Jersey--will try to use such calculations reintroduce conservation equivalency into the management process, and use it to wiggle out of the region-wide rules, so undercutting the rebuilding process.  Although Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass explicitly prohibits the use of conservation equivalency when the stock is overfished, the Management Board has the power to end that prohibition in Addendum III.  We can only hope that such power is never used.

Specific season-related proposals will be developed at future Plan Development Team meetings, and will be discussed in a future edition of One Angler’s Voyage.

Beyond that, the only topics discussed at today’s meeting were mode splits—providing special, more lenient harvest privileges for anglers fishing from for-hire vessels, which would not be shared by the shore-based and private boat anglers, who account for 98% of all directed striped bass trips—commercial tagging procedures, and creating a uniform way to measure striped bass.

Although I believe the first issue is the most important of the three, I can’t write much about it because my internet provider chose that point in the meeting to shut down, and couldn't be restored until the discussion was over.

The commercial tagging issue revolved around the question of whether commercially caught bass should be tagged as soon as they’re caught, or in any case, before being taken off the fisherman's boat, or whether it’s acceptable for them to be tagged at the point when they’re purchased from the fisherman.  

The Law Enforcement Committee generally preferred the former option, which is already in force in all states but Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina, believing that tagging upon capture reducing highgrading (the practice of throwing back a smaller fish, that is often dead, and replacing it with a larger, more valuable individual) and increases fishermen’s accountability, although a small minority preferred tagging at the point of first sale, saying that it reduced the administrative burden associated with sending tags to all eligible fishermen, and made it less likely that a fisherman will pass tags to someone else to conceal a black market sale.

The measurement issue arose because some states don’t specify how a striped bass should be measured, which results in the slot size limit being applied inconsistently.  A Massachusetts representative suggested language that read

“Total length means the greatest straight line length in inches as measured on a fish with its mouth closed from the anterior most tip of the jaw or snout to the farthest extremity of the tail with the upper and lower fork of the tail squeezed together.”

It seemed a simple suggestion, but led to discussions about whether a fish should be measured flat, as it would lie on a measuring board, or along the curve of its body, as anglers often measure fish with a flexible tape.  There weere also discussions of whether the rack of a filleted fish would, if measured, be the same length as the fish was when whole.

No decisions were made on either of the last two issues, but significant progress was nonetheless made.  And this morning’s meeting was only the first of four that will lead to in the initial draft of Amendment III.

Before I close, I want to make one more point.

Often, I hear fishermen—whether recreational, commercial, or for-hire—attack proposed management measures with comments like “The data’s no good,” or “It’s MRIP [the Marine Recreational Information Program, used to estimate recreational catch, effort, and landings], and I just don’t believe it,” without really understanding what folks on the Technical Committee and Plan Development Team do to assure that the data used really does represent the best scientific information available.

This morning, there were two examples of what appeared to be “outliers” in the data, data points that deviated significantly from all of the others.  One was a seemingly anomalous spike in the number of 19-inch fish caught in 2019; the other was a similar spike in the number of live releases during March and April in Rhode Island in 2021. 

In both cases, the Plan Development Team addressed the outliers in great detail, using Technical Committee advice and other analysis to resolve the seeming incongruities.  As I noted at the beginning of this essay, I am not a statistician, and have no desire to become one.  However, to my layman's eyes, the analysis and the outcomes reached this morning appeared both comprehensive and logical, and I could only come away with the belief that the PDT was doing its best to assure that the data is relies on truly reflects reality.

And on that note, I will end.

The Plan Development Team will meet three more times before it prepares the first draft of Addendum III, on April 4, 9, and 10.  I hope to sit in on all of those meetings, and let you know what went on.  Right now, the draft addendum seems to be progressing fairly well, but it remains important for all concerned anglers to monitor the document’s progress, and do their best to assure that the process remains on track, and doesn’t get hijacked by one interest group or another.

Because, if history is any guide, someone will certainly try.

SALMON AQUACULTURE DEBATE CONTINUES TO ROIL PACIFIC WATERS

 

When the State of Washington outlawed net pen aquaculture of non-native species in 2018, the decision seemed to foreshadow the end of net pen salmon aquaculture on the Pacific coast of the United States.

At the time, no open water salmon aquaculture facilities existed in Oregon, California, or Alaska.  In Washington, fish farms still produced coho salmon and sea-going rainbow trout, the latter also known as “steelhead,” but sentiment against the net pens was growing.  And in 2022, the state decided not to renew the aquaculture leases of Cooke Aquaculture, one of the largest net pen operators (Cooke was also responsible for negligently releasing 263,000 Atlantic salmon into Washington waters in 2017, after one of its net pens collapsed), with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources noting that it

“determined that allowing Cooke to continue operations posed risks of environmental harm to state-owned aquatic lands resulting from lack of adherence to lease provisions and increased costs to DNR associated with contract compliance, monitoring, and enforcement.”

