IF THIS IS WHAT THEY CALL AN "ACCOMPLISHMENT"...

Late last month, the American Sportfishing Association issued a release in which it said that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s recent efforts to reduce striped bass harvest was one of the

“2014 Top Recreational Fishing Advocacy Accomplishments”.

It noted that

“ASA and Keep America Fishing strongly advocated for this harvest reduction.  The reduction will help to safeguard this very popular and economically important fishery from overfishing which could trigger drastic restrictions on recreational fishing.”

But the reason for all of ASA’s happy hyperbole is a long way from clear, when you stop to think about what really occurred.

Back in October of 2013, the ASMFC received a peer-reviewed, benchmark stock assessment that stated, in no uncertain terms, that too many striped bass were being killed, and that overfishing had occurred repeatedly over the past decade.  The striped bass stock was quickly declining, and would almost certainly be overfished by 2015.

And ASMFC did…nothing.

A few of the folks who sat on its Striped Bass Management Board tried to take action, but at least an equal number pushed back, and in the end, the Management Board agreed to…talk about things in another four months.  At which point they agreed to talk a little more four months after that.

When all was said and done, it took ASMFC a full year before it agreed to incorporate the best available science into its striped bass management plan.

That seems a bit slow… 

And while the Management Board debated, fishermen continued to kill too many bass, and the stock came ever closer to being overfished.

Of course, once the Management Board accepted the benchmark assessment, it still had to do something to reduce the number of bass being killed.

Amendment 6 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass clearly states that when harvest exceeds target levels for two years in a row, and abundance falls below its target in one of those years, the Management Board “must” adjust management measures to reduce harvest within one year.

ASMFC’s Striped Bass Technical Committee and Plan Development Team put together a proposed set of management measures that would theoretically reduce harvest by 25%.  Such a reduction would provide a mere 50% chance of reducing fishing mortality to the target by the end of 2015.

But even such a plan, that was as likely to fail as succeed, was too much for the Management Board, which chipped away at the proposed harvest cuts and increased the chances of failure.

First, they upped commercial landings.

Instead of requiring commercial fishermen to take a 25% reduction from what they actually caught, the Management Board based the cut on the quota.  Since, coastwide, commercial fishermen don’t land their full quota each year, that change meant that the commercial reduction would be significantly less than 25%.  Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass described it as

“Option B16.  Takes a 25% reduction from the Amendment 6 quota.  This option does not achieve the proposed 25% reduction from 2013 harvest if all states harvest all of their available quota.  However, this option may achieve some level of reduction from 2013 harvest if the fishery performs similar to previous years.  [emphasis added]”

That pretty well says it all, although it doesn’t mention that if all of the quota was landed, harvest would actually exceed that of 2013.

So the 25% reduction—and the plan’s chances of succeeding--were already at risk.

Chances of success dropped even further when the Management Board decided to exempt all Chesapeake Bay striped bass fisheries from the 25% reduction, and allowed them to cut landings by just 20.5%.

And once the Management Board was done, the states stepped in, taking advantage of “conservation equivalency,” the notion that a state may adopt regulations other than those recommended by ASMFC, provided that such states can demonstrate that, in theory, they have a similar conservation benefit.  

That’s all that the various for-hire fleets needed to hear, as they began lobbying their state fisheries managers to come up with arguments “proving” that killing two dead stripers per trip, of some alternate size, won’t do more damage than taking just one.

And thus we have with what the American Sportfishing Association deems a “Top Recreational Fishing Advocacy Accomplishment”—a management plan that took too long to adopt, won’t prevent the stock from becoming overfished (and contains no measures to actually rebuild it) and is more likely to fail than succeed in its stated goal of reducing fishing mortality to the target level by the end of 2015.

That doesn’t sound like much of an “achievement” to me.

And yet, there is irony here.

For if striped bass were managed by a federal fishery management council instead of ASMFC, what the American Sportfishing Association is calling a “Top Recreational Fishing Advocacy Accomplishment” wouldn’t have required any advocacy effort at all.  A far better management plan would have been produced by such council simply by applying the law, and it would have happened sooner, as well.

If striped bass were managed pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, this is what would have occurred:

First, there would have been no debate about whether the best available science should be used for management.  As soon as the benchmark stock assessment passed peer review, it would have been adopted as a matter of course, with no debate and no vote.  In October 2013, and not a year later.

Then, because Magnuson’s National Standard One states that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing…”

harvest reductions would have been imposed right away, for the 2014 season.  And those reductions would, as a matter of law, have had to have no less than a 50% chance of reducing harvest to target by the end of that year.  There would have been no break for the commercial fleet, and no break for the folks in Chesapeake Bay.  Instead, we’d be looking at nothing less than a 25% reduction across the board, and because scientific and management uncertainty also need to be figured into federal catch limits, the reduction may have been a lot bigger than that.

And things wouldn’t even end there.

The Update of the Striped Bass Stock Assessment Using Final 2012 Data states that

“If the current fully-recruited F (0.200) is maintained during 2013-2017, the probability of being below the {spawning stock biomass] reference point increases to 0.86 by 2015.”

That means that there’s an 86% chance that the stock will become overfished this season.  

