HOW A CAMEL'S NOSE COULD AFFECT SUMMER FLOUNDER

For a very long time, summer flounder management was a serious mess.  The biologists at the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council were doing their job, and the fish were responding, but the burdens of recovery weren’t evenly shared.

At first, the same regulations were imposed coastwide, but that didn’t work very well.  Fish tended to be smaller at the southern end of their range, so folks in places such as Virginia and North Carolina had a harder time finding “keepers” than folks farther north.  And some of those northern states caught a lot more fluke than others, which means that a big harvest in a single state could force everyone to fish under more restrictive rules the next season.

To fix those problems, early on in the process, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission then tried allocating a defined part of the harvest to each of the states, and allowed each state to adopt its own regulations.  The only requirement was that such regulations have “conservation equivalency” to a hypothetical coastwide standard.

In theory, that sounded good, but in practice, things quickly fell apart.  A lot of that was due to the fact that state shares were set at the percentage of the recreational harvest each state supposedly landed in 1998.  Such allocations perpetuated the inequities of the old coastwide management system, while failing to provide for changes in the fishery caused by the recovery of the stock, shifts in local abundance or changes in angler participation.

Under the new system, New Jersey was awarded 39% of all recreational summer flounder landings, more than twice the fish given to the next two states in line, New York (17.5%) and Virginia (16.5%) combined.

All the while, an expanding summer flounder population was repopulating waters at the northern end of its historical range, with the larger and older members of that population seeming to move farther north and east every year.  As a result, when compared to its 1998 share of the catch, New Jersey was soon catching relatively fewer fish than its neighbors to the north, while New York was catching a much greater proportion of the total.

The result of this was that New Jersey anglers enjoyed the most relaxed regulations on the coast during most years, while New York anglers were burdened with the most restrictive.  The situation led to a lot of hard feelings, particularly in sections of the New York Bight where New York anglers were forced to release fish that their New Jersey counterparts, drifting less than 50 yards away, but on the other side of the state line, could legally toss into their coolers.

Eventually, the situation grew politically untenable and, aided by a surplus of summer flounder in southern waters, ASMFC replaced it with a regional management program in 2014, which imposed a consistent management regime on neighboring states.

Regional management has proved a success.  Going into the 2016 season, it appears that summer flounder anglers in the Connecticut/New York/New Jersey region will be enjoying stable regulations for the third consecutive year.  

However, those stable regulations required New Jersey anglers to accept some additional restrictions, in order to relieve a little of the burden placed on anglers in Connecticut and New York.  That didn’t go over very well.

In fact, Tom Fote, the governor’s appointee from New Jersey, tried to scuttle the whole process before it began, arguing at the February 2014 meeting of ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board that

“it is one of the most important fisheries in New Jersey…It is one of the largest fisheries in New Jersey.

“If the fish had moved off New York, there would be no problem with New Jersey catching less fish because we should have been under that [state allocation], but just the opposite happened.  We went over again in New Jersey.  If the regionalization would actually do something regionally or up and down the coast, it would be something to look at, but not the way it’s being proposed under this addendum.”

Apparently, even 39% of the harvest wasn’t enough for New Jersey; it still adopted regulations so lax that it kept exceeding its quota, and Fote had no intention of seeing the state have to surrender a single fish to its neighbors.  

Fortunately, the rest of the Management Board saw the merits in the regionalization proposal, and adopted by a healthy margin.  And, contrary to Fote’s assertion, the new approach did end up doing “something regionally,” by both adequately constraining everyone’s harvest and stabilizing regulations, which will now remain essentially unchanged for three consecutive years.

Even so, the folks down in New Jersey continued to rail against the regional management program, but this time, they took a new tack.  Fote had no problem seeing New York anglers severely disadvantaged compared to their counterparts in New Jersey.  But just a year later, he was howling at the inequity that forced New Jersey anglers to release fluke that could be kept in neighboring Delaware.

“I always think that I cannot get more outraged at members of the ASMFC Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Board.

“But they succeeded at their last meeting…Remember, that the problem in Delaware Bay was caused by the actions of this same board last year over the objections of New Jersey.  New Jersey was placed in a region with New York and Connecticut…New Jersey was forced into this regional district with no regard for problems that would be created for those who fish in Delaware Bay.   This caused New Jersey’s Delaware Bay fishermen to fish at 18 inches for a 128 day season.  At the same time the new regions allowed Delaware anglers to fish at 16 inches for a 365 day season.

“This had a devastating effect on the tackle stores, party and charter boat industry in 2015.  [Which was a pretty remarkable statement when it was made in March 2015, as the 2015 season had not yet even begun; perhaps Fote was trying out his hand at prophecy.]  Instead of coming to Fortescue or other New Jersey ports along Delaware Bay, the Pennsylvania anglers went to Delaware.  [emphasis added]”

The only problem is, there is no evidence that such switch to Delaware’s waters ever occurred.

The National Marine Fisheries Service provides statistics that estimate the number of trips made by summer flounder anglers in each state. And when you compare the number of trips made by summer flounder anglers in New Jersey and Delaware in 2013, before regional management went into effect, to the number made in 2014, after the regions were established, it is impossible to demonstrate that  New Jersey lost any angler trips to Delaware, particularly with respect to party boat anglers.

