STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7--ITS PROMISE AND PERILS: PART I, MANAGEMENT TRIGGERS

On the afternoon of Wednesday, January 26, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will hold its annual winter meeting, where it will review the latest version of its Draft Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, perhaps make a few changes, and then, in all likelihood, release the Draft Amendment for public review and comment.

The Draft Amendment has come a long way since the worrisome Work Group report was issued in August 2020, and since the Public Information Document to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was released nearly one year ago.

Since then, stakeholders in the striped bass fishery came out in big numbers to tell the Management Board that they wanted conservative striped bass management, and a healthy and abundant striped bass stock.  Last May, the Management Board heeded the more than 3,000 comments received.  It stripped provisions that would have tended to increase fishing mortality, while permanently reducing abundance and increasing long-term risk to the stock, out of the Amendment, then went even further, adding language that, if it survives in the final Amendment, would provide greater protection to the stock.

In October, the Management Board, recognizing that it has an obligation to rebuild the overfished stock, voted to add a rebuilding provision to the Draft Amendment.

Since then, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Plan Development Team, working in conjunction with the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee, has worked diligently to refine provisions supported by the Management Board, and produce options that reflect the varying sentiments of Management Board members.

The result is a Draft Amendment 7 that has the potential to significantly improve striped bass management, if the Management Board ultimately selects conservative options that focus on the long-term health and abundance of the striped bass resource.  At the same time, the Draft Amendment also contains other options that, if included in the final document, will not only perpetuate, but amplify, the problems that plague the striped bass management program today.

The following is a discussion of the merits, and the perils, of the options in the current draft.

Delay does no long-term good

Ever since striped bass biomass began to decline nearly two decades ago, delay has been the Management Board’s defining vice.

In 2011, after receiving a stock assessment update advising that the stock would be overfished within six years, it almost acted to reduce landings, but ultimately decided that bass still represented a “green light fishery” because none of the triggers calling for management action had yet been tripped.

In 2014, after two management triggers had finally been tripped, the Management Board did act decisively, and over the objections of some of its members, to reduce fishing mortality, but completely ignored its obligation to initiate a 10-year rebuilding plan, perhaps because of advice given by Michael Waine, then the Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, that because of uncertainty in rebuilding estimates, it was better to just address the mortality issue, and expect that biomass would eventually return to its target level, something that never occurred.

And in 2019, the Management Board learned that the striped bass stock was overfished.  Three years later, it has not even begun to draft a plan to rebuild the stock within 10 years, even though it was required to do so.

Now, the Draft Amendment 7 contains a number of proposed changes to the so-called “management triggers,” which would formally condone even more delay on the part of the Management Board, even when it appeared that the stock was already overfished and/or experiencing overfishing.

Section 4.1 of the Draft Amendment deals with such management trigger options, breaking them down into several “tiers.” 

Fishing mortality triggers

The “Tier One Options” deal with fishing mortality.

There are currently two fishing mortality triggers.  Trigger 1 reads

“If the fishing mortality threshold is exceeded in any year, the striped bass management program must be adjusted to reduce the fishing mortality to a level that is at or below the target within one year.”

It’s a sensible trigger, because if the stock becomes subject to overfishing, which is defined as a fishing mortality level above the relevant threshold, such overfishing needs to be stopped as soon as possible. 

Trigger 3 is a little different, reading

“If the fishing mortality target is exceeded in two consecutive years and the female [spawning stock biomass] falls below the target within either of those years, the striped bass management program must be adjusted to reduce the fishing mortality to a level that is at or below the target within one year.”

The fact that Trigger 3 deals with fishing mortality exceeding the target, rather than the threshold, is important.  In a perfect world, the target would never be exceeded, because managers would always be prescient enough to craft regulations that prevent that from happening, and estimates of fishing mortality would always be perfectly accurate, assuring that managers would always have the information that they need to get the job done.

Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t work that way.  Estimates of fishing mortality vary from year to year, for a host of reasons.  While commercial landings, constrained by hard poundage quotas, usually stay somewhat constant, estimates of recreational effort, and thus recreational-related fishing mortality, varies from year to year.  Sometimes that’s due to weather, sometimes its due to the presence or absence of fish, sometimes it’s just an artifact of the Marine Recreational Information Program which, in the case of striped bass, produces coastwide estimates which are typically within about 10%--over or under—of the actual landings.

That sort of uncertainty is exactly why a target fishing mortality rate is needed, for if fishermen merely exceed the target in any given year no harm is done to the stock; on the other hand, if there were no target, and bass were managed to the fishing mortality threshold, exceeding that threshold would cause overfishing and, under typical circumstances, a meaningful decline in abundance.

Thus, managers don’t need to get too concerned if fishermen modestly exceed the target in any given year.  However, Trigger 3 makes a sort of sense, because if the target is repeatedly exceeded, and spawning stock biomass is trending down, there may be some sort of cause-and-effect relationship, and the Management Board might want to reduce fishing mortality in order to prevent bigger problems from occurring in a few years.

With that in mind, we have to look at the proposal listed as “Sub-option A2,” which reads

“Reduce [fishing mortality] to a level that is at or below the target within two years,”

and just ask why?

Since Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was adopted in 2003, fishing mortality-related management triggers were only tripped twice, once when the findings of the 2013 benchmark stock assessment tripped Trigger 3, and once when the 2019 benchmark assessment found bass to be experiencing overfishing, and tripped Trigger 1.

Both times, when it adopted Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan in 2014, and when it adopted Addendum VI to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, over the course of just six months, in 2019, the Management Board demonstrated that it can amend striped bass management measures and successfully reduce fishing mortality to target within the 1-year timeline.

Why, then, introduce unnecessary delay?