Federal law requires that a fishery management plan

“specify objective and measurable criteria for identifying when the fishery to which the plan applies is overfished (with an analysis of how the criteria were determined and the relationship of the criteria to the reproductive potential of stocks of fish in that fishery) and, in the case of a fishery which the Council or the Secretary has determined is approaching an overfished condition or is overfished, contain conservation and management measures to prevent overfishing or end overfishing and rebuild the fishery.  [emphasis added]”

So if striped bass were managed under the Magnuson Act, steps would already have been taken to start rebuilding the stock.  We’d be a full year into the ten-year rebuilding period right now.

That would put us, and the bass, in a lot better place than we are under the weak ASMFC management plan that ASA calls a “Top Recreational Fishing Advocacy Accomplishment.”

But here is where the irony kicks in.

The American Sportfishing Association is actually trying to weaken the Magnuson Act, so that overfishing can continue and overfished stocks don’t have to be rebuilt so quickly, in order to provide greater economic returns to the recreational fishing industry.

In a press release dated May 29, 2014, ASA noted, with respect to Rep. Doc Hastings’ so-called “Empty Oceans Bill,” which would have seriously weakened the conservation and rebuilding provisions of the Magnuson Act, that

“This bill includes several provisions that we support, such as easing the strict implementation of annual catch limits…”

The American Sportfishing Association is also one of the foremost supporters of, and original contributors to, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership’s A Vision for Managing America’s Salt Water Recreational Fisheries, which states that

“The Magnuson-Stevens Act currently states that the timeline for ending overfishing and rebuilding fisheries ‘be as short as possible’ and ‘not exceed 10 years,’ with a few limited exceptions to allow for longer timeframes.  While some stocks can be rebuilt in 10 years or less, others require longer generation times, or factors other than fishing pressure may prohibit rebuilding in 10 years or less.

“…Instead of having a fixed deadline for stocks to be rebuilt, the [National Academy of Sciences] recommended that the regional councils and fisheries managers set lower harvest rates that would allow fish stocks to recover gradually while diminishing socioeconomic impacts.”

In other words, ASA seems to want all fishery management plans to be as weak as the one that governs striped bass.

Thus, we have to wonder, when we hear ASA call the recent striped bass harvest reductions a “Top Recreational Fishing Advocacy Achievement,” whether they did so because ASA doesn’t really understand what a wonderful conservation tool we have in the Magnuson Act.

Or whether they did so exactly because the ASMFC plan is so weak, and elevates “socioeconomic impacts” above meeting its goals.

Either way, calling the ASMFC’s actions an “Advocacy Achievement” casts ASA’s judgment into serious doubt.

THE ROAD AHEAD--PART II

On Thursday, I took a look at what 2015's hottest fisheries issues were likely to be in Congress and at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.  Today, I’m going to get a little more local, and take a look at issues that will be confounding managers in the areas covered by the regional fishery management councils.

 

I’m using the council regions for convenience more than for anything else.  While, in most cases, the big problems will be discussed at the council table, there are a few that fall outside the jurisdiction of the National Marine Fisheries Service.  The road to the possible resolution of those matters runs through the several states, various federal bureaucracies, the courts and, perhaps, even other nations.

But to keep things simple at the start, I’ll begin up in New England.

New England Fishery Management Council

Up in New England, in 2015, it’s all going to be about cod.

With the Gulf of Maine stock down to three or four percent of sustainable levels, managers don’t have a lot of room to maneuver.  They need to cut harvest, and keep harvest low, until stocks rebuild for a while.

Interim measures, in place until next spring, have already slashed commercial landings and closed the recreational fishery.  

In 2015, fishermen will be allowed to catch just 386 metric tons of fish, down from a 1,500 metric ton quota in 2014 and much higher quotas in previous years.  Still, the 2015 quota is nearly double the 200 mt recommended by the National Marine Fisheries Service, meaning that there’s a very good chance that it is still too large to stop the decline.

Even so, fishermen are clamoring for access to waters currently closed to protect spawning areas, and are asking to be able to fish for species other than cod in areas closed to cod fishing—meaning that they would merely kill the codfish and dump them at sea, rather than including them in their landings.  

The New England Council would probably be receptive to such notions, and regional office of NMFS just might let them stand.

There are not going to be any happy endings here.  

The New England folks have abused the cod resource for too many years, and if it can be rebuilt at all, that rebuilding will take some time.  Even under the best imaginable scenario, some fishermen are going to lose their businesses, their boats and their homes.

The only question is whether, like the red snapper anglers down in the Gulf, they will seek a legislative solution to the harvest restrictions, and have their Congressional representatives put language in a reauthorized Magnuson Act that exempts the New England fishery from some provisions of federal law.

If that happens, fishermen are still going to lose their businesses, their boats and their homes, but the public is also going to lose the Gulf of Maine cod stock.

Maybe, we'll lose it forever.

Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is everything that New England isn’t.

Unlike New England, the Mid-Atlantic was an early adopter of hard harvest quotas, and currently has no stocks that are overfished or subject to overfishing.

Thus, it’s probably not surprising that the issue that will be ruffling most of the feathers in the Mid-Atlantic region arises out of abundance rather than scarcity.

There is absolutely no one in the Mid-Atlantic fishing or management community who believes that black sea bass are in trouble.  The population has rebuilt nicely, particularly in the states between New Jersey and Massachusetts, where every rockpile, wreck, reef and, most likely, every discarded beer can on the bottom of the ocean holds its share of fish.