Hilary Franz, Washington’s Commissioner of Public Lands, said that

“Since the catastrophic Cypress Island net pen collapse in 2017, I have stood tall to defend the waters of Puget Sound.

“This effort began by terminating finfish net pen operations due to lease violations.  Despite years of litigation—and a company that has fought us every inch of the way—we are now able to deny lease renewals for the remaining net pen sites.  Today, we are returning our waters to wild fish and natural habitat.  Today, we are freeing Puget Sound of enclosed cages.”

On January 7, Washington took even more definitive action, as its Board of Natural Resources adopted final regulations banning commercial net pen aquaculture in state waters.

The regulations were widely supported, with over 80 percent of the comments received by the Board in favor of the prohibition.  The Wild Fish Conservancy, a Washington-based nonprofit founded over 35 years ago to support conservative, science-based management of Pacific Coast fishery resources and the habitats that support them, issued a press release celebrating the new rules, which said, in part, that

“…On Tuesday, Washington State made history, becoming the first—and only—place in the world to successfully remove and permanently ban commercial net pen aquaculture.

“…This decision ensures that this dangerous industry will never return to threaten Puget Sound’s ecosystems, safeguarding the health of Washington’s public waters for generations to come.

“’This is a landmark moment for environmental protection,’ said Emma Helverson, Executive Director of Wild Fish Conservancy.  ‘Thanks to the commitment of the public and the leadership of Tribal Nations, we have achieved something extraordinary.  This victory is not just for Puget Sound—it’s for every community, every species, and every ecosystem that has been impacted by the harmful practice of commercial net pens.’

“…These actions resulted in the complete removal of commercial net pens in Washington, making 2024 the first year in four decades that Puget Sound was free from daily pollution and the devastating impacts that net pens cause…

“Washington’s success will also serve as a powerful model providing important momentum for the global movement to eliminate open water net pens, an industry that poses a threat to marine ecosystems everywhere in the world that they exist.  Similar efforts to protect public waters and ecosystems from this industry are already underway in countries such as British Columbia, Chile, Scotland, Norway, Finland, and Tasmania…”

While that all sounds good, there were also people who were very unhappy about Washington’s actions, most or all of whom were positioned to profit from continued open-water net pen aquaculture.

An editorial in the media outlet Fishfarmingexpert.com declared that

“Washington State’s fish farm ban ‘is out of step with America,”

and went on to note that a

“Lobbyist points to growing bipartisan support for sector in Congress,”

undoubtedly the same sort of support that often occurs when just the right mix of lobbyists, congressmen, and campaign contributions is achieved.  The article went on to quote Drue Banta Williams, identified as the “campaign manager” for a group that calls itself Stronger America Through Seafood, who complained that

“This decision in Washington State is out of step with the growing bipartisan momentum for open ocean aquaculture across the country and in the nation’s capital, as Americans and environmentalists recognize that open ocean aquaculture can be conducted without harming the environment, is beneficial for our communities, and is a sustainable source of protein farmed here at home…

“Aquaculture is increasingly recognized by those on both sides of the aisle (in Congress) as a critical industry to boost our nation’s economy and ensure a steady supply of healthy, sustainable, American-raised protein.  The US should be making every effort to expand aquaculture in the US, and today’s decision in Washington State is a step in the wrong direction,”

which is probably what any lobbyist for the aquaculture industry would be expected to say.

Another group, the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance, which claims to be

“Championing the Growth of Responsible aquaculture in the Pacific Region, [sic]”

made similar comments, with the organization’s president, Jim Parsons, alleging that

“This ban was not based on the best available science, but rather on political maneuvering.

“DNR ignored hundreds of pages of scientific documentation that demonstrated that responsibly managed net pen aquaculture can coexist with Washington’s marine ecosystems.”

The catch, of course, appears in the phrase “responsibly managed;” Washington’s initial decision to end net pen aquaculture of non-native species was based on the collapse of what it viewed as negligently maintained net pens, and its decision not to renew Cooke Aquaculture’s leases was supposedly based on Cooke’s “lease violations.”  Some might thus consider it reasonable for Washington to believe that “responsibly maintained” net pens were more of an aspiration than anything that might exist in the real world.

Nonetheless, the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance brought a legal challenge to Washington’s new regulations, claiming that the rulemaking process used to adopt them was

“predetermined and inadequate,”

that the Washington Department of Natural Resources

“does not have unfettered authority to regulate aquaculture,”

and that

“As the demand for seafood continues to rise and wild fisheries are unable to meet that demand, net pen aquaculture is a crucial component of the vision shared by the Alliance and its members.”

Without having reviewed the administrative record underlying the Washington regulations, and without knowing anything about Washington law, it’s impossible to predict who will prevail in that legal action.  About the only certainty is that the issue of net pen salmon aquaculture in Washington, which appeared settled less than three months ago, is still very much up in the air.