Even so, New Jersey managed to convince ASMFC’s Management Board to consider creating a special Delaware Bay region this year, which would include anglers in both states fishing in Delaware Bay, west of a line drawn through Cape May, New Jersey.  Regulations would be a compromise between those of the two states, with a 17 inch minimum size, 4-fish bag and 128 day season.  The rest of New Jersey would follow the same regulations as New York and Connecticut.

However, New Jersey would no longer combine its allocation of fish with those of Connecticut and New York; instead of 1,081,993 summer flounder being shared by anglers of the three states, New York and Connecticut would share a pool of 596,823 fish, while New Jersey would have its own allocation of 490,626 summer flounder.

There is an old tale of a Bedouin who had to camp out on a cold desert night.  The Bedouin’s tent was small, and his camel was forced to remain outside in the frigid air.  Soon, the camel stuck its nose into the tent, seeking a bit of warmth and the Bedouin, feeling sorry for his faithful mount, allowed it.  Soon, the camel’s neck and front legs slid under the canvas, and the Bedouin allowed that as well.  Not too much later, the entire camel ended up in the tent, while the Bedouin spent the rest of the night outside, nearly freezing to death in the process.

New Jersey’s proposal to set up a special Delaware Bay region is the management equivalent of the camel’s nose.  

Already, if such a region is ultimately established, New Jersey will again have its own allocation of summer flounder; landings in New York and Connecticut will be counted separately.  That would degrade the accuracy of landings estimates, which become less precise when applied to smaller regions, and make it more likely that regulations will change from year to year purely due to statistical errors.

In addition, it paves the way for New Jersey to eventually argue for its own regulations as well.  The state's representatives already claim that differing regulations between it and Delaware disadvantage New Jersey businesses.  Should the Delaware management region be established, the next logical step would be for New Jersey to argue that the entire state needs a single, smaller size limit because businesses in the rest of the state are put at an unfair disadvantage because they have to compete with those serving Delaware Bay.

Sound farfetched?  The Delaware Bay region isn’t even established yet, and such complaints are already beginning.  

The Asbury Park Press is already reporting that

“Not all industry members were on board [with the creation of the Delaware Bay region].  Robin Scott, owner of the family-owned Ray Scott’s Dock in Margate, said her business would stand to lose customers to Delaware Bay boats and tackle shops if the smaller fish limit is adopted.”

Ms. Scott is almost certainly not the only business owner to feel that way.

Thus, it is in the best interests of anglers in New York and Connecticut, and perhaps throughout southern New England, to keep the camel’s nose outside where it belongs, and not let it sneak into the tent.  If they fail to do so, there is a good chance that summer flounder management could again become the mess it was prior to 2014.  We'll all be back out in the cold.

ASMFC is taking comments on the proposal to create a Delaware Bay region through 5:00 pm on Wednesday, January 21.  Additional information, including information on where to send comments, may be found at http://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file//56785506DraftAddendumXXVII_PublicComment_Dec2015.pdf.

It would be a good idea if a lot of folks let ASMFC know that creating a special Delaware Bay region is not a good idea. 

PUTTING FISH FIRST

The headline in the Alaska Dispatch News put it pretty well.

“If Alaska’s leaders put ‘fish first,’ we’ll prosper for generations.”

It’s not a difficult concept.  Whether you’re a commercial fisherman, a recreational fisherman or somebody who likes to snorkel or SCUBA dive and just watch fish swim by, without an abundance of fish, you don’t have much fun and you don’t make much money.  And not making money extends to other businesses, too, particularly those that support the angling and diving sides of things.

Even so, people have trouble wrapping their minds around it.  Even those who have given the concept of “putting the fish first” some level of lip service turn their backs on the notion when it begins to cause them inconvenience.

Yet without the fish, fishing becomes sort of futile, so folks ought to be giving “fish first” management a whole lot more thought.

That seems to be what’s happening up in Alaska.  The article in the Alaska Dispatch News was written by folks on the newly elected governor’s transition team, who were tasked with recommending the fisheries policies the state should adopt going forward.  They summarize their recommendations pretty clearly.

“The first recommendation from our committee at the transition team meeting was for the state of Alaska to define and implement a clear ‘fish first’ policy.  It is our consensus that such policy would include actions like creating enforcement methods for Alaska’s Policy for Sustainable Fisheries Management, enacting legislation that would ensure that there is always an adequate amount of water left in streams for fish, and ensuring that resource development projects never block the passage and migration of salmon to their spawning grounds.  It also includes protection for salmon and halibut while in the marine environment, ensuring salmon are not intercepted at sea and juvenile halibut survive to support historic fisheries.  Our committee put forward common-sense changes and recommendations for fisheries and habitat management that improve the system for Alaskans today and for generations to come…”

The recommendations were, of necessity, Alaska-specific, but the basic principles that underlie them are applicable to every coast of the United States.

Every coast would benefit from fish-first management policies that

• ·  Were based on a policy of managing fisheries for sustainability, coupled with enforcement mechanisms that assured such policy would not be evaded;
• ·  Maintaining healthy habitats in which fish can thrive;
• ·  Adequate marine spatial planning to assure that development, of any sort, does not interfere with the life cycles of any fish stock;
• ·  Protecting anadromous species while they are at sea, and not merely in the rivers;
• ·  Restricting harvest and discard mortality of juvenile fish, so that they may mature and support healthy fisheries; and
• ·  Perhaps the most important of all, manage not merely for current users, but for the benefit of generations that have not yet been born.