There is also no one with any practical experience in the northeastern fishery who doesn’t realize that anglers are catching a lot of black sea bass, and taking a lot of them home.   

And there comes a time when, if enough people remove enough fish—even by taking just two or three or four at a time—from a stock, they cross the line and begin overfishing. 

Add in the fact that so little is known about the black sea bass that biologists can’t produce a stock assessment that can pass peer review, and you have the stage set for a very different kind of disaster.

Right now, unless the Mid-Atlantic Council’s Science and Statistics Committee decides to change course, anglers in the northeast will be facing the strictest black sea bass regulations in history—perhaps something like three fish at least 14 inches long, and a 60-day late-summer season—at a time when the black sea bass stock is fully restored and the fish are being caught everywhere.

It’s not going to go over well, and we can be pretty sure that the various boatmen’s associations and other industry groups that want to tear down the federal fishery management system are going to be pointing to black sea bass as another reason why things must change.

The fact that anglers are overfishing the stock won’t come out in the conversation; instead, we’ll see the usual attacks on the science and the data that we’ve come to expect from these folks, who love to scream that “The numbers are bad!” but never seem able to pull out a calculator and spreadsheets to show you what the “real” numbers are…

That attack on the data will quickly morph into an attack on the same federal fishery management laws that rebuilt the stock in the first place.  

I can already picture one long-time leader of the bomb-throwing contingent getting so excited that he spits through his teeth as he tries to convince the crowd that “overfishing” is just a definition, and that if we pnly change the definition, we can even increase the kill, but won’t be “overfishing” anymore.

Actual consequences, to such folks, don't matter.

So, yes, this is a local issue, but it could, and probably will, have Magnuson impacts, too.

South Atlantic Fishery Management Council

In the South Atlantic, there probably won’t be a single big issue that grabs everyone’s attention.  Instead, the snapper/grouper fishery will continue to produce a host of irritants which will keep both chat boards and editorial boards busy as someone, somewhere, will always be unhappy with something that’s going on.

The biggest complaints may come from deep-water grouper fishermen who are opposed to the idea of establishing closed areas in those waters where the overfished speckled hind and warsaw are believed to spawn.  As a group, such anglers are still not reconciled to the marine protected areas established by the Council a few years ago, which are also designed to protect deep-water snapper and grouper (but do not prevent fishermen from pursuing pelagic species), and don’t want to see any other waters closed to bottom fishing.

The red snapper debate has cooled off quite a bit in the South Atlantic, but could flare up again.

The issue of how to manage unassessed stocks will continue to simmer, with one amendment based on recorded landings levels already sent to the National Marine Fisheries Service for final review and probable implementation.  Another, which would take the management of four uassessed snapper species out of the Council’s hands and hand it over to the State of Florida, is currently being considered.

But, pending something unexpected, the South Atlantic should not see too much controversy this year.

Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council

For a long time, the Gulf of Mexico seemed to be a pretty placid place--at least, once the "Redfish Wars" were done.

It was only on the rigs and reefs where problems and discontent stirred, and that primarily focused around red snapper.

That discontent has flared into an all-out war against the fishery management process.  These days, recreational red snapper fishermen may have actually outdone New England’s trawler fleet in terms of contempt for the law, disregard for the resource, anti-management rhetoric and efforts to cripple the federal management system.

Those efforts will certainly continue throughout 2015, as red snapper anglers do their best to cut the heart out of federal fisheries laws, at least as they apply to Gulf reef fish.

In the first part of this series, I already mentioned Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Alabama), who is Hell-bent upon removing such reef fish from NMFS’ jurisdiction.  If he succeeds—and, given this Congress, he easily could—he may not only bring population levels of popular reef fish down to those of Gulf of Maine cod, but he might also become one of the first conservative Republican representatives to have real success reaching across the aisle to liberal northeast-coast Democrats, who will want to work closely with him to replicate his efforts up here.

There will also be efforts by Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana to extend their state jurisdiction out to nine nautical miles, just like Florida and Texas, so just in case Rep. Byrne fails, they’ll be able to overfish their reef fish anyway, without the feds butting in.

And probably more important than any of the above details, the very well-organized angling rights and angling industry organizations based on the Gulf coast will be doing their best to weaken the Magnuson Act in the upcoming reauthorization, so that fish everywhere along America’s shores can be as unprotected and as badly managed as those Gulf folks would like the red snapper to be.

It’s a real threat, and it’s coming this year.

Pacific Fishery Management Council

I don’t write about the Pacific much, but in a roundup such as this one, it would be wrong to leave them out.

I will be leaving out the Pacific Council, though, because this problem is out of its hands.

On the Pacific Coast, it's all about current climate conditions, which have caused a crippling drought that has impacted spawning salmon and led to conflicts between the interests of the salmon, which simply cannot survive without clean, cold-running streams, and the interests of various groups of people, including farmers and ranchers who draw irrigation water from the rivers, power companies who use the rivers to generate power and those of various desert communities, who have long used the rivers for drinking water.

Those issues all collided in a recent federal lawsuit decided by the Ninth Circuit of the Court of Appeals, in which a number of organizations representing water users in California’s naturally arid Central Valley sued the Department of Commerce over a NMFS decision that such users must modify their water use in order to provide adequate flows for endangered runs of salmon.

In this case, NMFS and the salmon won, with the court memorably stating that

“People need water, but so do fish.”