Yet, while there is nothing unusual about an industry going to court to protect potential profits, something fairly surprising, and also aquaculture related, is happening up in Alaska.

Alaska has banned fish farming of any kind since 1990, when its legislature decided that

“Avoiding harm to the state’s wild finfish, land, and water resources must take precedence over the development of a new speculative and potentially harmful commercial finfish farming industry.”

However, on February 21, its governor, Mike Dunleavy, introduced legislation that would

“authorize the Commissioner of the Department of Fish and Game, in consultation with the Commissioner of the Department of Conservation, to permit the cultivation and sale of certain finfish in inland, closed system bodies of water.”

The legislation is relatively conservative, as it requires all finfish “acquired with a finfish farm permit” to be triploid hybrids that are sterilized and so unable to reproduce, prohibits the farming of Atlantic salmon or any of the five species of Pacific salmon, requires fish farms to be enclosed within a “natural or artificial escape-proof barrier,” and allows stocking a lake on private property with fish for personal consumption only, provided that the lake is also enclosed within such an escape-proof barrier.

Governor Dunleavy justified the bill by arguing that

“This legislation is a continuance of my administration’s efforts to grow Alaska’s food security by creating a new fish farming industry.  Alaska can join other regions of the world by raising fish that can be sold and consumed here in Alaska and be available for export.  This legislation will yield new jobs, economic growth, and a new food source for all Alaskans.”

But it seems many Alaskans aren’t convinced.

An opinion piece that appeared in the Anchorage Daily News declared that

“Dunleavy fish-farming plan shows he’s given up on Alaskan fishermen.”

It goes on to argue that

“…the signs have been there for a long time.  Dunleavy sided with the foreign backers of the Pebble Mine over the health and sustainability of Bristol Bay.  His appointees to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council have repeatedly failed to take any meaningful action to rein in the devastating negative impacts of trawl bycatch on salmon, halibut, herring and other species.  Now he has reached a new low with his introduction of legislation to permit fish farming in Alaska…

“It’s true fish farms are an established and growing part of the global food supply.  It’s also true that fish farming is oftentimes terrible for the environment and nearby communities…”

The Alaska Daily News is not alone in its criticism.

State legislators, in particular, have objected to its introduction.  Rep. Sarah Vance, who is typically a Dunleavy ally, made a post on social media saying,

“Friends don’t let friends eat farmed fish,”

while another legislator, Rep. Louise Stutes, opined that

“Lifting a ban on fishfish farming—regardless of the species or whether its in salt or freshwater—would send the wrong signal to the industry, fishing communities, and fishing families across the state that are struggling to recover.”

Rep. Stutes is also concerned that

“Pursuing freshwater finfish farming of any kind is a foot in the door for salmon farming in the state.”

Governor Dunleavy has attempted to play down such concerns, saying that

“This bill does not allow the farming of salmon.  That is an iconic Alaskan species of fish.”

But there is some evidence that Rep. Stutes worries are well-founded.  No less an authority than SalmonBusiness.com, which describes itself as

“an independent news source focusing on salmon farming,”

has recently reported that

“The bill is also of interest to the global salmon marketing sector, which has long faced opposition in Alaska.  While HB 111 does not propose lifting the ban on salmon farming, it signals a potential softening of the state’s stance on aquaculture.  If successfully implemented, the legislation could set a precedent for future discussions on farmed salmon in Alaska, a market that has remained exclusively reliant on wild-caught supply.  Any move toward finfish aquaculture in the state is likely to be closely watched by salmon farming companies looking to expand operations in North America.”

Thus, along the Pacific coast of the United States, we’re currently observing two potentially convergent events taking place which are keeping the salmon farming debate on the front burner.  

In Washington, state efforts to outlaw net pen salmon farming are being challenged in court by the aquaculture industry, while in Alaska, a 35-year old law that outlaws any sort of finfish aquaculture is being challenged by the state’s governor, who has introduced a bill that would chip away at the total ban and allow some aquaculture, initially for non-salmon species, but could eventually lead to the sort of salmon aquaculture that Washington is trying to abolish.

The long-term fate of Pacific salmon aquaculture in either state is impossible to predict right now, but whatever that fate may be, it appears that the debate over salmon aquaculture in the Pacific coast states will be continuing for some time to come.

 

 

FISHERMEN FEEL IMPACTS OF FEDERAL BUDGET CUTS

 

Not quite one month ago, I speculated about the current administration’s impacts on the federal fisheries management system, focusing on both cuts to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget and workforce, and on recent curbs on the agency’s regulatory powers.

Now, some of those impacts are beginning to emerge, and many fishermen are unhappy about what they’re starting to see.

