MID-ATLANTIC BLACK SEA BASS: "IS THE MAGNUSON ACT OPTIONAL?"

Of all the fisheries on the East Coast, the mid-Atlantic black sea bass stock may present the most challenging management issues.

The fish aren’t in immediate peril; the most recent stock assessment update indicated that spawning stock biomass was more than twice the target level. Overfishing is not taking place, and young fish continue to be recruited into the stock in adequate numbers.

At the same time, recreational catch regularly exceeds the recreational harvest limit (RHL). The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board (Board) seem neither willing nor able to take the actions needed to prevent such overages.

In some ways, black sea bass have become victims of their own success. The stock was badly overfished during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Overfishing continued until 2007. But once the Council and Board managed to end overfishing, the stock began to grow; such growth was hastened by warming winter waters at the edge of the continental shelf, which spurred the recruitment of juvenile fish into the stock.

Because recreational fishing effort is closely tied to abundance, as the black sea bass population expanded, more and more anglers began targeting the species. Off New England, fishery managers saw angler trips primarily targeting black sea bass increase from 31,400 in 2000 to 190,100 in 2010 to 621,600 in 2020.

Recreational harvest in New England waters also increased, growing from 294,000 fish in 2000 to 1,601,000 in 2020, even though recreational fishing regulations grew much more restrictive over that time. A similar pattern was seen in New York, where black sea bass harvest increased from 460,000 fish in 2000 to 1,274,000 two decades later, while directed black sea bass trips jumped from 141,000 to 562,000 over the same period.

As a result of such increased fishing effort, anglers exceeded the RHL in eight of the eleven years between 2010 and 2020, with such overages ranging from a nominal 4% in 2018 to a striking 141% in 2012; in six of the eight years, the RHL was exceeded by over 50%. Based on the landings during the first eight months of 2021, managers expect anglers to exceed this year’s RHL.

A History of Inaction

Yet, despite such repeated overages, the Council and Board have, since 2019, made no effort to keep recreational catch at or below the RHL.

2019 was a critical year, for it was the year that the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) which both the Council and Board use to estimate recreational effort, catch, and landings, replaced its venerable Coastal Households Telephone Survey, used to estimate angling effort, with a new, mail-based Fishing Effort Survey. The new survey revealed that angling effort, and so recreational catch and landings, were much higher than previously believed.

An operational stock assessment, released in 2019, included MRIP’s higher landing estimate among the data that it used to calculate the spawning stock biomass; as a result, such assessment estimated black sea bass spawning stock biomass at 33,407 metric tons at the end of 2018, which was much higher than the 22,176 metric tons estimated for 2015 in the last benchmark stock assessment—even though the spawning stock biomass has been declining since 2014.

The higher biomass estimate in the operational assessment led the Council and Board to increase the RHL from 3.66 million pounds in 2019 to 5.48 million pounds in 2020 and 2021. Yet recreational landings remained substantially higher; Council staff predicted that the coastwide black sea bass landings for 2019 would be about 7.33 million pounds, well in excess of the 2020 RHL. Such overage would normally mean that the recreational black sea bass regulations for 2020 would be made more restrictive, to prevent anglers from again exceeding the RHL.

Overages were not unusual in the recreational black sea bass fishery. The average of recreational landings for the years 2016-2018 substantially exceeded not only the average RHLs for those years, but the recreational sector’s annual catch limits (ACLs), too. When average landings exceed the average ACLs in any three-year period, while spawning stock biomass remains above the target level, accountability measures in the black sea bass management plan require “consideration of adjustments to the recreational bag, size, and/or season limits in response to the ACL overage, taking into account the performance of the measures and conditions that precipitated the overage.”

Such adjustments were never discussed by either the Council or Board.

Council staff recognized that “there may be a consideration that the 2020 recreational management measures in state and federal waters remain unchanged from 2019 to allow the Council and Board time to transition to a management system that accounts for the new MRIP estimates in a more gradual fashion,” but warned that “status quo recreational management measures in 2020 could pose an unacceptably high risk of exceeding the [Overfishing Limit]. [emphasis in the original]”

Yet, despite that warning, the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee (Monitoring Committee), which is composed of individuals representing the Council, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the Board, and affected states, recommended that the Council and Board make no changes to the recreational black sea bass regulations, despite the likelihood that anglers would exceed the 2020 RHL.