However, given climate trends, such problems are going to repeat themselves again and again, involving other rivers, other salmon and other groups of litigants.  It will only be a matter of time until Congressmen representing the irrigators and other users will attempt to legislate “fixes” that will subordinate the fate of the salmon to next year’s crop of almonds  or some homeowners’ “right” to water their lawns.

It may or may not come next year, but when it comes, the fish will be in serious trouble.

And even if the salmon escape with some of their rivers intact, overall warming trends in the ocean may ultimately condemn the southern runs to annihilation.  

Research suggests that those in California and Oregon may already be doomed, although they could hold out for a few more decades.

North Pacific Fishery Management Council

The North Pacific Council is one of the most successful fishery management councils in the country, with a strong commitment to conservation and a history of successfully managing its stocks.  In a lesson  that New England should learn, it has shown that strong conservation measures are the backbone of a profitable and sustainable commercial fishing industry.

That being the case, it isn’t surprising that the biggest problems in the North Pacific do not originate at the Council level.  Instead, as is the case farther south, they originate in the salmon rivers.

But in Alaska, there is plenty of water.  The problems are not caused by irrigators, or hydropower, or too many people living in places where water is too scarce to support major cities.  Instead, the salmon in Alaska are threatened by uses of the land, particularly mining, that threaten to pollute pristine streams.

We’ve heard a lot about the so-called Pebble Mine, which was been in the news for years and has generated substantial opposition.  

The proposed project would be huge, and would produce an equally huge amount of tailings and other waste that easily could—and, over a long course of years, probably would—flow into and pollute rivers feeding Bristol Bay, which hosts what may be the largest wild salmon fishery in North America, and perhaps the world.

Recent executive action would protect Bristol Bay from development, but would not stop the Pebble Mine.  It appears that the Environmental Protection Agency is prepared to halt the project on Clean Water Act grounds, but given the makeup of the incoming Congress, there is no guarantee that it will not pass legislation overturning any EPA decision for purely ideological reasons.

For the moment, Bristol Bay's salmon remain at risk.

And the Pebble Mine is only one proposed project that threatens Alaskan salmon.  A number of others exist, particularly on southern Alaska rivers.  

Mines and energy projects in British Columbia—completely beyond the control of the United States, except, perhaps, through international treaties—threaten the salmon runs in Alaska’s Stikine River.  Other mines threaten other Alaskan rivers, such as the Taku and the Unuk.  

It is not at all clear that anything will be done to prevent mine-caused damage before it occurs.

In contrast, our East Coast problems may be simpler to fix.

It is just a matter of finding the will to do so, and of not giving up merely because we lose the first round, or because the forces arrayed against usu appear overwhelmingly strong.

In the end, the truth has a way of getting out and even prevailing, if there are a few strong folks on hand, willing to tell its story and defend it from lies.

Let’s hope that such folks show up in 2015, because it's shaping up as a year to challenge us all.

THE ROAD AHEAD--PART I

Given the way things usually go in the fisheries management world, 2014 wasn’t that bad a year.

Forage fish management took some solid steps forward on both the east and west coast, bluefin tuna got some needed protections down in the Gulf of Mexico and, on the whole, the various regional fishery management councils didn’t do anything foolish to put fish stocks at risk, although many had chances to do so.  

No bad legislation made it through Congress, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission got a few steps closer to managing striped bass stocks the right way.

Of course, some unfortunate things happened, too.  The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas increased the quota for western stock bluefin, and again failed to take meaningful action to protect overfished sharks.  ASMFC seems intent on imposing the death sentence on the southern New England/Mid-Atlantic stock of winter flounder, extending the season fivefold on a stock that faces extirpation from many waters where it recently thrived.  And conservation advocates everywhere lost an important friend when Senator Mark Begich failed to win re-election up in Alaska.

But even when we consider the bad, we stand in a better place than we did just one year ago.

But enough of looking backwards.  What matters more than where we came from is where we now have to go.

In this essay, I’ll take a broad-brush look at what’s happening in Congress and at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.  Next time, we’ll take a look at the Councils.

In Congress

The biggest fight is going to take place in Congress, as legislators convene to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which currently governs all fishing in the federal waters of the United States.  

Last year, we saw two very different visions for Magnuson, one embodied in H.R. 5742, the so-called “Empty Oceans Bill” sponsored by Representative Doc Hastings (R-Washington), that would have sacrificed the health of fish stocks in the name of short-term economic benefits, and S. 2991, a very solid bill sponsored by Mark Begich (D-Alaska) that would have kept the most critical portions of Magnuson intact and even moved conservation efforts ahead just a bit.

The mid-term elections, including the change of control in the Senate, has shuffled the Congressional deck quite a bit, so it’s very possible that the reauthorization effort is going to start from scratch in both houses. 

The good news is that, in the House of Representatives, Doc Hastings has retired, and it appears that the reauthorization effort will be spearheaded by Don Young (R-Alaska).  Thus, “Empty Oceans” is pretty well dead, because when it comes to fisheries issues, the folks up in Alaska “get it.”  Unlike those New Englanders who are trying very hard to kill the last cod, Alaskans understand that rebuilding and conserving fish stocks is good for business as well as the ecosystem, and  support strong federal fisheries laws.