Most of their concerns are related to the reductions in scientific staff at NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service.  The first such reduction took place on February 27, and saw 23 jobs terminated at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center alone; far more jobs were abolished at NMFS' other science centers and across the agency as a whole.  And although such terminations supposedly only affected “probationary employees,” that category is far broader than it might at first appear; although it certainly includes people newly employed by the agency, it also includes long-time NMFS employees who were recently promoted or assigned to new duties, who had a deep understanding of the science and the fisheries management process.  As one recently discharged employee of NMFS Greater Atlantic Region Fisheries Office noted,

“A lot of institutional knowledge has been lost.  It’s going to severely impact the way fisheries are managed.”

Worse, the loss of such valuable employees’ services hasn’t even accomplished the administration’s supposed goal of reducing government spending.  Although a federal district court judge has stayed the NMFS employees’ termination, and reinstated them to their previous positions, a letter they received from the Department of Commerce, NOAA’s parent agency, noted that they were reinstated

“retroactive to the effective date of your termination, and placed in a paid, non-duty status until such time as this litigation is resolved or the Department of Commerce determines to take other administrative action with respect to your employment.”

In other words, they still have a job, and will receive both back pay from the date of their termination and a salary going forward, but they won’t be allowed to do their jobs, or perform any other duties that might benefit the public.  They will be paid for just sitting around. 

It also appears that some of the work done by the terminated-and-reinstated NMFS employees immediately prior to their initial termination may have been lost.  One employee of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, who helped determine fishery observers’ assignments to various vessels, said that she lost access to her computer files soon after termination, and observed that

“Everything I collaborated on, all my [computer] codes, I had no opportunity to transfer it to anyone…data that could be used by colleagues to further the mission of NOAA.  It’s not a professional way to treat individuals or the folks that are remaining.”

She went on to state something that should be obvious to those making the cuts.

“It’s very unfortunate to think about the rebuilding that we’re going to have to do after this.  If there is some kind of regulations freeze, it can end up where people can’t fish”

due to a lack of the data needed to manage regulated fisheries.

While that’s hardly a model of government efficiency, it does seem to be the administration’s preferred—or, at least, the administration’s default—approach to running things.

And that approach has many people in the fishing industry, or closely related to it, concerned.

Daniel McKiernan, the Director of Massachusetts’ Division of Marine Fisheries, pointed to the contributions NMFS makes to his state’s efforts to manage marine resources, noting that the cuts to NMFS funding and personnel

“may harm our state’s ability to conduct research and assess fish populations.  This would negatively affect our commercial fishers, seafood dealers, aquaculture operators, and seafood processers who work tirelessly to provide healthy seafood, support our coastal communities, and provide for their families.”

In Alaska, a state that has long hosted important commercial fisheries, fishermen are also expressing concerns about the cuts in NMFS science staff.  Linda Behnken, the executive director of the Alaska Longline Fisheries Association, expressed her worries that

“The indiscriminate firing of NOAA personnel could cripple our fisheries.  The impact to resources and the seafood industry will be substantial unless the administration corrects course.”

A letter signed by 170 fishing businesses and related entities located throughout the coastal United States, to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick earlier this month, noted that

“U.S. fisheries are heavily dependent on the regulatory process to open the fishing season and implement reasonable management measures, and any delays or inconsistencies can have immediate and severe consequences for our fishermen’s livelihoods.”

Those concerns were echoed by a scallop fisherman in New Bedford, Massachusetts, who commented anonymously out of fear of possible consequences should his name become known.  That scalloper stated his view that

“If people are aware of impacts, they are concerned.  Some aren’t aware and think government and regulations are bad and have ruined the fishery, and are welcoming the cuts.  But that’s not going to solve the issue that they have a problem with.

“If we don’t have the data, we can’t process the data or don’t have enough people, everything gets delayed.  It’s fair to say the loss of the one federal survey could impact quota.”

Yet that doesn’t seem to matter to the budget-cutters.  They cut the spending limit on all government-issued credit cards to $1, making it difficult, if not impossible, for many NMFS employees to do their jobs.  The Alaska Beacon reported that

“The first round of NOAA Fisheries staffing cuts have been accompanied by a freeze on most credit card spending.  One Alaska Fisheries Science Center biologist, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation, said she would typically use her credit card to buy gloves, life vests, extension cords and other gear needed for upcoming survey cruises off Alaska.

“’I am trying to figure out how to supply our surveys with the gear we really need.  It’s really frustrating,” the biologist said.  “We’re going to do our best.”

Many fishermen fear that NMFS’ biologists “best,” in the current budget environment, may not be good enough.  As noted in a recent edition of The New Bedford Light, fishermen fear that

“In the absence of sufficient data or analysis (which could happen if a federal survey gets defunded or cancelled, or analysts have been fired), stock managers will take a precautionary approach and err on the conservative side to avoid overfishing.  This means setting a lower fishing quota, which means fishermen may not catch as much.”