Yes, measures needed to reduce fishing mortality to target can be phased in over a period of time, but in the end, the final measures adopted must be capable of not only reducing fishing mortality to target, but at maintaining such mortality close to the target rate over an extended period.  Thus, reducing landings is best viewed in the same light as tearing a bandage off a wound—something that is best done quickly, so that any resulting discomfort can be relegated to the past as soon as possible.

The current, one-year requirement makes far more sense.

When we get to Option B:  F Threshold triggers, we find another bad idea, cast in two different forms.

Currently, Trigger 1 is tripped as soon as a stock assessment informs the Management Board that overfishing is occurring.  Both “Sub-option B-2” and “Sub-option B-3” would build delay into the process.  Sub-option B-2 states

“If the two-year average [fishing mortality] exceeds the [fishing mortality] threshold, the striped bass management program must be adjusted to reduce [fishing mortality] to a level that is at or below the target within the timeframe selected under Option A.  The two-year average [fishing mortality] should not include data under different management actions (i.e., the [fishing mortality] threshold trigger should not be evaluated unless there are at least two years of data in the assessment under the most recent management action).”

Sub-option B3 uses identical language, but would require a three-year average before the trigger is tripped.

If one looks at the worst-case scenario, such options could result in a management trigger never being tripped, and overfishing to continue indefinitely.

Let’s run the numbers.

Right now, if overfishing is found to occur in Year 1, the Management Board must complete a plan to reduce fishing mortality to the target level in Year 2.  That’s what we saw in the case of Addendum IV, which was adopted roughly one year after the 2013 benchmark assessment tripped Trigger 3.  Addendum VI was triggered and completed even more quickly.

But if Sub-options A2 and B3 were adopted, and overfishing occurred in Year 1, the management trigger wouldn’t trip until Year 3, when a 3-year average of the fishing mortality rate confirmed that continued overfishing was going on.  And after that trigger was tripped, the Management Board would have until Year 5 to return fishing mortality to the target level; until then, overfishing could continue to erode the health of the striped bass stock.

But wait, it gets worse.  We need to consider the parenthetical that says “the [fishing mortality] threshold trigger should not be evaluated unless there are at least three years of data in the assessment under the most recent management action.”

The ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass species page reveals that, since Amendment 6 was adopted, stock assessments have been performed every two or three years.  There was a benchmark assessment in 2003, and other benchmark assessments or assessment updates performed in 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2018.  Management actions are just about always taken in response to an assessment’s findings.  So, based on the historical frequency of assessments, there will seldom if ever be a time when “there are at least three years of data in the assessment under the most recent management action.   Trigger 1 might never be tripped.

The situation might be a little better in the case of Sub-option B-2, which only requires “two years of data in the assessment under the most recent management action,” but even then, there are likely to be times when overfishing continues but, because of the frequency of assessments, no management action is required.

The Draft Amendment tries to alleviate such concerns by noting that

“Although the trigger would only be evaluated when sufficient data years are available for sub-options B2 or B3, the Board is not limited to taking action only when a management trigger is tripped.”

That statement is true, but it is also completely irrelevant in the real world.

At no time, since the current amendment to the management plan was adopted in 2003, since the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act was passed in 1993, nor since the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act became law in 1984, has the Management Board ever acted preemptively to address a threat to the striped bass stock before a trigger was tripped.  It came the closest in 1985, when it adopted Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, and began rebuilding the then-collapsed stock, but it’s easy to argue that such amendment was a response to Congressional action, and not initiated on the Board’s own initiative.  And the Board, at that time, was made up of fisheries professionals, and not of the sort of self-interested, amateur managers that dominate it today.

So anyone who really believes that the Management Board would take meaningful action without a trigger being tripped does not have history on their side.  The proposed fishing mortality options deserve a quick and unheralded death.

When we move on to Option C:  F Target Triggers, we face another dismal set of proposals.  Despite the labeling, there is no true status quo option; even the option that retains the current triggering events entertains the possibility of extending the deadline to achieve the fishing mortality target out an extra year.

A second sub-option would decouple fishing mortality from spawning stock biomass, and allow fishing mortality to exceed the target level for three years before the trigger is tripped.  Because it addresses target, not threshold, it’s not particularly damaging, but it’s difficult to argue that it’s a better trigger than what we have today.

But it’s the third sub-option that’s the really bad one.  It would eliminate the target-related trigger entirely, which for a practical matter would mean that striped bass would be managed for threshold, not target, fishing mortality, substantially increasing the danger that overfishing would occur.  At that point, as explained above, there is no guarantee that the Management Board would have to do anything at all.

These options, too, deserve to die.

Female spawning stock biomass triggers

When we get to the “Tier 2 options” for management triggers related to spawning stock biomass, things get a little more complicated, and there is even a little good news.

Right now, although the Management Board is obliged to initiate a 10-year rebuilding plan if certain management triggers are tripped, there is no hard deadline for when such plan must be started, nor for when it must be implemented.  Thus, while we may complain that the Management Board violated its obligations under the management plan when it failed to initiate rebuilding after the 2013 and 2019 stock assessments, that claim is not, strictly speaking, true.  While the Management Board may be obliged to create a rebuilding plan, it is facing no hard deadline, and thus has an indefinite amount of time to do so.

That’s why the proposal known as “Sub-option A2” is worthy of strong support.  It would require the Management Board to implement a rebuilding plan within two years after accepting a stock assessment’s findings that the stock had become overfished.  Such deadline would elevate at least that portion of the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan to the level long occupied by federal fishery managers, who are required to implement rebuilding plans within two years by the explicit language of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

After that, though, the female spawning stock biomass options are, on the whole, less attractive.