Unfortunately, everyone on the relevant committee won’t be as enlightened as Rep. Young.  Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Alabama) will probably be a particular thorn in conservationists’ side as he pushes legislation to take management of Gulf of Mexico red snapper, and other reef fish stocks, away from the National Marine Fisheries Service and hand it over to the Gulf States Marines Fisheries Commission which, like ASMFC, will not be bound by provisions of the Magnuson Act.  

It is all too easy to envision a compromise in which an otherwise strong law is reauthorized, but with carveouts that exempt Gulf reef fish, and very possibly other stocks, from its provisions.

That risk becomes more apparent when one looks to the Senate, where Marco Rubio (R-Florida) will almost certainly chair the relevant committee.  Coming not only from a red snapper state, but from a state where the fishing and boating industries, as well as a big anglers’ rights group, have deeply penetrated the political system, Sen. Rubio can be expected to produce a bill that elevates short-term harvests and economic gains above the long-term health of fish stocks, at least so far as Florida and greater Gulf of Mexico interests are concerned.  

At the same time, Sen. Rubio had very significant input on Sen. Begich’s bill, which was a good one, so once again the stage is set for a bill that is basically solid, but panders far too much to various local interests.

It is going to be a very difficult to avoid that scenario, particularly when there is no big angling organization out there with the courage to stand up and put the fish first, particularly if red snapper are involved.  But folks are still going to have to try, and maybe, with luck, things won’t turn out too badly.

Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission

When the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted new fishing mortality reference points for striped bass last October, it followed up with a weak management plan—Addendum IV to Amendment 6 of the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass—that is slightly more likely to fail than to succeed in achieving its goal of reducing fishing mortality to the target level by the end of 2015.

Even so, imposing a one-fish bag limit and 28-inch minimum size on anglers fishing everywhere but in Chesapeake Bay represented real progress, and could only help a striped bass population that, according to the Update of the Striped Bass Stock Assessment Using Final 2012 Data, is almost certain to slip below the spawning stock biomass threshold and become overfished this year—if it hasn’t fallen  that far already.

Anglers overwhelmingly supported a one-fish bag and a size limit of no less than 28 inches (many wanted to see it higher).  However, just as we saw in 1995, when the striped bass stock was first declared rebuilt, and in 2003, when Amendment 6 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was adopted, there is a very clear split between those anglers and many in the recreational fishing industry—today, mainly the party boats and “six-pack” charter operations—who insist on keeping the kill high.

The for-hire fleet dug in and fought like badgers to defeat the single-fish bag.  After appearing to fail at the ASMFC, they turned their hunger on the states, insisting that they take advantage of the “conservation equivalency” provision of Addendum IV and devise regulations which will let the for-hires kill two striped bass rather than one.

To say that it’s an inexact process is kind.  

To prove “conservation equivalency,” states have to look back at past striped bass landings, then, assuming that weather, angler activity and the size and availability of fish doesn’t change from one year to the next, put together a set of regulations—including a 2-fish bag—which still would reduce harvest by at least 25%.  

Then, next week, ASMFC’s Striped Bass Technical Committee will meet to determine whether such alternate regulations really are “equivalent” to one 28-inch fish.  

Finally, in February, ASMFC’s Striped Bass Management Board will meet to pass final judgment on each state’s proposal.

Needless to say, there’s a certain amount of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” going on.  If Rhode Island wants New Jersey to approve its regulations, it would do well not to vote against New Jersey’s…

Striped bass anglers are pretty upset by the whole process, and are trying to get their states to stick with the one @ 28” program.  But the for-hires have better organization and better political contacts on their side, and are likely to win.  

Yet that won’t necessarily end the debate.

As I mentioned earlier, striped bass stock will almost certainly slip into “overfished” territory this year.  And if that can be captured in an interim stock assessment—or if things don’t improve by the time the next benchmark assessment is done—additional management measures will be triggered, including a requirement to rebuild the biomass to target levels within a decade.  So anglers still have something to fight for.

Will that fight actually happen?

A lot will depend on whether anglers stick around, and don’t just throw up their hands, if the for-hires win on equivalency.

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Those are the big, broad-based debates.

Next Sunday, I’ll take a look at some more localized issues that are going to have a big impact on anglers, and may well influence events outside their immediate regions.

ENDURANCE

Actor Woody Allen allegedly said “Showing up is 80 percent of life.”

In the fisheries management arena, it might be more accurate to say “Sticking around is 80 percent of succeeding.”

Because in our world, things usually don’t happen overnight.

Consider the striped bass. 

When the stock began to collapse in the mid-1970s, it took a very long time before concerned anglers could even convince fisheries managers that there was a problem.  Here in New York, an organization called Save our Stripers toiled long and hard to convince state authorities that the 16-inch size limit that had prevailed for years needed to be raised in order to better protect the fish. 

It took them until 1983 to get a bill to the governor’s desk, and there was a very real fear that Mario Cuomo would veto the legislation out of misguided concern for the health of the Fulton Fish Market and the commercial fishing fleet.  Fred Schwab, who was a hardcore striped bass angler and an inspiring advocate for striped bass conservation, spent much of the year up in Albany, trying to get the bill signed into law.  He had just about given up when he learned that Cuomo had decided to sign the legislation, giving New York a 24-inch size limit, which was then one of the biggest on he coast.

But Fred Schwab’s long grind was only beginning.

A complete moratorium on striped bass harvest still lay in the future, as did the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s adoption of Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which was the management measure generally credited with kick-starting the striper’s recovery.