Fishermen are also concerned that their voice is going unheard, particularly after NOAA leadership terminated the Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee, which saw fishermen, other members of the seafood industry, academics, and representatives of environmental organizations volunteer to provide advice to and share their concerns with NMFS.  Sarah Schumann, a Rhode Island commercial fisherman who sat on the Committee, lamented that

“We’ve been robbed of a voice.  It felt like a real place to collaboratively, honestly evaluate the larger scale trajectories of fisheries management in the U.S.  And now that’s gone.”

But, once again, the administration budget cutters don’t seem to care.  Instead, they merely posted a notice on the Committee web page that

“The Secretary of Commerce has determined that the purposes for which the Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee was established have been fulfilled, and the committee has been terminated effective February 28, 2025.”

But Ms. Schumann questions both the rationale for and the wisdom of the Committee’s termination.

“I don’t think the Trump administration’s decision to cut committees like that has anything to do with saving money.  It’s consistent with a larger emphasis within this administration to bring everything under the control of the White House and to remove any source of independence that our public agencies might have.

“The ocean is getting more complicated.  I really fear reducing our scientific capacity at a time like this is a huge mistake.”

And the cutting isn’t limited to future expenses.  Under the current administration, agencies including the United States Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency are reneging on past commitments to fishermen and the fishing industry, cancelling grants and abandoning contractual obligations.  Such actions are causing real economic harm to fishermen and fish processing companies.

Much of the hardship arises out of an ongoing program to replace old, inefficient diesel engines and obsolescent refrigeration systems, which would both cut fishermen’s costs and reduce the industry’s carbon footprint; not surprisingly, the program’s carbon-reduction goals, and so its connection to the climate change debate, made it a natural target of the climate change deniers at the top of the Trump administration.

That put fishermen and fish processers in a bind because, trusting that the government’s word was good and that they would receive the grant money that the government was contractually obliged to pay, they began to upgrade their vessels, only to learn, after work was done and expenses incurred, that the Trump administration had apparently decided to dishonor its obligations to reimburse program participants.

Thus, fishermen are finding themselves in the same situation as Seattle salmon fisherman Robert Buchmayr, who replaced the refrigeration unit on his boat, relying on a $45,000 grant from the government to pay for much of the work.  However, the grant payment is now on indefinite hold, leading the fisherman to comment that

“I’m scrambling, where does the money come from.  I was counting on the grant.  I was under the impression that if you got a grant from the United States, it was a commitment.  Nothing in the letter was saying, ‘Yes, we’ll guarantee you the funds depending on who is elected.’”

But even if the $45,000 is never paid, it represents a relatively small financial burden, at least when compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars now being denied to Alaska vessel owner Lacey Velsko, after she relied on a government promise to replace the large refrigeration unit on one of her trawlers.  She admitted that

“Of course we think it was unfair that we signed a contract and were told we would be funded and now we’re not funded.”

While many of the grants have not been officially cancelled, but instead are on “indefinite hold” and supposedly being reviewed, Ms. Velsko acknowledges that

“If six months down the road we’re still not funded I don’t know what avenue to take.”

Togue Brawn, a Maine seafood distributor, did not mince words.

“The uncertainty.  This is not a business-friendly environment.  If they want to make America great again, then honor your word and tell people what’s going on.”

It’s not at all clear that will happen.

In the meantime, America’s commercial fishing fleet, as well as millions of recreational fishermen, will be forced to stand by, and hope that the arbitrary attack on fisheries science will end, and that the Trump administration will eventually give the nation’s fishermen, commercial and recreational, the recognition, and the respect, that their multi-billion dollar industries deserve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"THE BIOMASS...DECIDED TO STAY OFFSHORE"

 

It’s a big ocean—big enough that, one would think, fish have many places to hide.

That’s certainly been a theme at many fishery management meetings that I’ve attended over the years, as fishermen rise to contest the need for management measures, arguing that various stocks aren’t overfished, but have merely moved on to places unknown.  And if you don’t know much about how the ocean supports life, it might even seem believable.

But the truth is that most of the ocean is pretty poor habitat.  Once you get past the edge of the continental shelf, which might mean heading a few hundred yards offshore in some places, and a hundred or more miles offshore in others, the bottom falls away quickly, to 10,000 feet or more, and the sea’s ability to support the sort of fish people typically like to catch and eat falls away just as quickly.

Back in the early 1970s, a musical group called “America” released a song titled "A Horse with No Name,” which included the line,

“The ocean is a desert with its life underground/And a perfect disguise above.”

I always liked that song, and it still plays in my truck from time to time, but back then I had not yet grown familiar with deserts, and only knew the ocean as a place where various party boats took me fishing for cod, so it took me a few years, and some meaningful time spent both in the desert and well offshore, before I realized how aptly its lyrics described the open sea. 