It’s hard to look at the above list of goals and not think of fisheries where they should be applied; it is equally hard to look at that list and think of fisheries where such goals are being openly and aggressively subverted.

The committee on which the article’s authors served also produced a detailed report that contained their recommendations.  It also contained a list of barriers to successfully implementing such recommendations, along with some ideas of how those barriers might be breached.  

Once again, we find things that are common to every coast in the nation.

Some are almost too obvious to discuss, such as the “Lack of scientific data due to lack of money” hampering fishery management efforts.  But others deserve a little closer look, particularly because they do come out of the Alaska experience, which represents what is arguably the most successful fishery management effort in the country.

For example, two of the barriers mentioned were “Subversion of science to politics” and “Sustainability rhetoric from state versus reality (i.e. effective implementation of sustainable practices).”

Anyone who is active in the fisheries management process is familiar with those issues, for in the end, fisheries management is a political process.  That’s frustrating to fishery management professionals who, on the whole, are trained biologists who want to do the right thing, and the lifeblood of various economic interests and advocacy groups who want to operate at the state level, where they can use political pressure to subvert science based fishery management.

Today, the biggest example of that is taking place in the Gulf of Mexico, where red snapper anglers are trying to escape their share of the burden for rebuilding the stock by taking management authority away from the National Marine Fisheries Service and handing it over to the several Gulf states.  However, it has also emerged in North Carolina, where coastal legislators sympathetic to gill net fishermen have threatened to thwart measures needed to conserve southern flounder, and all along the Atlantic Coast, where the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which gives lip service to

“promot[ing] the conservation of Atlantic coastal fisheries resources…based on the best scientific information”

in its charter, but has repeatedly failed to heed scientific advice on stocks ranging from American lobster, to tautog, to weakfish.

The solution to such problem that the Alaska report suggests is both simple and sensible,

“Recommit to sustainability and precautionary management—walk the talk.”

Federal fisheries managers, bound to such course by the conservation and stock rebuilding provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, are already acting that way.  Unfortunately, such precautionary management style necessarily results in lower harvest levels in the short term than does the sort of politically driven management often practiced by the states—which is exactly why some folks in the Gulf and elsewhere are currently trying to weaken the law.  They have invested fully in the short term, while their commitment to “generations to come” is nearly nil.

Closely related to that is the recommendation that managers combat the “Myth that we can re-create fish, recreate nature, recreate habitat or replace wild runs with hatchery production.”  

Such myth is irresistibly attractive to the sort of folks who want to kill as many fish as they can, without concern for the impact on natural systems.  Experiences across the country with trout and other salmonids has proven it wrong, but its promise that anglers can abandon restraint and continue to overfish natural stocks lends it a timeless measure of support.

It really hasn’t caught on in East Coast salt waters, except down in the Gulf of Mexico, where Texas has ballyhooed the concept for years, despite an American Fisheries Society review that notes

“Substantial resources have been allocated to augmenting populations of red drum and spotted seatrout with hatchery stockings.  While the survival of hatchery-reared fish has been documented, the research hypothesis that hatchery stockings increase abundance has not been conclusively proven.”

It is not unlikely that the money currently allocated to such stocking efforts would be better utilized to better manage wild stocks.

Because, in the end, maintaining wild stocks at sustainable levels of abundance is the only way to assure that future generations will have any real opportunity to reap the same benefits from coastal fisheries resources that we have enjoyed.

And you don’t assure such sustainability by permitting overharvest in order to avoid short-term socioeconomic impacts or placing political considerations above scientific advice.

You assure it by putting the needs of the fish, themselves, first.

An abundance of good will flow from there.

WHO WILL RED SNAPPER ANGLERS BLAME NEXT?

Gulf of Mexico red snapper anglers lost in court again this week. 

The case, Coastal Conservation Association v. United States Department of Commerce, was decided on January 5 by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, sitting in New Orleans. 

The Coastal Conservation Association said that the National Marine Fisheries Service improperly reserved a portion of the recreational red snapper quota for federally-licensed party and charter boats, rather than leaving it a part of a common pool that could also be accessed by private vessels and for-hire vessels without a federal reef fish permit.

The judge said that CCA was wrong. 

I’ve written about Gulf red snapper now and again over the past couple of years.  For those new to the topic, the issue is effectively this:  Red snapper were badly overfished by both the recreational and commercial sector, but beginning about a decade ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service began to turn that around, and the stock is now rebuilding nicely. 

Commercial overfishing ended in 2007, after the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council replaced the historic, free-for-all “derby” fishery with a “catch share” program in which each commercial fishermen was granted a percentage of the overall commercial quota, based on past reported landings.  Fishermen were then free to either catch their share of the quota themselves or, if they chose not to fish, to lease or sell it to another fisherman willing to pay the requested price.

Recreational overfishing, however, continued apace.

“Conservation” might be CCA’s middle name, but neither it nor the red snapper anglers that it represented cared enough about conservation to accept regulations strict enough to prevent recreational fishermen from exceeding their share of the overall harvest. 