I didn’t meet Fred until 1995, after ASMFC had declared the striped bass stock “recovered” and adopted Amendment 5 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which would allow significantly increased levels of exploitation.  He was still right in the middle of the fight, trying to convince New York regulators to take a conservative approach to striped bass harvest, and not to allow anglers to kill two 28-inch fish every time they go out.  Party boats, charter boats and tackle shops all supported the bigger kill, and in the end New York adopted a cut-the-baby-in-half sort of approach, giving the for-hires two 28-inch fish, while everyone else could only land one.

Striped bass anglers were generally outraged, but after a couple of years that outrage turned to acceptance, and only a few of us continued to work for the striper.  Any hope of making a difference was pretty well done, because anglers attention spans had run out, and no one attended the hearings any more.

Half a dozen years later, ASMFC came out with yet another Amendment to the Management Plan, and the anglers returned—for a while.  This time, they came together under the slogan “Bring back the BIG bass,” a response to the decline in the size of the stripers since Amendment 5’s 2 @ 28” was adopted by most of the states.  

It was probably a Quixotic effort; there was no question that the striped bass population was still at healthy levels of abundance, and to ask that target fishing mortality levels be reduced from F_target=0.31 to something below 0.25—perhaps even below 0.20—in order to improve the age and size structure of the stock was just a couple of steps too far for managers more used to dealing with collapsed stocks and delayed rebuilding to take.

So once again there was a bustle of angler activity, and once again, everyone went away, disappointed and disillusioned, when ASMFC failed to heed their call.

Once again, there was insufficient angler infrastructure in place in most of the states to get anything meaningful done, and anglers were too impatient to build such infrastructure in preparation for the next chance to do good.

That chance came over a decade later—in this year that has almost reached its end—after a benchmark stock assessment informed managers that F_target should be reduced to 0.180.

The assessment vindicated our position on Amendment 6, that F_target=0.30 was far too high (in fact, it lead to overfishing the stock, as we now know that the overfishing occurs when F>0.219).  And once again, anglers came together from up and down the coast to fight for the health of the striped bass stock.

This time, armed with good science, they made progress.  

New, lower fishing mortality reference points were adopted, as was a 25% cut in landings.  But the foes of striped bass conservation never give up, and so fought a retrograde battle in which they argued that for-hire vessels—and maybe all anglers—should not be bound by the one 28-inch fish allowed by ASMFC’s Striped Bass Management Board, but rather should be granted “conservation equivalent” regulations that would permit each angler to kill two bass.

There is a very good chance that the for-hires are going to get their way, and there is a real possibility that some states—including New York—might adopt a 2-fish bag for everyone.

That will surely make anglers angry.  They did everything right this time, turning out at public hearings and making it clear that the public overwhelmingly prefers a one-fish bag limit.

So the big question is, if the regulators effectively slap the anglers in the face, ignore their testimony and allow a two-fish bag, how will anglers react?

Will they do what they’ve done in the past and retreat, grumbling, to their lairs, to emerge a five or a dozen years later, when a new issue captures their attention?  Or will they channel their anger to start preparing for the next fight now, when there is time to pull together the contacts and the resources needed to actually win?

Because more fights are coming, perhaps sooner than we expect.

If we can convince the Striped Bass Management Board to order an interim stock assessment after the 2015 season, that assessment will likely find that the stock is overfished.  If that is the case, it will trip one of the Management Triggers in Amendment 6 and require the stock to be rebuilt to target levels in no more than 10 years.

Even if that effort fails, a new benchmark assessment will be done in 2018, and we need to be ready to respond to its findings.

Losing a management battle is discouraging.  I know that.  I’ve been there plenty of times.

But the key to winning such battles isn’t just “showing up.”  

You win by sticking around, learning from your losses and figuring out how to win the next time.

You can be sure that the party boats and the six-pack charters aren’t going anywhere.  They’ll be at every meeting and hearing, doing everything they can to maintain their kill.

We’re making a very big mistake if we’re not also there, to speak for the striper.

THE POLICY

One of the continuing themes in fisheries management this year was the notion of a “Recreational Fishing Policy”.

It’s another one of those ideas given birth down in the Gulf of Mexico, where anglers keep feeling picked on, that risks creating “collateral damage” among anglers everywhere else on the coast.

The basic premise of the push for a recreational policy is that the National Marine Fisheries Service manages fish for the benefit of commercial fishermen (I think we might find more than a couple of folks up in New England who disagree with that, but…) and doesn’t understand how to manage recreational fisheries. 

As evidence, they point to the red snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico where the big, bad federal government won’t allow anglers to overfish the red snapper stock or, as an alternative, turn the entire fishery over to the recreational anglers so that they can kill every red snapper that the biologists will allow.

Bill Bird, Chairman of the Coastal Conservation Association’s national Government Relations Committee, noted in public comment to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council that

“…we question the timing of an effort that represents such a significant shift in recreational fisheries management in the middle of NMFS’ attempt to craft the nation’s first Recreational Saltwater Fisheries Policy.  It is highly ironic that passage of Amendment 40 will severely limit the ability of the Council or NMFS to meaningfully implement any such policy for the Gulf recreational red snapper fishery, which is virtually the sole impetus for the creation of the policy in the first place  [emphasis added].”