The Monitoring Committee justified its recommendation by saying, “it is very hard to justify a reduction when the RHL is increasing by 59% compared to 2019, spawning stock biomass was 2.4 times the target level in 2018, and availability to anglers remains very high…it is challenging to constrain the recreational fishery under current high levels of availability and further restrictions on harvest would likely increase discards…spawning stock biomass has remained very high despite multiple years of [Acceptable Biological Catch] overages going back at least to 2015…”

The Monitoring Committee recommended status quo measures, rather than the 29% reduction suggested by Council staff, even though it fully recognized that such measures were likely to cause recreational harvest to exceed the RHL by 26%, the recreational ACL by 23%, and the Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC) by 12%. Such recommendation would appear to be a clear violation of NMFS policy, as well as a violation of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens), which governs all fishing in federal waters.

Section 302(h)(6) of Magnuson-Stevens requires each regional fishery management council to “develop annual catch limits for each of its managed fisheries that may not exceed the fishing level recommendations of its scientific and statistical committee…” Such fishing level recommendations take the form of the ABC. By recommending 2020 recreational black sea bass regulations that it knew would probably result in the 2020 black sea bass ABC being exceeded by 12%, the Monitoring Committee rendered the ABC and recreational ACL meaningless, an action clearly inconsistent with the relevant section of Magnuson-Stevens.

Moreover, NMFS’ published guidelines for establishing ACLs and related accountability measures state that “If catch exceeds the ACL for a given stock or stock complex more than once in the last four years, the system of ACLs and [accountability measures] should be reevaluated, and modified if necessary, to improve its performance and effectiveness.” The Monitoring Committee admits that there were “multiple years…going back to at least 2015” when black sea bass overages exceeded not only the ACL, but the ABC as well. Yet, instead of recommending a reevaluation of the ACLs and accountability measures, it recommended status quo.

Both the Council and Board concurred.

Events were little different a year later, when 2021 management measures were discussed.

Thanks to a new Council risk policy, the 2021 black sea bass RHL was 6.34 million pounds, the highest RHL ever set for the species. But, because COVID-19 had affected the MRIP catch surveys, no estimates of 2020 landings were available; 2019 data would have to be used. 2019 recreational black sea bass landings totaled 8.61 million pounds, more than 2 million pounds more than the 2021 RHL. Once again, more restrictive regulations were called for, and once again, the Council and Board maintained the status quo.

This time, even Council staff advised against change, saying “Given challenges associated with transition to management based on the new MRIP data, high availability of black sea bass to anglers, and a very healthy stock status, the Council and Board agreed to leave recreational management measures remain [sic] unchanged in 2020 compared to 2019 to allow more time to gradually transition to a management system that accounts for the new MRIP data. These conditions remain relevant for 2021 recreational management measures.”

The supposed “challenges” posed by the new MRIP data were used to justify maintaining status quo regulations for both 2020 and 2021. However, given that the same new MRIP data was used to calculate the higher RHLs adopted for both 2020 and 2021, it’s not clear why data that was acceptable for use in an operational stock assessment, and so presumably represented the best available scientific information, was not also suitable for determining when anglers might have exceeded their new, higher harvest limits. Neither Council staff nor the Monitoring Committee chose to explain that seeming contradiction.

Will 2022 Be Different?

Because of the status quo regulations, anglers substantially exceeded the RHL again in 2021. Although final figures have yet to be compiled, Council staff projects that 2021 recreational black sea bass landings will be about 11.98 million pounds, 89% above the RHL, even before dead discards, which typically add between three and four million additional pounds to the total, are considered.

Because of the uncertainty inherent in MRIP estimates, Council staff recommended that, instead of basing 2022 management measures solely on 2021 recreational harvest, the average harvest for the years 2018-2021, when recreational measures remain unchanged, be used. Even taking that approach, recreational landings would have to be reduced by about 28% in order to keep recreational landings at or below the RHL.

In making its recommendation, Council staff warned that,

The recreational ACL and the RHL are based on the best available science, are intended to prevent overfishing, and are reflective of recent stock status. Therefore, allowing multiple years of recreational overages may pose a risk to the stock, even at high biomass levels. In addition, NMFS has indicated that although status quo measures were justified for 2020 and 2021 despite expected RHL overages, this approach may not be justifiable for 2022. The [Monitoring Committee] should take this into consideration when developing their recommendation for 2022 management measures. [emphasis in original]

Despite that warning, when the joint Council/Board Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel met on November 18, 2021, the Monitoring Committee again recommended status quo management measures for the 2022 season. If NMFS insisted on imposing accountability measures, the Monitoring Committee arbitrarily suggested reducing landings by just 14%, half the reduction recommended by Council staff.