Instead, they proposed that the NMFS change the commercial/recreational allocation, to effectively take fish away from the commercial guys, who were not overfishing, and give them to the recreational folks, who were.  To some, that might seem like rewarding folks for their bad behavior, but CCA argued that

“Using 30-year-old landings to set a modern allocation is inappropriate.  The current allocation was set using the first nine years of MRFSS recreational data collection, 1979-1987, which we now know to have a significant bias.  Reallocating red snapper increases to the recreational sector would increase fairness by righting the wrongs of this flawed initial allocation.”

As often happens when folks challenge NMFS data, CCA didn’t offer up any hard numbers in support of its claim; instead, it tried to impeach NMFS’ figures by bringing up reasons why they just might be wrong.  To be fair, a recent review of the data did show that recreational landings were undercounted, and as a result, the recreational share of the fishery was increased from 49% to 51.5%, although that increase is probably somewhat less than CCA desired. 

In the meantime, red snapper anglers allied with CCA realized that they didn’t have to venture out into federal waters to catch red snapper; they could catch them in state waters, too.  Since federal rules didn’t apply in state waters, they encouraged the states to adopt far more liberal regulations than federal managers, who are legally bound to prevent overfishing, could ever consider.

The result was described in a recent Outdoors column in the Corpus Christi (TX) Caller-Times.

“…the states did an end-run by creating relaxed snapper rules in their jurisdictional waters.  This threatens to derail the current rebuilding trend.

“State defiance or denial has resulted in expanded or newly-created state-water seasons in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.  Remember that Texas already had a year-round season, with a four-fish daily bag.  Extending state seasons backfired by hastening the annual harvest pace, which resulted in reaching the gulf’s quota more quickly.

“In turn, this forced the feds to shave days off the federal season, to abide by a rebuilding schedule mandated by Congress.  I should point out that the 365-day state season in Texas is a farce, wink-wink, because it essentially allows anglers to ignore the invisible jurisdictional boundary and remove fish from federal waters out of season…”

Such a result might make the state-waters fishery sound problematic, and to biologists trying to rebuild the red snapper stock, it is.  However, it put CCA and its allies in a no-lose position.

On one hand, red snapper anglers could still catch plenty of fish in state waters—and maybe federal waters, too—when the federal season was closed. 

On the other hand, NMFS was forced to shorten the federal season to just a few days as a result of all of the snapper being killed in state waters.  That short season gave CCA a reason to claim that the federal management system was so badly “broken” that the only way to fix things is to hand red snapper management over to the states.

The states, of course, would not be bound by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which prohibits overfishing and requires stocks to be rebuilt within a time certain.  So if management was handed over to the states, red snapper anglers could kill even more fish.

Machiavelli would have been proud…

The only problem with that approach was that it hurt quite a few people, and those people weren’t willing to pay the price for someone else’s bad conduct.

Commercial fishermen, who had seen their earnings increase as red snapper grew more abundant, went to court, and on March 26, 2014, in the case of Guindon v. Pritzker, a federal judge decided that NMFS had a duty to “require whatever accountability measures are necessary” to prevent anglers from overfishing the red snapper stock.

CCA was not pleased, and predictably blamed the federal management system, “elite commercial businesses” and the Environmental Defense Fund, rather than their members’ overfishing, for the court’s decision.

But commercial fishermen were not the only ones being hurt by recreational overharvest.  Federally-permitted charter and party boats were only allowed to fish when the federal waters were open.  They could not participate in the longer state seasons.  That hurt their businesses badly.

In order to protect themselves from the consequences of private boat anglers’ excessive harvest in state waters, they asked the Gulf Council to separate the federally-permitted for-hire sector from the rest of the for-hire fleet.  They asked for a portion of the recreational quota, based on the for-hires’ historical proportion of recreational landings, which they could land unaffected by the private boats’ actions.  That request was granted, and upheld in the court decision described at the beginning of this post.

Again, CCA was not pleased.  Bill Bird, Chairman of its Government Relations Committee, complained that

“The great risk in these kinds of cases is that the court will simply defer to the federal agency charged with managing public resources and, unfortunately, that is what the court chose to do in this case.”

Of course, Bird probably should have mentioned that is exactly what the court is supposed to do, unless the agency’s action was arbitrary, capricious or contrary to law; the Supreme Court said that such deference is required in the case of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. 

And yet again, CCA blamed federal managers for doing their job, and claimed that state managers would have done something better.

In their zeal to impose state management on the red snapper fishery, CCA and the rest of the militant red snapper crowd even managed to convince Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) to put a provision in the federal omnibus spending bill that would give all of the Gulf states jurisdiction to manage the red snapper fishery within nine miles of their shores, rather than the three-mile limit that prevailed off Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. 

Such an extension of state jurisdiction is likely to increase the number of red snapper killed when the federal season is closed, and thus cause the federal season to become even shorter.  It’s possible that federal waters won’t open at all.

And one can’t help but wonder who CCA and the rest will blame if that ever happens.  It won’t be the state, and it won’t be themselves.  They don’t want to address the real problems.

However, there are anglers on the Gulf Coast who are willing to work with fisheries managers to find real solutions that will allow anglers to fish for red snapper without putting the rebuilding effort in jeopardy.  Anglers who are willing to accept responsibility for their own actions, and recognize the need for regulations that adequately constrain their catch.

The Gulf Council has considered convening a private recreational advisory panel that would allow such anglers to air their views and, without rancor, work toward a viable solution.