The fact that most of America’s anglers probably don’t catch a single red snapper in any given year—and don’t particularly want to—doesn’t matter to these folks.  They’re using red snapper to inform a policy that will impact all of us, whether we prefer to fish for striped bass, scup, summer flounder, king mackerel, kelp bass or king salmon. 

Thus, it’s probably in our interest to take one last look at what is being proposed and perhaps make some comments that might help to clean up some of the rough spots.

Let’s start out with the fact that the policy includes good things which, if put into effect, will benefit both anglers and the fish we pursue.  However, we also have to be cognizant of the fact that the recreational fishing industry has worked pretty hard to get what it wants into the policy, and as a result, a few things got in there that are based on a questionable premise.

The trick then, for anglers, is to separate those policy elements that will benefit both fish and fishermen from the padding that the industry put in there to benefit themselves.

For example, we should first insist on the truth.

That gets stretched quite a bit by a couple of statements, one of which notes that

“Saltwater recreational fishing is a traditional, important and expanding thread in the social, cultural, and economic fabric of coastal communities in the United States.  [emphasis added]”

I’ll grant NMFS the “traditional” and “important” parts, but as to “expanding”, well, that just isn’t so, no matter how many folks were crawling over the rocks out at Montauk last fall, or how many stood shoulder to shoulder down at Hatteras when the red drum came in.

That means that the statement that

“…an increasing number of people are pursuing recreational opportunities afforded by this nation’s expansive coastal and ocean resources”

is equally untrue, if “recreational opportunities” is defined to mean “recreational fishing.”

The data on recreational fishing effort over the last ten years pretty much say it all.

Back in 2004, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, anglers throughout the United States made about 79 million individual fishing trips (note that such number is actually low, as it does not include trips made in Alaska, California, Oregon, Texas or Washington, which do not participate in NMFS’ data collection program; however, since information from those states will be consistently absent from this discussion, the trends discussed remain valid).

By 2013, the number of annual trips had dropped to roughly 64 million, a reduction of 19%.  The drop was even sharper in many regions.  For ten years between 2004 and 2013, effort dropped by 29% in the North Atlantic, 24% in the Mid-Atlantic, 22% in the South Atlantic, 48% in Hawaii and 51% in the Caribbean. 

In all of those places, angling effort has been steadily trending down over the years.

Only the Gulf of Mexico seemed to buck the trend somewhat (remember what I wrote about the Gulf fishermen trying to shape this policy to reflect their reality, rather than that of the rest of us?).  There, anglers made about 26 million trips in 2004 and 25 million trips in 2013, which also appears to reflect a small decline, but this is one of those cases where two terminal years don’t really tell the right story or reflect dominant trends.

Both 2004 and 2013 appear to be outliers, in which Gulf effort was higher than the norm.  

Over the entire 10-year period, anglers averaged about 23.67 million trips, not very different from the 23.66 million trips that they averaged in most recent three years, 2010-2013.  So, unless you believe that 2013 was the start of a new upward trend, angler effort in the Gulf of Mexico over the past decade was flat.

Saying that angling is “expanding” or “increasing” is a factual error that needs to be fixed, but there are true policy problems that need fixing, too.

The first appears in the statement that

“the goals of this policy are to promote recreational fishing for the cultural, social and economic benefit of the nation…  [emphasis added]”

If it said, to “manage recreational fishing” for the greatest national benefit, I’d be the first one on board, but “promote” is a very different thing.

It’s just not NMFS’ job to spend taxpayer dollars to “promote” any particular industry, including those that cater to saltwater anglers.  The American Sportfishing Association does that job just fine.

It’s also dangerous to put NMFS in a position where it is responsible for both regulating anglers and promoting angling.  

It’s a no-win position for the agency, which could easily get whipsawed between its obligation to prevent overfishing and recover fish stocks (although we don’t like to admit it, anglers can overfish and, at times, be an obstacle to recovery) and its proposed job of promoting recreational fishing (even, presumably, when stocks are down).

We’ve seen that happen when NMFS tries to both promote and regulate the commercial fishing folks, and there’s really no reason to go down such a bad road again…

The policy reassures us that

“..the goals of this policy are to promote recreational fishing…through science-based conservation and management…”

and includes a statement that

“NMFS will…support ecosystem conservation and enhancement…”

both of which are good.

But the Devil is always in the details, and as you read through the policy, you realize that they guy in the red suit, with horns on his head and pitchfork in hand, has authored some of the details here.

For example, the Policy describes recreational fishing as fishing “for sport or pleasure,” with the anglers

“…retaining, consuming, sharing or releasing their catches…  [emphasis added]”

Yet it’s hard to understand why the word “retaining” is necessary, since “consuming” and “sharing” pretty well describe the only things that one can do with a dead fish, outside of selling it (which recreational fishermen, by definition, can’t do) or using it as fertilizer, which is something that the Policy certainly shouldn’t encourage.

The Policy’s specific inclusion of “tournaments” within the definition of recreational fishing just enhances that concern, because we all know that there are still a lot of big-money “dumpster tournaments” out there, in which fish—usually big apex predators such as sharks and marlin—are killed and weighed in for prizes; after such events are over, the winners drive away with their checks and the fish are driven away to a landfill, if they’re not just dumped back at sea.

Such wasteful events are a relic of the last century, and have no place in this one; no rational national recreational fishing policy should even suggest that such waste is justified.