Thus, the Monitoring Committee again recommended that both Council and Board again render the RHL meaningless, while holding commercial fishermen to their annual quotas.

Growing Discontent

Such disparate treatment did not go over well with representatives of the commercial fishing industry.

George Topping, a Maryland commercial fisherman who sits on the advisory panel, complained about the lack of recreational accountability, saying “Somebody needs to hold these people accountable…To keep rewarding these people and giving them more fish is never going to solve the problem.”

Yet, despite such concerns, the Council and Board are moving forward with a so-called Recreational Reform Initiative (Initiative), which would address recreational excesses not by crafting management measures that more effectively constrain anglers’ harvest, but by eliminating the RHL and, in some versions of the Initiative, by completely decoupling recreational management measures from both the ACL and annual recreational landings.

No one has yet determined whether the Initiative complies with the mandates of Magnuson-Stevens.

The Council’s willingness to ignore the spirit, and very probably the letter, of Magnuson-Stevens when managing black sea bass caused Meghan Lapp, Secretary of the Center for Sustainable Fisheries and a representative of Rhode Island-based Seafreeze Ltd., to say at the recent Advisory Panel meeting, that the continued recreational overages were “not acceptable,” and to ask, “Is the Magnuson Act optional?”

She went on to ask whether, if there is “no strong conservation need” for further restrictions on the recreational fishery, there is also no strong conservation need for commercial restrictions.

It was a good question, for whatever the black sea bass may or may not need, it is difficult to justify holding one sector strictly accountable for its landings while allowing another to shirk its obligations under the management plan.

A Legal Question

It’s not even clear whether the Council may legally ignore chronic recreational overages in the black sea bass fishery.

In 2014, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia decided the case of Guindon v. Pritzker, which addressed a very similar issue, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s repeated failure to hold anglers accountable for chronically overfishing red snapper. In its decision, which found that NMFS had failed to meet its obligations under Magnuson-Stevens, the court stated that

Under the MSA, NMFS has a statutory duty to: prohibit the retention of fish after quotas are reached in the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery; use the best scientific information available when making management decisions; require whatever accountability measures are necessary to constrain catch to the quota; avoid decisions that directly conflict with the [fishery management plan’s] allocation of catch; and, where sectors are managed separately, avoid penalizing one sector for overages that occur only in another.

Admittedly, the mid-Atlantic black sea bass fishery differs in some important respects from the Gulf fishery for red snapper; most particularly, black sea bass abundance is high, while red snapper were still overfished when Guindon was decided. The recreational accountability measures applicable to black sea bass also prohibit the imposition of in-season closures to prevent recreational overages, and only require the Council to “consider,” rather than actually impose, accountability measures if such overages occur when spawning stock biomass is greater than its target level. For those reasons, some might argue that the court’s reasoning in Guindon doesn’t apply to the black sea bass fishery.

Yet, there are enough similarities between the actions that gave rise to Guindon and the Council’s failure to address recreational black sea bass overages to suggest that the Guindon court’s logic would apply to black sea bass as well. The court’s finding that “NMFS has a statutory duty to…require whatever accountability measures are necessary to constrain catch to the quota” is particularly relevant, as it seems to imply that merely considering accountability measures, that are never actually required, may not be enough to fulfill the Council’s obligations.

When the Council and Board meet in joint session, on the afternoon of December 14, 2021, to discuss recreational management measures for the 2022 black sea bass season, they will have to choose between finally taking action to rein in recreational overharvest or, once again, doing nothing at all.

The choice that they make will answer Ms. Lapp’s question, “Is the Magnuson Act optional?” with respect to black sea bass.

We can only hope that their answer is “No.”

-----

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

FISHERY MANAGEMENT: CRITICS SING THE SAME SONG

I went to my first fishery management meeting a very long time ago. 

It was held in Connecticut, where I lived ‘way back then, at a time when striped bass abundance was hitting new lows and scientists were raising their first concerns about winter flounder.  I think Jimmy Carter was President, though it might have still been Gerald Ford.

As I recall, state biologists were talking about adopting a modest minimum size for winter flounder, perhaps 8 inches or so, a size that let fishermen keep flounder that were still far too small to fillet, but were at least big enough that you had to squint a little bit if you wanted to see bones through the white side when you held the fish up to the sun.  Yet some people objected to that, mainly folks who owned angling-related businesses, and were afraid that outlawing the harvest of postage-stamp flounder might cause them a few sales.