For, from the perspective of supporting life, the ocean is a desert.  The clear, indigo waters of the open sea only have such clarity and color because they hold so little life; the big offshore fish like the tunas and marlins are built to travel fast and far, to take advantage of baitfish concentrations that occur when a body of warm, clear offshore water rolls up against the cloudier, nutrient-laden ocean above the continental shelf, or collides with an upwelling of water from the deep ocean floor that also carries nutrients to the surface of the sea.  Fishermen refer to such places as color and temperature “breaks,” and seek them out knowing that, in the desert of the open sea, they form a sort of oasis where fish find a concentration of life on which they can feed.

Despite the size of the ocean, its most abundant life is found in the narrow strips of coastal sea, where phytoplankton thrives on nutrients brought down to the sea by rivers and up from the abyss by upwelling currents, zooplankton flourish among the abundant microscopic plants, and baitfish, feeding on the plankton, support a plethora of life that ranges from flounders to the great whales.

It's where almost all of the most common and most popular commercial and recreational fish species will be found.

Of course, when fisheries managers are contemplating more restrictive regulations, that can prove to be an inconvenient fact for those who don’t like the proposed rules.  For them, it’s always more convenient to think that the relevant fish aren’t in need of regulation, because they’re just somewhere out in the ocean.  

Thus, at the March meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council, we saw a Long Island party boat captain, with a long history of opposing any restrictions on marine fisheries, argue that the state would be wasting its time if it considered adopting regulations to protect the false albacore (more properly, little tunny) fishery, because even if those fish sometimes seem scarce, they're just somewhere between the U.S. East Coast and Italy (false albacore are found in the Mediterranean Sea; however, there are no genetic studies, and no tag returns, that suggest that there is any interchange between the body of fish found off the United States and those found in the Mediterranean, or that the fish in the two areas are not reproductively isolated). 

A few years ago, when the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council held a hearing on what eventually became Amendment 7 to the Bluefish Fishery Management Plan, the same individual tried to argue that bluefish weren’t overfished, despite a recent operational stock assessment that found otherwise, but were merely in the ocean somewhere between the U.S. and Africa.  And given the amount of water between the two places, perhaps he thought that no one could conclusively prove him wrong.

Unfortunately, such comments aren’t limited to a handful of fishermen.

Half a dozen or so years ago, then-Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-NY, now the head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency) condemned striped  bass conservation efforts, claiming that

“the ASMFC used flawed data that measures the Atlantic Striped Bass stock based on the entire eastern seaboard, yet failed to account for Atlantic Striped Bass outside of the 3-mile fishing area, assuming fish abide by arbitrary bureaucratic boundaries.  Alternative data that shows the Striped Bass stock is in a better place outside the 3-mile limit was not only thrown out by the Commission, but the Commission also moved to no longer provide data collection in those waters, virtually assuring that any future decision regarding the Striped Bass fishery will be based on flawed data in perpetuity.”

The fact that there is no reliable data, alternative or otherwise, showing a healthy striped bass population that exists out beyond the 3-mile limit, and that striped bass surveys outside of state waters were halted largely because they weren’t finding enough fish to make such surveys worthwhile, was completely ignored by Zeldin, who was merely trying to help some of his constituents to keep killing too many fish, regardless of the health of the stock.

While politicians sometimes take such positions, it is usually to appease fishermen in their districts, who are attempting to stave off more restrictive rules.  However, it often seems that the fishermen themselves actually believe what they are saying, either because they honestly can’t believe that fish populations could have fallen low enough to threaten their livelihoods or, perhaps more often, because of deeply-ingrained confirmation bias, which leads them to focus on the good news (“my friend Joe caught so many cod in a single tow yesterday, that he had to shovel them off the deck, dead, in order to stay within his trip limit”) while ignoring the bad (“for the last couple of months, almost none of the boats in this entire harbor have come close to catching their trip limit of cod when they go out.”)

Thus, even though New England’s northern shrimp population has been a clear victim of a warming ocean, with the stock collapsing well over a decade ago, it wasn’t surprising to see a fisherman, who had been allowed to participate in a fishery designed to sample the stock during the winter of 2024-25, note that

“The traditional places the shrimp would be during the year, they weren’t there.  I don’t know why.”

But instead of conceding that a warming ocean and past overfishing might have badly depleted the shrimp population, the fisherman assumed that there was a very different reason for his inability to catch any shrimp:

“It seems as though the biomass of shrimp decided to stay offshore this year, but we haven’t been out in so many years, I don’t know it that’s the new normal or just something that happened now…

“There’s a couple of guys left who have done it throughout time, and some older guys said that, in the ‘70s and another time in the ‘80s, they saw the exact same thing happen…

”We had some years when the shrimp catch was crazy…One time, I went out and  made a tow, and I had almost 6,000 pounds in less than an hour.  That may sound discouraging, because I didn’t see that this time, but if you talk to the older guys, they’re like, ‘This has happened in cycles forever.’