The current management triggers include Trigger 2, which reads

“If the Management Board determines that the biomass has fallen below the threshold in any given year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to the target level within [no more than 10 years]”

That makes sense, because if the stock has become overfished, the Board ought to act promptly to restore it to health, rather than to let if fall farther, and perhaps collapse.

The current triggers also include Trigger 4, which has a parallel structure to the fishing mortality target-related Trigger 3:

“If the Management Board determines that the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target for two consecutive years and the fishing mortality rate exceeds the target in either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above the target within [no more than 10 years].”

However, it is more difficult to make an argument favoring the current Trigger 4 than it is to support Trigger 3.  While Trigger 3 arguably creates a cause-and-effect relationship—the Management Board must respond to an above-target fishing mortality rate because it may be causing spawning stock biomass to decline—the same relationship doesn’t apply to Trigger 4.  Yes, spawning stock biomass may be decreasing, but that decrease doesn’t cause a rise in the fishing mortality rate; in fact, it may lead to a corresponding decrease, as recreational fishing effort is tied to striped bass abundance, and tends to wane as abundance declines.  Thus, Trigger 4 is probably ripe for revision.

That being the case, “Sub-option C-2” could be worthy of support.  It would decouple fishing mortality from spawning stock biomass, and require the Management Board to act if biomass fell below target for three consecutive years.  Because it deals with the target, rather than the threshold, level, the extra year is unlikely to cause any harm, and eliminating the fishing mortality component seems like an appropriate action.

The remaining options are problematic.  “Sub-option B-2” and “Sub-option C-3” would, respectively, completely eliminate the threshold and target spawning stock biomass triggers.  Those are both bad ideas.

While Draft Amendment 7 recognizes that it would be foolish to completely eliminate both spawning stock biomass triggers, and includes language requiring that either the threshold or target trigger remain, removing any such triggers would be a mistake.

As mentioned earlier, with respect to fishing mortality, eliminating the target trigger means that the fishery would be managed to its threshold level.  That would have a very detrimental effect on long-term abundance, and also make it more likely that the stock would become overfished.  Eliminating the threshold trigger would, in one way, be less of an issue, for if the target trigger was tripped, and the Management Board responded appropriately, the stock should never decline to the threshold.  However, eliminating the threshold trigger could inadvertently lead to a delay in responding to an overfished stock, especially in a period of rapid decline, if a new stock assessment found bass to be overfished, but the three years below target standard had not yet been satisfied.

The latter scenario is probably unlikely to occur, but why take the chance?  Keep Trigger 2 at the status quo.

Recruitment triggers

Finally, some unalloyed good news.

Currently, poor recruitment is addressed by Trigger 5, which reads:

“The Management Board shall annually examine trends in all required Juvenile Abundance Index surveys.  If any JAI shows recruitment failure (i.e., JAI is lower than all other values in the dataset) for three consecutive years, then the Management Board will review the cause of the recruitment failure (e.g. fishing mortality, environmental conditions, disease, etc.) and determine the appropriate management action.  The Management Board shall be the final arbiter in all management decisions.”

There are two big problems with Trigger 5.  The first is that “the dataset” extends back for more than 60 years, and includes the low-recruitment years that precipitated, and continued throughout, the stock collapse of the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Even when a juvenile abundance index is very low for the requisite three consecutive years, the values are unlikely to fall into the lower 25 percent of such dataset.  And, after all, the purpose of the management trigger is to compel Management Board action that will maintain stock health and prevent another collapse.  Waiting for recruitment to not merely emulate, but perhaps fall below, collapse-era levels is probably counterproductive.

In addition to that, Trigger 5 doesn’t actually require the Management Board to take any remedial action, raising the always-present possibility, perhaps likelihood, that even if the trigger was tripped, the Board would stand pat and do nothing.

Draft Amendment 7 seeks to remedy that situation by including two options, designated “Sub-option A2” and “Sub-option A3,” which would reduce the number of juvenile abundance indicators considered from six (Maine, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina), to four (eliminating North Carolina and Maine), and shorten the time series used to 1992-2006, when striped bass generally enjoyed strong recruitment. 

Sub-option A2 would still require that the juvenile abundance index fall below 75% of the values, in that shorter time series, for three consecutive years, while sub-option A3 would only require that such index fall below the median value for the time series for the same three years. 

Either option would be substantially more sensitive to reduced recruitment than the current Trigger 5.  Trigger 5 has only been tripped once since 2003, by the North Carolina juvenile abundance index for 2020.  During the same time period, sub-option A2 would have been tripped three times (New York in 2006, and Maryland in 2010 and 2014), while sub-option A3 would have been tripped six times (New York in 2006 and 2013; Maryland in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2014; and Virginia in 2010).

Other proposed options would require the Management Board to act if the recruitment trigger was tripped.  “Sub-option B2” and “sub-option B-3” would both require the Management Board to adopt an interim fishing mortality rate based on an assumption of low recruitment, and implement it if such rate was lower than the fishing mortality target recommended in the most recent stock assessment; such interim rate would remain in effect at least until the next stock assessment was released.  Sub-option B3 would also implement an interim spawning stock biomass threshold.  How that would work isn’t completely clear, but could prove problematic if such interim threshold allowed biomass to fall lower before the stock was declared overfished.

Taking no action when action is called for

The final tier of the management trigger section is TIER 4 OPTIONS:  Deferred management actions, a section that could also be named “Doing nothing even though a trigger was tripped.”

Draft Amendment 7 notes that

“These options are developed in response to the Board’s concern about the frequent need for management action due to triggers tripping with each stock assessment update or benchmark.  Stock assessment updates are typically conducted about every 2 years with benchmark assessments conducted about every 5 years.  The alternative Options B-F would defer management action until the following stock assessment.”

In other words, it formally perpetuates and encourages additional delay.