They said that such rules weren’t needed.  There were plenty of flounder around and no need for restrictions.  The fish would do fine on their own.

It would be interesting to have a conversation with those same folks today, now that the flounder are, for all practical purposes, gone.

Yet, when you think about it, the same conversation takes place quite often these days.  The people might be different, and instead of flounder, they might be talking about striped bass, tautog, channeled whelk, or cod, but while the folks and the fish always vary, the song that they sing remains the same.

“The science is wrong."

"Regulations will hurt my business.”

“There are plenty of fish around.”

I’ve written about that song plenty of times before.

Back in January 2014, when this blog wasn’t quite three weeks old, I described a meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council, where the Department of Environmental Conservation’s proposal to place a 5 ½-inch minimum size on whelks—which is the point when many, but not most, females first mature—caused an uproar among commercial whelk fishermen, who claimed that such rule would put them out of business.

State biologists pressed the point that, by continuing to harvest immature whelks and not giving the females an opportunity to reproduce, the fishermen risked putting themselves out of business, but no one else in the room seemed to be looking that far ahead.  Perhaps the most remarkable comment came not from the audience, but from an Advisory Council member, who complained that, if the DEC adopted the rules for the upcoming season,

“You’re not giving us time to dispute your data,”

never seeming to even consider the possibility that the agency data was right, since disputing fisheries data is just what fishermen do, at least when such data indicates the need for more regulation.

A few years later, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission finally decided to end two decades of ineffective tautog management, and adopt a plan that might finally begin to rebuild the overfished stock.  But that plan, too, required landings cuts, so it came as no surprise when an ill-mannered Montauk party boat captain interrupted the ASMFC’s New York hearing to announce

“We don’t care about your science.  Your science is bullcrap.”

Nor was it surprising to hear the crowd respond with cheers.

Similar situations pop up in other fisheries.

Up in New England, after a state fisheries survey, intended to fact-check the findings of federal surveys, confirmed that the cod population was in dire shape, a Gloucester fisherman criticized the results, saying

“The state survey literally does zero to improve our confidence [in the biologists’ findings].  You can’t just sample anywhere.  You have to go where the cod are supposed to be.”

In saying that, he completely ignored the fact that, if the cod stocks were healthy, the survey would have found fish where the cod used to be, for such truth would not support his position, and thus must remain unsaid.

Then there are the claims that the overfished striped bass stock is really healthy, but that the fish have all moved offshore (a pretty neat trick for a fish that must ascend coastal rivers to spawn), or that bluefish aren’t really overfished, they’ve just gone somewhere else—although just where, no one can say.

Every time I hear that sort of thing, I keep hoping that, at some point, people are going to start embracing reality, but two recent news articles make it clear that the same folks are still singing their same anti-science, anti-management song.

Up in New England, the cod still aren’t doing well.  The most recent operational stock assessment found that

“the stock status for the Gulf of Maine Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) stock is overfished and overfishing is occurring,”

while

“the Georges Bank Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) stock status cannot be quantitatively determined due to a lack of biological reference points associated with the PlanBsmooth approach but is recommended to be overfished due to poor stock condition, while recommended overfishing status is unknown.”

The New England Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, executing its legal duty to set a maximum fishing level for the Georges Bank stock, established an acceptable biological catch which gave due consideration to the relatively high level of scientific uncertainty, and called for a 70% reduction in landings.

That naturally didn’t sit well with fishermen, so two organizations, the Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Associated Fisheries of Maine, have asked that the New England Fishery Management Council remand the issue to its Scientific and Statistical Committee for reconsideration.  The organizations claim that the Committee did not have all of the “relevant information” needed to make an informed decision when it set the 2022 acceptable biological catch for Georges Bank cod.

In particular, the organizations claim that the Scientific and Statistical Committee lacked final 2020 catch data, relevant socioeconomic information, and groundfish surveys from areas where recreational fishermen landed large amounts of cod.  They also noted that, due to COVID, the National Marine Fisheries Service didn’t engage in their usual trawl surveys in 2020, further clouding the true state of the stock.

As is typical in such disputes, the executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition claimed that fishermen were seeing more fish than the scientists’ work revealed.

“Why are these assessments not reflecting what fishermen are seeing on the water?...These assessment reports do not reflect what’s going on on the water.”