“Maybe the shrimp are not going to come back into these waters.  I don’t know.  You could say it’s because the water’s warming, but if you look at studies this year, the Gulf of Maine was colder, more like a traditional temperature for the Gulf of Maine.  So maybe the shrimp are just waiting for the email.”

It’s just very, very hard for fishermen to accept that the abundance of fish or other marine resources that they have depended upon for so long has crashed; thus, if they can’t catch, it’s not because the population has declined.  The fish have just moved.

Such thinking isn’t limited to the northeast. 

Down in North Carolina, fishery managers are trying to rebuild a badly depleted southern flounder stock.  They’re having some difficulties, because a stock assessment completed earlier this year did not survive the peer review process; the review panel found that there was no unique North Carolina population of southern flounder, that fish from North Carolina mixed with fish from other states offshore and were caught by fishermen from those other states, and that trying to manage flounder in North Carolina without considering the rest of the fish in the same stock was a flawed approach.

However, a regional assessment of the southern flounder stock completed in 2018 found that the stock was badly overfished, overfishing was continuing, and the recruitment of young flounder into the population was at a time-series low.  It predicted that if fishing mortality continued at the then-current rate and recruitment didn’t improve, the spawning stock biomass would be depleted by 2046, and advised that total catch (landings plus dead discards) would have to be reduced by 31% just to end overfishing, and by 51% to reach the fishing mortality target.  But even if the latter reduction was achieved, it would not be sufficient to rebuild the stockhin the statutorily-required ten years.  A 72% reduction would be needed to achieve such timely rebuilding.

Soon after that stock assessment was released, North Carolina attempted to cut catch back far enough to allow the stock to rebuild within ten years.  However, recreational fishermen exceeded their annual quotas, and some have argued that trawling inside the state’s sounds has increased discard mortality. 

The stock remains overfished, and in the interim, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission has opted to move forward with a management change that would allocate 50% of the catch to each of the commercial and recreational sectors, a big change to the current, 70% commercial/30% recreational allocation (which was already scheduled to go to 60% commercial/40% recreational in 2025).  But members of the commercial fishing industry oppose the quota change, and once again are claiming that there are more fish in the water than scientists believe.

This time, they’re not trying to argue that the flounder are somewhere far offshore, just that there are

“plenty of flounder out there,”

wherever "there" might be, and that

“We’re doing a good job [rebuilding the stock], we just don’t have the data to show it.”

But then, that’s always the problem.

Whether talking about New York false albacore that suddenly decided to take an Italian vacation, bluefish that went on safari, shrimp that departed their traditional waters to sojourn at some undetermined offshore spot, or southern flounder that are exhibiting new, if undocumented, levels of abundance, fishermen regularly assure us that such fish are there, even though they have no data to support their claims.

But without data, assurances are words that lack context, and mean next to nothing at all.

DO HEALTH ADVISORIES UNDERSERVE SEAFOOD CONSUMERS?

 

This morning, I learned that the Washington, D.C. Department of Energy and Environment issued a seafood health advisory, warning that

“people who eat fish caught in the District of Columbia’s Potomac and Anacostia Rivers need to consider eating less of those fish.”

The notice goes on to inform readers that

“[A] study analyzed the tissue of various species of fish for a variety of chemicals, including for the first time, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS.  The study also analyzed the samples for the chemicals tested in earlier studies such as PCBs, PAHs, metals, and organochlorine pesticides.  The study results showed that the majority of species tested contained PFAS.  PFAS are at times referred to as “forever chemicals” as they do not break down and tend to accumulate in the environment.  Long term exposure to PFAS can put individuals at risk for serious health problems such as cancer, liver problems, thyroid issues, birth defects, kidney disease, decreased immunity, and other health problems.  Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are also still a chemical of concern in fish tissue.”

The advisory notes that there are currently no federal standards for PFAS issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (and, perhaps understandably, fails to note that the EPA probably won’t issue any suchstandards so long as Lee Zeldin is in charge, and seeking to create an environment safe for big business, particularly if the current administration carries through with its plans to fire between 50% and 75% of the scientists employed by that agency’s Office of Research and Development), that fish consumption advice will be conformed to such standards should they ever be developed, and that in the meantime,

“Comparison of the study results with screening values for PFAS developed by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection showed that fewer servings of some species should be eaten.”

More particularly, the advisory recommended that no striped bass, carp, or largemouth bass caught in the named rivers should be eaten, but that people might safely consume three servings per month of blue catfish, or one serving per month of brown bullhead, channel catfish, gizzard shad, smallmouth bass, snakehead, sunfish, white perch, or yellow perch.

But then the advisory includes the somewhat anomalous disclaimer that

“This notice does not pertain to fish purchased from restaurants, fish vendors, or supermarkets,”

which immediately leads to the question:  “Why?”

Following up, I learned that Washington does not permit any commercial fishing to take place within its borders, so assuming that restaurants, markets, and such all purchase their fish from bona fide, law-abiding commercial fishermen, the advisory woudn’t apply to anything sold there.