So, as far as I’m concerned, the references to “retaining” and “tournaments” should both go away.  “[C]onsuming, sharing or releasing” pretty well cover the universe of acceptable use.  If you can conduct a tournament within those parameters, fine.  If you can't...

NMFS should also rethink the notion that the

“easing of regulatory fishery restrictions when conservation goals are achieved”

is a worthwhile Policy goal.

Sure, it’s nice if it can be done, and the measures needed to maintain a fishery at sustainable levels are usually not as strict as those needed to rebuild it, but that’s not always the case.  

The black sea bass fishery in the Mid-Atlantic is a prime case in point.  The stock is fully rebuilt and the fish are very abundant; in fact, they’re so abundant that anglers aren’t having any trouble catching them, and as a result are overfishing badly.  Next year, it appears that regulations will actually have to be tightened…

And such overfishing leads to the next concern, the promotion

“…of sustainable, safe aquaculture to support recreational fisheries…”

In plain English, that means hatcheries, and that’s not a good thing.

I touched on them in detail in an earlier blog, entitled “Seductive—but not Satisfactory.”

The bottom line is that hatcheries are, for the most part, a sign of failed fishery management policies.  They give managers an opportunity to let people overfish stocks with a clear conscience, as they know that an endless supply of “rubber fish” produced in a tank will be provided to replace what the anglers remove.  

However, there is a good body of research which suggests that hatchery fish are not as fit to survive as their naturally spawned counterparts, and if enough such fish are dumped into the water, can harm the genetic makeup of the natural population. 

Reducing our fish’s fitness to survive isn’t something that the Policy should support.

The final problems with the Policy lie in its call for

“innovative solutions to evolving science, management and environmental challenges through partnerships by supporting investigation and development of new …data collection techniques (e.g., electronic catch reporting)…”

as well as

“public-private collaboration (e.g., cooperative research and citizen science activities)…”

That’s just asking for trouble.

So far, NMFS’ efforts in the direction of “electronic catch reporting” have been notably unimpressive.

For example, anglers are supposed to report every Atlantic bluefin tuna that they land within 24 hours.  However, when I spoke with an employee of NMFS’ Highly Migratory Fisheries unit at the Recreational Fishing Summit down in Alexandria, Virginia last April, he lamented that reporting rates languished at around 20%--anglers who landed 4 out of 5 bluefin tuna fail to comply with the law.  That doesn’t bode well for electronic reporting by anglers.

It’s not clear that for-hire vessels will do any better.

Right now, federally-permitted for-hire vessels in the Mid-Atlantic summer flounder, scup and black sea bass fishery are required to file vessel trip reports, but there is reason to question the information provided.

For example, when passengers of a New Jersey party boat landed over 800 out-of-season black sea bass a few years ago, the captain told a reporter that

“I didn’t think it was that many.  And I’m not getting paid by the State of New Jersey to take fish out of people’s buckets.”

With comments such as those, it’s easy to guess that his vessel trip reports might be lacking in accuracy.

And while those passengers were taking illegal fish, the captain appears to have acted within the law.  When you consider the number of for-hire boats that don’t do everything by the book, such as those out in Montauk, New York who conducted “sushi cruises,” allowing their fares to kill and eat undersized summer flounder right on the boat, or a Sheepshead Bay boat that allows its passengers

“to keep anything and everything that they catch,”

 (and please note that these are only two examples of blatant violations; I could have bored you with plenty more if I thought that it would have served any purpose), it’s a pretty fair bet that many vessel trip reports don’t bear much resemblance to reality, and will not improve the fisheries management process.

Similar concerns surround the concepts of “cooperative research” and “citizen science”.

Any time that someone offers to “help” NMFS conduct research, our first reaction should be to question why.  

Maybe they are merely scientists, seeking to further their professional reputations by conducting research that will expand our knowledge about the fish stocks that swim off our shores.

But there is a good chance that they have more selfish motives.

Perhaps they are state employees seeking to impeach NMFS’ data, in order to get a few more fish for local residents, as we have seen happen in Alabama’s red snapper fishery.  

Maybe they will be members of the fishing industry trying to find ways for their customers to increase their kill, as we’ve seen with summer flounder.

But we can be pretty sure that what we’ll be seeing is agenda-driven research, and not the sort of objective research that should be used to manage America’s fisheries.

That shouldn’t be part of the Policy, either.

So what should be a part of a recreational fishing policy?

In my view, recognition that salt water fish are a public resource, which should be managed in a way that benefits the public as a whole, and not just particular industries.  

That should be coupled with recognition of the fact that recreational fishing is just that—recreation—and that the best recreational experiences occur when fish are abundant and fishing is fun.  Recreational fishing is not and should never be a grim grind aimed at filling the fish box—although eating some of one’s catch is a pleasure that should never be denied.

The way to provide a quality recreational experience is through good, objective science, using data that meets the highest scientific and statistical standards, obtained through reliable and verifiable sources rather than from folks with their own ax to grind.  That science must then be used to craft regulations that place the highest priority on the long-term health of fish stocks, for everything else—all economic, social and recreational benefits—depend on the fish being there.

Fishing in an empty ocean is not very much fun.

But that’s only my view.  I’m sure you have your own.

And if you do, you should let NMFS know what it is, by going to http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/management/recreational/policy/, clicking on the links and filling out the form.

You have until December 31 to do it.

This weekend would be a good time.