While none of the options would be good for the bass, two carry particular risk.  One is Option B which, if a trigger was tripped, would allow the Management Board to do nothing until the next stock assessment if it had put a management measure in place within the past three years. 

To understand why that’s a bad idea, picture this scenario:    In its final version of Amendment 7, the Management Board chooses Sub-option C2, which requires that fishing mortality be above target for 3 years before action is taken, and opts to eliminate the spawning stock biomass trigger.  Spawning stock biomass has been in steep decline, but the Board, not required to take any action, decides to do nothing.  Finally, the fishing mortality trigger is tripped, so the Board modestly reduces landings, hoping that such reduction will reduce fishing mortality to target although, thanks to conservation equivalency, there is only a 42 percent chance of that happening (as was the case, in the real world, when Addendum VI was implemented).  The same year that the new management measures went into effect, a new stock assessment comes out, revealing that the stock is badly overfished.  The Management Board, taking advantage of the Option B deferral, does nothing.  For at least two more years, the stock suffers from fishing mortality at above-target levels and continues to decline.

If the Management Board makes the wrong choices on Amendment 7, that scenario could become all too real.

Option F, which reads

“If a management trigger trips after the Board has already initiated action in response to a different management trigger, the Board can defer management action in response to the subsequent trigger until the next assessment,”

leaves the door open to something similar, although the period between management actions would, hopefully not be quite as long.

Options C-E are nowhere near as offensive, as they deal with only the fishing mortality target, and permit the Management Board to defer action only if the spawning stock biomass remains relatively healthy.

Even so, why delay?  A minor management action, taken in time, might prevent a crisis, and so prevent the need to adopt much more restrictive management measures a few years down the road.

As I noted before, delay never does any good for the bass.  And, in the long term, it doesn’t benefit fishermen, either.

Justifying delay

The Draft Amendment justifies proposals that induce delay by saying, in part, that

“When female [spawning stock biomass] is below the target level, the variable nature of fishing mortality can result in a continued need for management action.  Additionally, the shorter timetables for corrective action are in conflict with the desire for management stability, and the use of point estimates does not account for in inherent level of uncertainty.”

But when you look at that statement, such excuses quickly wear thin.

Amendment 6 was adopted in 2003, and in the nearly 19 years between such adoption and today, management triggers were tripped only twice—in 2013, when a benchmark stock assessment revealed that the stock was headed sharply downhill (and would have revealed even worse information, had the assessors only known that the estimates of recreational fishing mortality used at that time grossly underestimated the number of bass being caught and killed by anglers), and in 2019, when the next benchmark assessment revealed the stock to be both overfished and experiencing overfishing.  Two management changes over the course of 19 years, both in response to clear threats to the stock, hardly constitute “continued need for management action.”

As for the alleged “desire for management stability,” I can go through all 3,000-plus comments made in response to the Public Information Document last March, and while I can only find a few stakeholders calling for more “management stability,” I can easily find a report prepared by Emile Franke, the current Fishery Management Plan Coordinator (who, I might add, is doing a very good job after walking into something close to a firestorm when she took over the post as last spring’s comment process was just beginning) noting that 1,292 stakeholders commented that “Stability and/or flexibility should not override goal” of the management plan.  Included among them was a comment from the Maine Association of Charterboat Captains, who noted that

“Stability is easily achieved with a fully rebuilt fishery.”

A similar comment was made by the Native Fish Coalition, which stated that

“management stability should not be considered more important than rapid action toward rebuilding the population to a healthy, sustainable level.”

Recreational fishing clubs seem to agree, with the Rhode Island Anglers Association saying

“We agree with more stability and regulatory consistency, but only when the stock has been rebuilt to levels above the [spawning stock biomass] Target level,  [emphasis added]”

And the Virginia Anglers Association noting

“Given the current status of the stock, management flexibility and stability should take a back seat to other issues until the stock is closer to its target population.”

Individual stakeholders seem to agree, making comments such as

“stock stability is a first-order concern, far more important to our coastal fisheries than management stability,”

“Now is NOT the time for management stability.  Now is the time for management action,”

and

“the goal of stability in the fishery should be swapped for the stability of the striped bass population (i.e. it is ok to change regulations frequently to protect the species).”

So maybe “management stability” doesn’t matter too much, except to a small handful of stakeholders, most of whom are recreational and commercial industry members who profit from killing fish, and to a few state bureaucrats who don’t want to prepare new regulatory packages any more often than they need to.

Finally, although the use of point estimates unquestionably does not account for the uncertainty inherent in such estimates, using such uncertainty as an excuse for delay ignores the fact that uncertainty goes in two directions—it can both underestimate or overestimate a particular value.

The various options that would incorporate more delay into the striped bass management process ignore that fact.  They assume that, because of uncertainty, fishing mortality point estimates will always overestimate the mortality level; the possibility that the point estimate will underestimate the true level of fishing mortality never seems to raise any concerns. 

Yet, absent any retrospective bias in the stock assessment, both possibilities are equally likely.

Thus, Board members frequently express concerns that proposed management measures might be unnecessary, because the point estimate could be overestimating fishing mortality and overfishing isn’t really occurring, but seldom if ever voice fears that, even though the point estimate is very slightly below the fishing mortality threshold, the uncertainty inherent in that point estimate could be masking the fact that overfishing is already occurring, and prompt remedial measures are needed.

The Management Board is biased toward maintaining the highest possible level of landings, and not toward adopting conservative measures intended to ensure the health of the stock.

The current effort to insert greater delay into the management triggers, and to find ways to defer taking needed management actions, are the latest evidence of such long-held biases.

Hopefully, such measures will not survive stakeholder review.

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I apologize for the length of this essay, but I wanted to give the thorough treatment that it deserves.