But that led to a bigger question:  What about everywhere else?

As an angler fishing in New York waters, I received a copy of the New York State Freshwater Fishing 2025 Regulations Guide when I bought my fishing license last spring.  Despite the Guide’s freshwater orientation, it contains a section titled “2025 Health Advice for Eating Sportfish,” which notes that fish taken from various saltwater venues, including Jamaica Bay, Long Island Sound, the East River, the lower Hudson River (down to the southern tip of Manhattan), the Harlem River, New York Bay, Upper and Lower New York Bay, Newark Bay, Raritan Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean are all subject to cautionary health advisories.

The Guide then instructs me to follow a link to the New York State Health Department’s website to learn more details.  It turns out that, even in what we might assume are the state’s cleanest waters—places like the Peconic Bays, Gardiner’s Bay, Long Island Sound, and the Atlantic Ocean—there are contaminants in seafood that might be harmful to one’s health.  For example, women of childbearing age and children less than 15 years of age are advised not to eat weakfish more than 25 inches long, and to limit consumption of smaller weakfish, striped bass, bluefish, and eels from such waters to just one meal per month; everyone else can eat one meal per month of big weakfish, and four meals per month of the other listed fish.

But while that’s fine for anglers who happen to read the entire Guide, and then take the trouble to look up the Health Department’s website, where does it leave the consumer, who might buy the same fish, caught in the same waters, from a market or local restaurant.

After all, we all can recall going into a restaurant and seeing a warning on the menu, telling us that certain dishes might contain raw eggs, or uncooked or semi-cooked seafood or beef, and so might pose a threat to our health.  But have we ever gone into a restaurant and seen a similar warning about the possible risks of ordering the striped bass or the bluefish?

And markets offer no warnings at all.

Perhaps they should, because if eating a fish poses a threat to an angler and to that angler’s family, don’t they pose the same threat to consumers as well?

Some of the fish that we see in a market, or are served in a restaurant, often comes from out of state, where other health advisories may apply.  For example, the New York State Health Department advises that blue crabs from the Hudson River shouldn’t be eaten at all by women of childbearing age or children under the age of 15, while everyone else can safely consume four meals per month.  The Health Department further advises

“Don’t eat the soft ‘green stuff’ (mustard, tomalley, liver, or hepatopancreas) found in the body section of crabs and lobsters from any waters because cadmium, PCBs, and other contaminants concentrate there.  As contaminants are transferred to cooking liquid, you should also discard crab or lobster cooking liquid.”

But during the 2006 season, blue crabs were so large and abundant in the Hudson River that they were being shipped down to Maryland, the spiritual home of the blue crab gourmet, who undoubtedly consumed them believing them to be local, Chesapeake Bay fare. 

Did those crabs carry an appropriate warning? 

And how many might have contributed some of their cooking liquid to a Maryland blue crab bisque?

A Health Department warning doesn’t do too much good if the people eating the seafood that it mentions never had a chance to read it.

It’s not that the states don’t try to protect the consumer.  Here in New York, commercial striped bass fishing is not allowed in waters west of East Rockaway Inlet, or west of Wading River in Long Island Sound, where Hudson River fish, believed to carry larger loads of PCBs, are deemed to be the most common.  But those closures were based on research last performed in 2007, so New York is now engaged in a comprehensive new study, addressing striped bass caught throughout the state.  The Department of Environmental Conservation advises that

“Analytical and quality control work will be conducted by DEC’s Hale Creek Field Station laboratory and commercial analytical laboratories.  In addition to PCBs, contaminant analysis will include testing for mercury and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from all survey areas, as well as dioxins and furans in fish collected from the New York-New Jersey Harbor.  Samples from each fish will also provide data on size, age, sex, disease prevalence, population genetics, and diet.”

Since the New York study will involve bass caught all along the state’s coast, fish which may have been spawned in the Chesapeake Bay or the Delaware River, as well as in the Hudson, it will be interesting to see what it finds.  The bass studied might have multiple origins so, should contamination be found, there will be no way to cordon off a section of the state’s coast to harvest, and feel even moderately confident that bass caught elsewhere will be contaminant-free.  The problem could well originate out-of-state, and be carried to New York on the spring striped bass migration.

Thus, if contaminants are found—and particularly if those contaminants include PFAS, which seem to be ubiquitous—it will be interesting if the Health Department requires that an appropriate warning be displayed on menus and in seafood shops, or whether it will continue to provide advisories to anglers, while letting consumers bumble along in their current bubble of toxic ignorance.

We can hope that won’t be the case, for it would seem that a substance known to increase the chances of “cancer, liver problems, thyroid issues, birth defects, kidney disease, decreased immunity, and other health problems” is worth at least as much warning as a freshly-shucked oyster or a glass of egg nogg.