However, there is one problem.

The same militant red snapper anglers who gave birth to many of the current problems, the same people who are trying to overthrow the federal management system in order to increase their kill, are trying to prevent that panel from meeting.

They have lost at the council level, they have lost at the highest levels at NMFS, they have lost in the courts.  But still they refuse to admit that they may be on the wrong side of the issue.

So like the “Vanilla ISIS” militants out in Oregon, who have staged an armed occupation of a bird sanctuary to protest federal resource management policies, the red snapper militants have taken the recreational advisory panel hostage, and will not let anglers who might be opposed to their views have a say (they justify their actions by saying that such anglers’ actions might be orchestrated by various organizations, conveniently ignoring the fact that, even if that were so, their own actions are orchestrated by various organizations as well.)

Perhaps they feel that the only way they have a prayer of winning is if no one else shows up at the fight.

But the responsible anglers aren’t backing down.  They have started a petition on change.org, demanding that an advisory panel meeting be held.

That petition can be found here https://www.change.org/p/gulf-of-mexico-fishery-management-council-fwc-aldnr-tpwd-ldwf-mdwfp-ask-the-gulf-fishery-management-council-to-convene-a-private-recreational-ap?recruiter=367030668&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-lg-share_for_starters-reason_msg&fb_ref=Default

Anyone who would like to see this long, dismal fight reach a conclusion might want to sign—now.

RECREATIONAL DATA TAKEN HOSTAGE BY GULF SNAPPER ANGLERS

If you pay any attention to fishery management issues (and if you’re reading this blog, it’s pretty clear that you do), you know that one of the most contentious issues, which comes up year after year, is the estimate of recreational landings.

Commercial landings are pretty easy to measure, because commercial fishermen, as well as the processors and packing houses that purchase their products, are generally required to report such landings on a timely basis.  To be sure, there are holes in the process.  Some fail to report, some report late and some fish are sold outside of formal channels of distribution.  Illegal landings and fish sales occur.  But on the whole, commercial landings are reported and recorded in something not too far from real time, and management based on those reports is pretty reliable.

But when it comes to recreational landings, it’s not that easy.  There are thousands of commercial fishermen on the coast; there are millions of anglers.  Commercial fishermen tend to land a lot of fish at the same time, and do so at fish buyers’ docks and in other, predictable locations.  Anglers land their fish in ones and twos—sometimes in dozens—along every part of the coast; some are caught from the banks of tidal creeks in the dark of night, others are landed at busy marinas and still others at private docks in the anglers’ backyards.

There are few real-time reporting requirements for recreational fishermen, but at least one that does exist—recreational reporting of bluefin tuna—is typically ignored.  And it is physically and economically impossible to physically interview every angler at the end of every trip.

As a result, fisheries managers have had to devise ways to estimate recreational landings, based on  creel surveys that provide data on catch frequency and composition, coupled with telephone surveys that provide a window on angler effort.  Such effort, called the Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey, or “MRFSS,” represented a supposedly statistically valid means to obtain such landings data.

Like all estimates derived from surveys, those derived from MRFSS included some inherent level of error.  Such error was fairly insignificant when the survey was used to measure then overall harvest of a commonly-encountered species along the entire coast over the course of a year.  However, when managers used MRFSS to gauge the landings of species that is not caught very often, and/or tried to limit the scope of the survey by state, time period or recreational sector (e.g., shore angler, party boat angler, etc.), the level of error increased significantly, sometimes rendering the estimate practically unusable.

And that was a problem, because as managers began to rebuild overfished stocks, and rebuilding plans required strict regulation of all fishermen, including anglers, MRFSS’ inherent errors became both a practical and a political problem.

MRFSS became the favorite whipping boy of any member of the angling community who wanted to kill a few too many fish, but was prevented from doing so by regulations based, in part, on the MRFSS numbers.  The recreational fishing industry, which generally saw rebuilding programs as a threat to current profits, were particularly vehement.  Comments made by the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund were typical:

“Despite the degree of economic downturn in the USA, the unprecedented amount of inclement weather this past summer, and by almost all accounts, a general downturn in angler participation, the Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey (MRFSS) has determined that increasingly significant landings of Summer Flounder have occurred!  The MRFSS data also shows effort and participation numbers at odds with first hand industry observations!

“This information is completely contrary to evidence gathered by marine fisheries businesses up and down the coast.”

Such comments were used by organizations intent on undermining the conservation and rebuilding provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to alienate anglers from the management process.

And in truth, MRFSS estimates were somewhat flawed due to biases that had become part of the system, a fact confirmed by a National Academy of Sciences review.

So the National Marine Fisheries Service set out to overhaul the process of estimating recreational harvest, with the eventual goal of replacing MRFSS with a new methodology called the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP).

At this point, MRIP remains a work in progress.  That is mainly because NMFS is being very careful to get it right, and avoid making the sort of mistakes that it made with MRFSS.  MRIP is being phased in over a period of years, and NMFS has asked that it be reviewed by the National Research Council before it is fully implemented to detect any problems before they infect the data.

Thus, both fisheries managers and anglers on every coast of the United States were getting close to enjoying the benefits of a robust catch estimate system—until the red snapper anglers down in the Gulf of Mexico intervened.