But fishermen’s unverified observations are not the same thing as scientific assessments, particularly given that reports from fishermen, who would suffer financial difficulties if landing levels were cut, could well be biased.  Furthermore, the fishermen don’t seem to understand how the Scientific and Statistical Committee is supposed to deal with uncertainty when setting the maximum catch level, although that issue is very clearly addressed in the National Marine Fisheries Service’s published guidelines, which direct, in part, that

“Acceptable biological catch (ABC) is a level of a stock or stock complex’s annual catch, which is based on an ABC control rule that accounts for the scientific uncertainty in the estimate of [the overfishing limit], any other scientific uncertainty, and the Council’s risk policy…”

“Scientific uncertainty refers to uncertainty in the information about a stock and its reference points.  Sources of scientific uncertainty could include: Uncertainty in stock assessment results; uncertainty in the estimates of [maximum fishing mortality threshold], [minimum stock size threshold], the biomass of the stock, and [overfishing limit]; time lags in updating assessments; the degree of retrospective revision of assessment results; uncertainty in projections; uncertainties due to the choice of assessment model; longer-term uncertainties due to potential ecosystem and environmental effects; or other factors.”

“…each Council must establish an ABC control rule that accounts for scientific uncertainty in the [overfishing limit] and for the Council’s risk policy, and that is based on a comprehensive analysis that shows how the control rule prevents overfishing…the ABC control rule should consider reducing fishing mortality as stock size declines below [the biomass needed to produce maximum sustainable yield] and as scientific uncertainty increases…”

The fishermen argue that the significant scientific uncertainty surrounding Georges Bank cod should militate against significant landings reductions, while NMFS policy, as expressed in its published guidelines, calls for an acceptable biological catch that is calculated to prevent overfishing, and endorses reducing fishing mortality when a stock declines below sustainable biomass levels and/or when substantial scientific uncertainty exists.

In the case of Georges Bank cod, the stock is badly depleted, with biomass far below a sustainable level, and the stock assessment admits to substantial scientific uncertainty.  Such conditions justify the Scientific and Statistical Committee’s finding that landings be substantially reduced.

But New England cod fishermen never believe that such substantial reductions are ever justified.  The science must be wrong...

Something similar is happening in the Connecticut whelk fishery.

Both New York and Connecticut are considering adopting a 5 ½-inch minimum length/3-inch minimum shell diameter for whelk (yes, New York whelk fishermen have so far managed to delay their state’s regulations for nearly eight years).

New York issued proposed regulations in April 2021; the comment period closed long ago, and the state is now deliberating whether, and how, to issue final rules.

Connecticut is lagging a little behind New York, and has only recently held a hearing on its proposed regulations.  According to the Connecticut Examiner, fishermen attending that hearing predictably

“decried the state’s plan to limit harvesting of the edible oversized snail as another blow to the survival of their industry and livelihood…

”East Haven lobsterman and whelk fisherman Peter Consiglio said the state’s proposal to protect the Sound’s whelk population by cutting the harvest by as much as 62 percent is not only based on inaccurate data, but will bring the industry another step closer to extinction.”

As is typical, the fishermen questioned the state’s science, while advancing questionable scientific thoughts of their own.  The Examiner reported that

“Al Schabel, a dealer of whelk and crabs in Northford, said population swings of shellfish and other species is a natural if not mysterious occurrence that can’t be completely controlled by humans.

“’It’s going to go up and down forever—that’s just the way it is,’ he said, adding that he expects this year to produce one of the most robust whelk harvests in 20 years.  ‘It’s not a regulatory thing.’”

It also reported that a Norwalk lobsterman called state surveys, which found that the whelk population had declined by 90% over the past 20 years,

“Hogwash,”

and said that

“We lost the lobsters and now the conch has the show.  The conchs are all we have left and we fishermen have proven that we can manage it ourselves…”

Precisely what the fishermen actually did to manage the conch (whelk) stock, other than catch as many as they could bring to market, was never described.

One lobsterman even alleged that whelks were a threat to the lobsters.  John German (who actually lives not in Connecticut, but on the North Shore of Long Island, New York, where he has long fought against whelk regulations in his state of residence) argued that

“Conch has taken over the lobster grounds and are hindering the lobsters coming back.  They’re predators and they should be treated as predators,”

although he never explained just how lobsters are being threatened by whelk.

Once again, fishermen’s rhetoric usually seemed to outrun established fact.