Although I originally intended to cover the entirety of the Draft Amendment 7 in a single post, it now appears that I will have to break the issues down into three separate parts.  Sunday’s edition will address rebuilding and special protections for the 2015, 2017, and 2018 year classes.  It should be a much shorter essay than this one.

 

CHRISTMAS CAME EARLY FOR SHORTFIN MAKOS

 Perhaps no one ever captured the essence of the shortfin mako as well as Ernest Hemingway:

 

He was a very big Mako shark, built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the sea and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws. His back was as blue as a swordfish’s and his belly was silver and his hide was smooth and handsome. He was built as a swordfish except for his huge jaws which were tight shut now as he swam fast, just under the surface with his high dorsal fin knifing through the water without wavering. Inside the closed double lip of his jaws all of his eight rows of teeth were slanted inwards. They were not the ordinary pyramid-shaped teeth of most sharks. They were shaped like a man’s fingers when they are crisped like claws. They were nearly as long as the fingers of the old man and they had razor-sharp cutting edges on both sides. This was a fish built to feed on all the fishes in the sea, that were so fast and strong and well armed that they had no other enemy. Now he speeded up as he smelled the fresher scent and his blue dorsal fin cut the water.

When the old man saw him coming he knew that this was a shark that had no fear at all and would do exactly what he wished.

Unfortunately, while makos had little to fear in the sea, the people who came from the land posed a real threat. Some were anglers, who looked at the mako’s size, strength, and speed and saw an adversary they sought to vanquish and kill. Others were commercial fishermen who competed with the big sharks for the tuna and billfish on which they both fed, and who were always ready to harvest and sell any makos that they happened to catch on their lines.

For many years, such threats didn’t appear to have much of an impact on the mako population, but in 2017, scientists at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), an organization that manages not only tunas, but sharks and billfish as well, determined that the shortfin mako population in the North Atlantic Ocean had become badly overfished, and was experiencing an unsustainable level of fishing mortality.

The scientists advised that, in order to merely halt that population’s decline, fishing mortality would have to be reduced by at least 80%. Even such a large reduction would not be enough to rebuild the mako population, but it would probably prevent that population from getting too much smaller.

Another stock assessment, released in 2019, found that “the number of pups produced in each year will continue to decline until approximately 2035 even with no fishing, because the cohorts that have been depleted in the past will age into the mature population over the next few decades (the median age at maturity is 21 years).” It further stated that, “Given the vulnerable biological characteristics of this stock and the pessimistic findings of the projections, to accelerate the rate of recovery and to increase the probability of success the [stock assessment] Group recommends that the Commission adopt a non-retention policy as it has already done with other shark species.”

 

That recommendation didn’t go over well with three of the nations most responsible for the shortfin mako’s decline, Spain, Portugal and the United States.

Spain has historically been responsible for the largest share of shortfin mako fishing mortality, catching many of the sharks on pelagic longlines set for swordfish and tuna; Portugal’s longline fishery is second only to Spain’s with respect to the number of makos killed. Both nations are members of the European Union (EU), and exert significant influence on its fishery policies.

The United States is the fourth-largest contributor to shortfin mako mortality; it is unique among the major mako fishing nations in that the greater part of its mako landings are attributable to its recreational fishermen, and not to its pelagic longline fleet.

Recreational mako shark fishing has long been a big part of the offshore angling scene in New England and the mid-Atlantic, supporting charter boats, fishing tournaments, and those who sell fuel, bait and tackle to the private boat fleet. Thus, many in the recreational fishing industry opposed the proposed ban on mako harvest. An editorial that appeared in the November 2019 edition of The Fisherman magazine set out their position.

…I know we can expect our U.S. advisors to fight hard for reasonable access; the truth is, non-retention of makos by American anglers will have minimum impact on the state of the world fishery. As is often the case, other ICCAT member nations could do so much more in terms of accurately reporting their landings and implementing new gear requirements (circle hooks and mono leaders) in their longline fleets to promote better mako release success, as has already been done in the United States by our fishermen.

The environmental community seems to be blindly working in overdrive to completely shut down our fishery; at the very least, one would hope these folks could bend a bit in favor of existing, historical tournaments, all of which already require permits and boats reporting requirements for 100% monitoring within the shark fishery. One would argue that a limited harvest exemption for our recreational mako contests would have a de minimus effect on the global fishery while positively contributing to the scientific understanding of this species at the same time.

The United States heeded such arguments, and jointed the EU in staunch opposition to a no-retention proposal sponsored by Senegal, which was later co-sponsored by Canada and the United Kingdom. From 2017 through 2020, the EU and U.S. delegations successfully fought against the ICCAT scientists’ recommended landings ban, and maintained their fishermen’s ability to harvest at least some of the makos that they caught.

In 2021, that changed. The United States had a new president, who installed new leadership at the Department of Commerce, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and at the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), giving conservation advocates hope that the U.S. ICCAT delegation might adopt a new position on the proposed mako harvest ban.

Additional hope was kindled after NMFS issued a “90-day finding” on a petition seeking to list shortfin makos under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). While such finding didn’t guarantee that the shark would be listed, it did say that “the petition presents substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that [listing] may be warranted. Therefore, we are initiating a status review of the species to determine whether listing under the ESA is warranted.”

 

It would seem logically inconsistent for the United States to support continued shortfin mako harvest at the same time that it was considering listing the species as either “threatened” or “endangered.” Yet in July, at an intercessional meeting, called by ICCAT, to address the shortfin mako issue, the United States again opposed a no-retention proposal introduced by Canada and supported by ten other ICCAT members.

 

The U.S. position on mako conservation was not at all clear.