The intervention didn’t take place because the red snapper anglers had a problem with MRIP, which is actually leading to higher estimates of acceptable biological catch and maximum sustainable yield (although they have encouraged states to create their own surveys to challenge NMFS’ numbers).  

Instead, they convinced Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, to insert language into the Omnibus budget bill that would hold money for MRIP’s full implementation hostage, not permitting its expenditure until the red snapper anglers get a stock assessment that they approve.

Now, it’s not as if red snapper have not already been assessed.  

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council conducted a benchmark stock assessment in 2013, and issued an 1,100 page report summarizing its findings. 

The Data Workshop, which provided the information on which such assessment was based, included a 30-person panel composed of individuals from federal and state fishery management bodies, as well as the private sector, and considered a trove of information that included 33 papers produced solely for the workshop, as well as 50 other reference papers that explored aspects of the Gulf’s red snapper population. 

The conclusions reached in the stock assessment were peer reviewed by a panel of independent experts, and updated in 2015.

The stock assessment clearly represents the best available science.  However, Gulf red snapper anglers don’t want an assessment that represents the best available science, they want an assessment that lets them kill more fish.

Thus, they prevailed upon Senator Shelby to pass a law requiring NMFS to conduct an assessment that places emphasis on artificial reefs and oil rigs where red snapper congregate, and thus is likely to edge population estimates—and harvests—substantially upward, whether such estimates are scientifically valid or not.

And want to hold up MRIP implementation until they get their way.

The saddest thing may be that they’re proud of what they’re doing.  In a press release issued by the Coastal Conservation Association on December 16, Pat Murray, CCA’s President, is quoted as saying

“It is impossible to get the red snapper fishery back on a course that makes sense for the angling public under the current broken federal management system…We are fortunate to have Sen. Shelby not only recognize the systemic problems, but begin fixing this frustrating situation.”

Murray wasn’t alone in his sentiments.  Senator Shelby’s actions were also praised by the American Sportfishing Association and the Center for Coastal Conservation, among other organizations. 

In endorsing such outrageous disruption of needed federal recreational data improvements, in the name of solving a single, parochial problem, they have all essentially flipped the bird and issued a big “Screw You!” to anglers in the rest of the nation who fish for cod, haddock, winter flounder, summer flounder, black sea bass, bluefish, weakfish, scup, striped bass, red drum, speckled trout, king mackerel or any other species that is dependent upon good recreational harvest estimates for its management.

Shortly after I started writing this blog two years ago, I posted a piece called “Red Snapper Anglers Embarrass Us All,” which remains the single most popular essay that I have written; each week, a few folks still read it.  It describes how the Gulf’s red snapper anglers, and their selfish political machinations, cast discredit on all of America’s recreational fishermen.

But that piece is now a little passé. 

With this latest effort to deny the rest of America’s anglers the benefit of accurate data estimates and the sort of good fisheries management that such estimates bring, the Gulf red snapper anglers, or at least its self-centered core and the organizations which represent them, who are willing to bring down the federal fisheries management system just so they can score some sort of Pyrrhic victory against NMFS and the Gulf of Mexico Council, have now demonstrated themselves to be not just an embarrassment, but an actual threat, to responsible anglers and angler-related businesses on every coast.

It is disappointing to see how far once-reasonable folks have fallen.

But today, that’s just the way things are.

MORE BAD INFORMATION ABOUT OCEAN PLANNING

Ocean planning is a hot topic these days, with both state and federal agencies looking at how sections of ocean might best be used.

Unfortunately, it’s also one of those hot-button topics that draws knee-jerk reactions from some in the angling community, who immediately oppose the notion without first taking the time to understand it at all.

This was recently brought to my attention by a post entitled “Our Right to Fish Is at Risk” on a website called The Activist Angler. 

The post is an unfocused screed that throws such diverse issues as no-take reserves, ocean planning, catch-share programs, freshwater invasive species controls and private lake associations’ prohibitions into a single pot, then tries to sell them as a great conspiracy to abolish angling. It includes the usual unreasoned attack on the conservation community, with the author imagining that

“those who dislike recreational fishing or, at best, are indifferent to it, are using their White House alliances to push for massive federal control of public waters..

“[T]hose pushing an anti-fishing agenda are preservationists who believe in ‘look but don’t touch.’  They assert that humans live apart from nature, rather than as a part of it…

“Consequently, the big picture is that a concerted effort is underway to deny us access to a public resource, and, in so doing, to deny and destroy a significant portion of our history, culture and economy—not to mention our right to enjoy a day on the water with friends and family…”

It’s nothing that we haven’t heard before, although tossing catch shares in with freshwater invasives, and suggesting that they’re all a part of the same sinister environmentalists’ plot, may be a new high in angling-related paranoia. 

The writer appears to be a pond fisherman, and apparently a pretty good one.  He may fish salt water from time to time—that’s not completely clear—but as a “Senior Writer” for Bass Anglers Sportsmen’s Society publications, and the author on a book on freshwater bass fishing, his expertise seems to be tilted heavily toward pulling small fish out of enclosed waters, and not to ocean issues.

However, a lack of day-to-day familiarity apparently doesn’t stop him from writing on marine matters.  As he says of himself,

“[I]t was my coverage of the federal Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force that sparked a firestorm of controversy.  Although I did not say that President Obama was considering a ban on recreational angling, as some disreputable sources proclaimed, I did say that the task force posed a threat to public access to public waters, not only for our oceans, coastal waters, and Great Lakes, but inland fisheries as well.”