Thus, supporters of shark conservation were both elated and relieved when, at the November 2021 ICCAT meeting, the United States delegation agreed to support a compromise proposal that would completely prohibit the retention of shortfin makos in 2022 and 2023 but, at the insistence of the EU, might permit a small harvest beginning in 2024, provided that overall fishing mortality, including dead discards, could be kept below 250 metric tons (551,156 pounds).

 

The proposal adopted by ICCAT wasn’t perfect.

Sonja Fordham of Shark Advocates International, while pleased that ICCAT has finally adopted meaningful mako conservation measures, observed that “the two year time horizon is totally inadequate for rebuilding this depleted and still declining population…We will keep fighting to extend the ban long-term to give the makos the break they need to recover, while also pressing for additional measures to maximize the survival of makos caught incidentally and released.”

 

Ali Hood, director of conservation at the Shark Trust, deemed the ICCAT decision a “critical breakthrough,” but noted that “it won’t be successful if we take our eyes off the EU and their egregious intent to resume fishing a decade before rebuilding is predicted to begin.”

That view was effectively echoed by Shannon Arnold, the Marine Program Coordinator for the Ecology Action Centre, who said, “We celebrate this critical step today, mindful that the fight to bolster it begins tomorrow. It is crystal clear from these negotiations that the EU remains focused on reviving exploitation as soon as possible. To prevent shenanigans and backsliding in 2004, we need even more countries at the table fighting back with equal vigour to rebuild the population.”

 

In the United States, NMFS acknowledged that there was more work ahead.

 

Despite this important step forward, ICCAT’s work to end overfishing and rebuild North Atlantic shortfin mako is far from done. “The United States looks forward to advancing additional conservation measures through future ICCAT negotiations to further reduce total fishing mortality and fully rebuild this stock,” said [Alexa] Cole [U.S. Commissioner to ICCAT and Director of NOAA Fisheries Office of International Affairs and Seafood Inspection]. “The use of modified fishing gear, including circle hooks to reduce bycatch mortality, is an important element we want to discuss further in ICCAT.”

Those are encouraging words from an agency that is still considering whether the shortfin mako should be listed under the ESA. One of the criteria for an ESA listing is whether a species is threatened or endangered because of “the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms,” so it is even possible that ICCAT’s recent action will tip the scales against listing, and the problems that listing would cause for fishermen targeting other species, in favor of an ICCAT-approved rebuilding plan.

 

Whether or not listing occurs, ICCAT’s recent action provides hope that the shortfin mako stock might be restored over the next 50 years, and that future generations might have the chance to see the “high dorsal fin” of that beautiful shark “knifing through the water without wavering,” even as this 21st century winds down, and a new century waits to be born.

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This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at htt://conservefish.org/blog/

MARINE FISHERIES--WHAT WILL THE NEW YEAR BRING? PART II, A HOST OF ISSUES

 At the beginning of each new year, One Angler’s Voyage typically reviews the fishery management issues that will be in the spotlight over the next twelve months.

Last Sunday, I discussed the upcoming issues likely to impact striped bass.  Today, I cast a broader net, describing matters that will affect stocks as varied as Gulf of Mexico red snapper, forage fish, mid-Atlantic black sea bass, summer flounder, and scup.  I also take a brief look at some other issues that could potentially impact every fishery that exists on every coast of the United States.

Counting red snapper landings in the Gulf of Mexico

Recreational red snapper landings in the Gulf of Mexico have long been a contentious issue, as anglers chronically overfish their annual harvest limits.

After the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council approved Amendment 50 A-F to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico, which allocated a portion of the overall recreational quota to each of the Gulf states and allowed such states to set the seasons and, within strict parameters, the size and bag limits best calculated to allow each state’s anglers to catch, but not exceed, such states’ allocations, it appeared for a while that recreational overharvest was finally brought under control.

However, a new problem soon arose.  Although the data collection programs that each Gulf state (other than Texas) uses to estimate recreational red snapper catch and landings were designed to work with NMFS’ Marine Recreational Information Program, each employs a slightly different methodology.  In order to calibrate all of the state data collection programs, and allow them to feed meaningful data into the federal system, state catch estimates must be converted into a “common currency” that works with MRIP.

When NMFS made a preliminary effort to recalibrate state data, and convert it into such common currency, it found that, although the state data suggested that anglers stayed within their annual quota, recreational fishermen in some states actually exceeded their harvest limit by substantial amounts, and would have to pay back such overages in the following season.  Such revelation upset a number of angling industry and anglers’ rights groups which, stymied by the facts, left them behind and began casting aspersions on the motives of federal fishery managers and the worth of the federal fishery management system.

When the Gulf Council addressed the calibration issue at its August 2021 meeting, it chose to kick the can down the road, deferring recalibration of state data until 2023, and basing 2022 state red snapper regulations on the uncalibrated numbers.  Thus, it tacitly allowed overfishing to continue.

NMFS’ Southeast Regional Fisheries Office deemed such action unacceptable, and

“not based on the best available science,”

and also found that it

“would result in the private angling component exceeding their annual catch limit in 2022.”

Thus, the Council’s action was

“inconsistent with the requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.”

Nevertheless, the Council did not modify its decision, leaving it at loggerheads with the agency.

NMFS has not yet taken formal action with regard to the Council’s decision.  Given the language used in its communications, the agency seems likely to disapprove the Council’s actions.  Should such disapproval occur, time constraints may very well force NMFS to issue emergency regulations to prevent overfishing during the 2022 season.

That’s not the way that things are supposed to work.  It is more than past time for recreational representatives and organizations in the Gulf to stop acting like spoiled children upset that they didn’t get a pony for Christmas, and start working in good faith to constrain recreational harvest to scientifically justifiable levels and so assure the long-term health of the stock.

And we can only hope that NMFS holds their feet to the fire, and doesn’t permit them to backslide.

Forage fish issues

Forage fish—species that generally feed on plankton, and in turn serve as prey for everything from slightly larger fish to seabirds and the great whales—are a critical part of the ocean’s food web.  At the same time, they are some of the least-protected fish species.  Although, along the northeast coast, NMFS does manage Atlantic herring, Atlantic mackerel, chub mackerel, butterfish, and some species of squid, and the ASMFC manages Atlantic menhaden, many other forage fish species, including sand lance (“sand eels”), alewives, threadfin herring, blueback herring, American shad, and hickory shad enjoy little meaningful protection in federal waters.

While an Omnibus Unmanaged Forage Amendment adopted by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council in 2017 purports to limit the harvest of forage species unless and until any such harvest until there is adequate scientific evidence that such harvest would harm neither the forage species itself nor the species that feed upon it, such protections may prove to be largely illusory.  At the June meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Council, that body was presented with a proposal from Lund’s fisheries, which was seeking to land 6.6 million pounds of threadfin herring, a species included in the unmanaged forage amendment, subject to an “exempted fishing permit.”

The most troubling aspect of the Lund proposal isn’t that it was made—if Lund can demonstrate that threadfin herring can be harvested without weakening the Mid-Atlantic food web, there is no reason why a fishery can’t be prosecuted—but that any application for an exempted fishing permit does not receive the same level of review as even the most routine fishery management measures, which must be approved by a regional fishery management council, after at least some opportunity for public comment, before being passed on to NMFS for review and, in most cases, approval.

According to NMFS, exempted fishing permits are “generally” issued

“for research purposes, seafood product development and/or market research, compensation fishing, and the collection of fish for public display.”

The threadfin herring proposal would certainly qualify as a product development effort.  Should an application be made,

“The Regional Administrator will review [it] and make a preliminary decision on whether the application contains all of the required information and constitutes an activity appropriate for further consideration.  If the Regional Administrator finds that any application does not warrant further consideration, both the applicant and the affected Council(s) will be notified in writing of the reasons for the decision.  If the Regional Administrator determines that the application warrants further consideration, notification of receipt of the application will be published in the Federal Register with a brief description of the proposal.  There will be a 15- to 45-day comment period on the notice of the receipt of the EFP application.

“As soon as practicable after considering comments and conducting required analyses and consultations…the Regional Administrator will make a determination on whether to approve or deny the EFP request…”

Such a process, which provides the affected regional fishery management council or councils no opportunity to veto a proposed exempted fishing permit, and provides only a minimal opportunity for public input (after all, how many people pay attention to what’s published in the Federal Register?), could nonetheless authorize threadfin herring landings to rise from their current annual level of between 11,500 and 30,500 pounds (for the years 2015-2020) to 6,600,000 pounds over the course of a single year.

Although granting the proposed exempted fishing permit might be legally permissible, it would clearly contravene the intent of the Mid-Atlantic Council when it adopted its Omnibus Forage Fish Amendment, which explicitly states that

“This document contains a summary and analysis of management measures considered by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to prohibit the development of new and expansion of existing directed commercial fisheries on certain unmanaged forage species in the Mid-Atlantic Federal waters.  The Council intends to prohibit such fisheries until they have had an adequate opportunity to assess the scientific information relating to any new or expanded directed fisheries and consider potential impacts to existing fisheries, fishing communities, and the marine ecosystem.  [emphasis added]”

Unfortunately, such Council intent is does not constitute applicable law, while the regulations permitting the issuance of exempted fishing permits does.  Thus, the exempted fishing permit process provides a way for fishermen to do an end run around the Omnibus Amendment, and allow the harvest of forage fish which are not subject to a fishery management plan.

Federal legislation has now been introduced that would guarantee forage fish the sort of protections that the Mid-Atlantic Council may have believed they were provided in the Omnibus Amendment.  S. 1484, the Forage Fish Conservation Act, introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and its House companion, H.R. 5770, introduced by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI-12), recognize the importance of forage fish to the marine food web, and would prohibit regional fishery management councils from developing any new fisheries for unmanaged forage until a council had considered the relevant scientific information, determined whether the relevant forage fish stock required conservation and management and, if conservation and management were needed, developed a fishery management plan for the stock in question. 

The bill would offer benefits to coastal ecosystems.  However, because of the realities facing the current session of Congress, getting it passed will probably prove very difficult, if not impossible, to do.

Yet folks still ought to try.  The first House hearing addressing the bill, along with a number of others, has already been held.

Reauthorizing Magnuson-Stevens

Forage fish are just one of many issues addressed in H.R. 4690, the Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act, introduced by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA-2^nd).  

H.R. 4690 would reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and amend that current law in ways intended to address the impacts of a warming ocean, provide broader public representation on regional fishery management councils, improve the likelihood of rebuilding overfished stocks, improve the collection and quality of fisheries data, and otherwise move federal fishery management into the 21^st century.

Rep. Huffman’s bill stands in stark contrast to H.R. 59, the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, introduced by Don Young (R-AK).

While H.R. 4690 looks forward, and seeks to prepare the federal fishery management system for its future challenges, H.R. 59 is a retread of legislation that reiterates, nearly word-for-word, language rejected by Congress, in multiple sessions, for the past decade. 

While H.R. 4690 attempts to move federal fishery management deeper into the 21^st century, H.R. 59 seeks to drag the federal fishery management system back into the late 1900s, by weakening the conservation and management provisions that helped to end overfishing and rebuild scores of federally-managed fish stocks, and retreat toward the management paradigm that first subjected such stocks to overfishing and then presided over their decline.