What he doesn’t say is that his coverage of the matter, which appeared on the ESPN website, and the resultant “firestorm of controversy” that ensued, was pretty well disclaimed by the rational angling community, including ESPN, which noted, in part,

“ESPNOutdoors.com inadvertently contributed to a flare-up Tuesday when we posted the latest article in a series of stories on President Barak Obama’s newly created Ocean Policy Task Force…Regrettably, we made several errors in the editing and presentation of this installment…

“[W]hile our series overall has examined several sides of this topic, this particular column was not properly balanced and failed to represent contrary points of view…

“’[G]iven the nature of this task force and the potential impact on all fishermen, this was an appropriate topic to address for our audience.  We take seriously the tenets of journalism that require we take an unbiased approach, and when we make mistakes in the presentation of a story or a column, it is our responsibility to admit them…”

The unjustified “firestorm” happened five years ago, but “The Activist Angler” has apparently not learned from the experience.  

He’s still issuing the same sort of “they’re out to get us” rants.  As a quick perusal of his site will show, that’s probably because, instead of spending much of his time out on salt water learning the issues for himself, he gets his information second hand, relying on press releases from industry-related organizations that have their own axes to grind.

An active salt water angler, who actually takes the time to reason things out, will see ocean planning in a very different light.

Certainly, ocean planning is not the same thing as establishing marine reserves.  While it’s not impossible that marine reserves might be established under such a program, having a comprehensive planning process in place actually makes it more likely that any reserves that are established will not be placed in areas that are extremely important to fishermen, whether recreational or commercial. 

That’s because a comprehensive ocean plan will look at all existing and potential uses for a region, and then consider the needs of all stakeholders before deciding which uses are compatible with a given section of sea.  Under such a transparent program, both recreational and commercial fishermen would be able to identify areas important to them, and present their case for why closing such areas would be inappropriate.

Perhaps more important in the long run, such fishermen would also be able to make their case as to why such areas should not be opened to other activities, such as resource extraction or perhaps the building of an offshore LNG terminal, that would degrade the habitat or make them inaccessible to anglers. 

And yes, ocean planning really does work that way. 

Here in New York, I was very involved with the process when the Department of State updated its coastal zone management program.  I traveled to fishing clubs bearing an array of charts, marking off the spots that anglers deemed important, and did not want disturbed.  Other folks went to dive clubs, or spoke with commercial fishermen and other users to identify areas important to the various stakeholder groups, which were later incorporated into the management plan.

On a practical level, we’ve seen the state reject two LNG terminals, one planned for the eastern end of Long Island Sound and one for the approaches to New York harbor, because it recognized that such terminals, along with their attendant infrastructure, were not appropriate for the region.  

Far from threatening anglers, such actions assured that we would be able to freely access our waters and would not see important hard-bottom habitat disturbed.

Off Rhode Island, the first wind farm on the Atlantic Coast is being constructed with very little controversy, or threat to fishermen, due to an effective ocean planning process.  As noted in Slate,

“…Rhode Island zoned the ocean waters under its control, and designated this area as a renewable-energy zone.  While support for the plan wasn’t unanimous, the fact that the community effectively chose the spot”

minimized opposition to the project.

Yet ocean planning doesn’t need to address such great concerns as energy production.  Even squabbles about who gets to fish where falls under its control.  When New Jersey recently limited commercial fishermen’s ability to compete with anglers on two of the state’s artificial reefs, and completely banned them from fishing another reef under construction, it was an example of ocean planning in action.  

So was New York’s adoption of a law prohibiting menhaden reduction vessels from fishing in most of the waters on its side of Long Island Sound.

It’s impossible to argue that either of those actions hurt recreational fishermen, or that recreational fishermen should fight the sort of ocean planning that made such actions possible.  Yet if a comprehensive ocean planning policy had been in place early enough, it’s very possible that neither action would have been necessary.

For good ocean planning can be of great benefit to salt water anglers.  The key is, indeed, becoming “activist” anglers and showing up at the meetings when shareholder input is sought.  

But before anyone becomes an “activist,” they need to get a firm grip on the issues and know what they’re talking about.

MAGNUSON-STEVENS REAUTHORIZATION: THERE'S NO ESCAPING REALITY

On Monday, December 7, the House Natural Resources Committee held an oversight field hearing in Riverhead, New York. Entitled “Restoring Atlantic Fisheries and Protecting the Regional Seafood Economy,” it illuminated the debate surrounding reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens).

The Committee had already approved H.R. 1335, the so-called Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, which was passed by the House last spring; the hearing was held in New York at the request of Rep. Lee Zeldin, a freshman Republican and an avowed opponent of the conservation and stock rebuilding provisions of Magnuson-Stevens.

The majority of the witnesses were opponents of such provisions, too. Even so, more than one of them unwittingly praised Magnuson-Stevens while doing their best to condemn it.

Jim Donofrio, Executive Director of the Recreational Fisheries Alliance, set the tone in his opening statement.

“Prior to the modern advent of environmental organizations…fishermen assumed the function of advocate, scientist, manager, and conservationist long before these roles were defined in the modern fisheries management…”

That’s probably why summer flounder abundance fell to the lowest level ever recorded in 1989, when biologists had trouble finding fishthat had managed to survive for more than two years, black sea bass were probably overfished from 1996 through 2002 and scup spawning stock biomass flatlined below 25,000 metric tons from at least 1984 (and perhaps earlier) through 2000.

And that’s also probably why, even after the Magnuson-Stevens Act, as amended in 1996, required that managers end overfishing and rebuild stocks within a time certain, the fishermen who dominated the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council still created a summer flounder management plan that had an 80% chance of failure in 1999.

As Mr. Donofrio words suggest, management didn’t improve until the “environmental organizations” stepped in, the Natural Resources Defense Council sued the National Marine Fisheries Service over that summer flounder plan, and a federal court declared that

“Only in Superman Comics Bizarro world, where reality is turned upside down, could the [National Marine Fisheries] Service reasonably conclude that a measure that is at least four times as likely to fail as to succeed offers ‘a fairly high level of confidence.”

That court decision finally gave the Magnuson-Stevens Act real legal teeth. As a result, the age and size structure of today’s summer flounder stock has markedly improved; by the end of 2014, the summer flounder spawning stock was nearly eight times larger than it was in 1989. The black sea bass stock was fully rebuilt by 2009, while scup have grown so abundant that their biomass is now twice the number needed to produce maximum sustainable yield.

Even so, Mr. Donofrio refused to give Magnuson-Stevens credit for all of the good that it had done. Instead, he made the incredible claim that “Magnuson is not working,” and praised H.R. 1335.

The testimony of Bonnie Brady, Executive Director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, was marked by the same disconnect.

She began by rightly noting that

“Federally, our commercial fish stocks are in very good shape. Of the 308 commercially caught (230 of which represent 90 percent of all commercial landings) stocks, 84% are not overfished and 92% overfishing is not occurring, while 37 stocks have been rebuilt since 2000.”

But then she, too, failed to give due credit to Magnuson-Stevens, and instead also supported H.R. 1335, saying

“Nothing has destroyed our New York fish economies more than the unintended consequences of a rigid, ten-year timeline for rebuilding a fishery to a supposed Spawning Stock Biomass (SSB) level that does not take into account the economic effect on fishing communities that must suffer these cuts, and the cumulative effect when more than one fishery is in need of rebuilding.”

Like Mr. Donofrio, she supports a Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill that would, as Mr. Donofrio’s says,

“allow for long-term sustainability, rebuilding and improved access [“improved access” being a euphemism for larger harvests] without compromising conservation goals.”

Unfortunately, such legislation resembles a diet that allows folks to eat steak and eggs for breakfast, pizza for lunch and a pound of pasta—plus sausage—for dinner, and still lose a few pounds, in one important respect. Neither one exists in the real world.

That point was emphasized by Capt. Patrick Paquette of Hyannis, Massachusetts, a hometown that has made Capt. Paquette an eyewitness to what the sort of “flexibility in fisheries management” proposed by supporters of H.R. 1335 can do to a fishery. In his testimony to the Committee, Capt. Paquette firmly declared that

“Flexibility failed America’s oldest fishery…

“No clearer example of this exists than what [the New England Fishery Management Council] & [the National Marine Fisheries Service] did when a stock assessment in 2011/2012 confirmed what some fishermen had been saying for a few years; there was an ongoing and significant decline of our nation’s oldest fishery, Gulf of Maine cod (GOM cod). Management decisions took advantage of existing flexibility within [the Magnuson-Stevens Act] to push back mandatory rebuilding timelines; initiate interim measures that delayed and lessened the immediate impact of reduced catch limits and conduct a previously unscheduled back-to-back stock assessment to corroborate the decline.

“Ultimately, however, these allegedly creative ways to use existing flexibility within [the Magnuson-Stevens Act] once again delayed needed rebuilding of the stock and merely paved the way for quotas so small that recreational harvest of GOM cod was shut down for all of 2015, because the recreational quota of 30% of the annual catch limit was used up by discard mortality that occurs when fishing for other species. This use of the existing flexibility under [the Magnuson-Stevens Act] seemed eerily familiar to the failed management practices of the past.

“…The evidence shows that increased flexibility, whether it is for GOM cod, summer flounder, or other valuable species will not provide the sustained fishing opportunities our fishermen and communities need. Many small boat commercial and nearly all recreational fishermen that rely on GOM Cod and other iconic species will respectfully urge you to be careful what you might ask for when it comes to flexibility. Flexibility Failed GOM cod.”

Thus, in the testimony of just three of the witnesses, we find the underlying truths in the Magnuson-Stevens debate.

At one time, “fishermen assumed the function of advocate, scientist, manager, and conservationist long before these roles were defined in the modern fisheries management.”

And fish stocks crashed.

In 1996, the Magnuson-Stevens Act was amended by the addition of strong conservation and rebuilding provisions. As a result, “Federally, our commercial fish stocks are in very good shape. Of the 308 commercially caught…stocks, 84% are not overfished and 92% overfishing is not occurring, while 37 stocks have been rebuilt since 2000.”

Despite such clear success, some fishermen want Magnuson-Stevens to be weakened, by introducing greater “flexibility” to the management process.

But “Flexibility Failed GOM cod.”

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NOTE:  This post first appeared in "From the Waterfront", the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which may be found at http://www.conservefish.org/blog/