Although H.R. 4690 would offer significant benefits to both fish stocks and fishery managers, the current dysfunction in Congress makes it unlikely that the bill will pass in the current session.  However, the continued existence of H.R. 59 serves as a warning of what fisheries legislation could look like if control of Congress changes after this year’s elections, and should provide some incentive for conservation advocates to get out and vote for candidates who will keep focusing on the future, and not on the past.

“Recreational reform” in the mid-Atlantic

Since passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, which was bolstered by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006, federal fishery managers have fully rebuilt more than 40 once-overfished stocks, and ended overfishing for many more.  That success was largely due to the legal standards for fishery management established in the ’96 Act, and by requirements in the 2006 law that annual catch limits be established for every managed fish stock, and that fishermen be held accountable when those catch limits are exceeded.

Of course, those laws didn’t make everyone happy.  Among the discontented were organizations such as the American Sportfishing Association, Coastal Conservation Association, and Center for Sportfishing Policy, who were upset that anglers could no longer overfish Gulf of Mexico red snapper with impunity.  They were so upset that they pushed Congress to pass the Modernizing Recreational Fishery Management Act of 2017, which as originally written, would have seriously undercut the federal fishery management process, but as passed, ended up being little more than a participation trophy for the people and organizations involved.

Now, the same organizations which have, to date, failed to meaningfully obstruct federal red snapper management in the Gulf have changed venues, and are trying to undercut summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass management in the mid-Atlantic region.  They’re doing so by proposing a so-called “harvest control rule” as part of what has become known as the “recreational reform initiative.”

In some of its iterations, such control rule would decouple recreational management measures from the annual catch limits for the affected species.  Instead of constraining recreational catch to an annual catch limit, and adjusting regulations that are proven inadequate to achieve that end, the control rule would employ a set of fixed management measure tied to factors such as the overall state of the fish stock, trends in abundance and recruitment, etc.

It is not yet clear how such an approach will comply with the management standards established by Magnuson-Stevens.  The American Saltwater Guides Association, which represents charter boat captains, as well as anglers, who understand that healthy and abundant fish stocks are critical to the long-term success of the fishing industry, has expressed concern about such compliance, saying

“our primary concern was that the [harvest control rule] appeared to offer a way for recreational fisheries to sidestep the Magnuson-Stevens Act requirements of Annual Catch Limits (ACL)—bringing back unpleasant memories from the Modern Fish Act debate on Capitol Hill in 2017-2018.  If you’re wondering why that’s a concern, consider that the same groups who initially proposed the [harvest control rule] were also behind the Modern Fish Act.  For months, [Council and ASMFC] staff members grappled with developing [harvest control rule] alternatives without fully sorting out how this system will adhere to ACLs.  We view this as a major issue for two reasons.  One, ACLs work; they have been an integral reason for the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s success in rebuilding overfished stocks.  Second, catch limits are a legal requirement; operating without them or ignoring them can open NOAA Fisheries to legal liability.  Details regarding how managers plan to integrate ACLs—and accountability measures—into [a harvest control rule] system remain to be seen.”

It is possible that, with enough time and effort, a scientifically and legally valid harvest control rule system could be established by the Mid-Atlantic Council and the ASMFC.  However, one of the most troubling aspects of the current recreational reform initiative is that it seems to be moving forward with intemperate haste. 

If adopted, the harvest control rule will bring a radical change to the way NMFS manages the recreational summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass fisheries, completely overturning the approach that has been employed for the past twenty years.  Yet, in addressing a management change of such magnitude, NMFS is proposing to make the change by what is known as a “framework” action, which is the most expedient way to amend fishery regulations, as it requires no public scoping process, no public hearings, and minimal opportunity for public input.

It’s impossible not to ask, “What’s the rush?”

If the harvest control rule truly has merit, that merit could be easily demonstrated by stringent scientific review and ample opportunity for public comment.  On the other hand, if the control rule’s merit is dubious that, too, ought to be revealed by providing an opportunity for rigorous public scrutiny. 

The current effort to push the reform effort though without substantial and meaningful public debate is a tactic that, by itself, casts doubt on the initiative’s worth.

30x30 and angler access

Just a few weeks ago, I mentioned the so-called “30x30” initiative, in which various conservation advocates call for 30% of the nation’s lands and waters to be protected by 2030.

On its face, it seems to be a good idea—development, whether on land or on the water, can only destroy habitat that living resources need to survive—and the Biden administration has taken its first steps toward achieving the 30x30 goal.

Existing national forests, state forests, and national marine sanctuaries are expected to contribute toward the 30x30 goals.

Unfortunately, there are some large national conservation organizations that seem to view the 30x30 process as a way to close off sections of ocean to the angling public, and so are calling for “highly protected” or “fully protected” ocean areas.  While “highly protected” areas might be justified—areas where non-selective, bottom-tending, or other types of harmful fishing gear are prohibited, or which are closed during the spawning periods for certain fish stocks—there has yet to be a cogent argument made for “fully protected” areas, where all fishing is prohibited, even for healthy fish stock that quickly migrate in and out of the protected areas and receive no benefits from a closure.  It is one thing to protect deep-sea corals, or reef fish spawning areas with a prohibition on bottom-tending gear.  It is a very different issue to prohibit anglers from trolling for tuna or billfish hundreds of feet above the resources that require protection.

Thus, the 30x30 process needs to be carefully monitored, to assure that the public is not arbitrarily closed out of public waters.

Get ready to dig in and work

It should be clear from the above-described issues that that much needs to be done to conserve and manage living marine resources, while preserving some level of public access to marine fish stocks.

Few stakeholders will be affected by every outstanding issue, but everyone will be affected by one or more.

Thus, over the next year, everyone concerned with the future of our nation’s fisheries ought to be prepared to get out and comment on the issues important to them.  And to vote in November, because if the wrong folks end up elected, all the comments in the world won’t get the job done.