But that’s nothing new.

Fishermen opposed to needed management measures always seem to sing the same old song, with verses lamenting the failures of science and the threats to their way of life.

But with cod and winter flounder already on the ropes, bluefish and striped bass overfished, mako sharks in peril and a host of other species facing real problems, that song is getting a little stale.

It’s time for them to find a new tune.

 

 

 

 

MARINE FISHERIES: ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR EVERYONE

Section 303(a)(15) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act states that every fishery management plan must

“establish a mechanism for specifying annual catch limits in the plan (including a multiyear plan), implementing regulations, or annual specification, at a level such that overfishing does not occur in the fishery, including measures to ensure accountability.  [emphasis added]”

Guidelines issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service flesh out that statutory mandate, saying

“[Accountability measures] are management controls to prevent [annual catch limits], including sector [annual catch limits], from being exceeded, and to correct or mitigate overages of the [annual catch limit] if they occur.  [Accountability measures] should address and minimize both the frequency and magnitude of overages and correct the problems that caused the overage in as short a time as possible…”

On the whole, NMFS has done a fairly good job of adopting and enforcing accountability measures in commercial fisheries.  Whether it is managing Atlantic cod and other important northeastern groundfish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass in the mid-Atlantic, or amberjack in the southeast, the agency’s fishery management plans require that, should the commercial sector exceed its annual catch limit, that sector must repay the overage, on a pound-for-pound basis, in the next fishing year.

The repayment might be made on a fishery-wide, state, seasonal, or other level, but regardless of how repayment occurs, commercial fishermen are held very strictly accountable when they land more fish than they are entitled to in any given year.

Recreational fishermen, on the other hand, are given far more leeway.  In many fisheries, mid-Atlantic black sea bass being one of the clearest examples, both the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and NMFS itself seem to be willing to find—or create—excuses for chronic recreational overfishing, instead of holding the recreational sector accountable for its actions.

In recent years, anglers overfished their annual harvest limit by 84% in 2016 (admittedly, there seemed to be at least one major outlier in the data for that year), 4% in 2018, and 56% in 2020, while falling 3% short of the recreational harvest limit in 2017 and 5% below the limit in 2019.  2021 is not yet over, and final figures for this year will not be available for another couple of months, but preliminary indications, based on landings through August 31, suggest that 2021 recreational landings will again be well in excess of the recreational harvest limit, even before dead discards are taken into consideration.

The accountability measures for the black sea bass fishery are imposed when the most recent 3-year average of recreational catch (i.e., landings plus dead discards) exceeds the most recent 3-year average of recreational catch limits.  The nature of such accountability measures depends upon the state of the fishery.  Because current black sea bass biomass is roughly twice the biomass target, the following accountability measures apply:

“If biomass is above the target (B>B_MSY):  Adjustments to the recreational management measures (bag, size, and seasonal limits) would be considered for the following year, or as soon as possible once catch data are available.  These adjustments would take into account the performance of the measures and conditions that precipitated the overage.”

The average of landings for the years 2018-2020 exceeded the average annual catch limits for those years, meaning that accountability measures should be invoked for the 2022 season.  A report of the most recent meeting of the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee, which suggests management measures to the Mid-Atlantic Council, states that

“The [representative from NMFS’ Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office] on the [Monitoring Committee] said the regulations required a change in the measures given that an Accountability Measure (AM) was triggered…”

Despite such recreational overage, and a recommendation from Mid-Atlantic Council staff that landings be reduced by 28% in order to keep them below the 2020 recreational harvest limit, the Monitoring Committee stated that it

“preferred no change in the measures given that biomass is more than double the target and there are no concerning trends in recruitment or other stock status indicators…the [Monitoring Committee’s] primary recommendation was for status quo measures in 2022.”

If NMFS insisted on a reduction in landings, the Monitoring Committee recommended a 13% or 14% reduction, the former achieved through a ½-inch across-the-board increase in the size limit, the latter by allowing the states to adopt regulations that would achieve the required cut, even though such small reduction would almost certainly assure that recreational catch would again exceed the recreational catch limit in 2022.

Such recommendation by the Monitoring Committee marked the third time in three years that the Committee recommended status quo monitoring measures that it knew would lead anglers to exceed the applicable catch limits, recommendations that have so far been followed by the Mid-Atlantic Council.

The commercial fishery has managed to stay within its quota during those years, but it is very difficult to imagine that NMFS and the Mid-Atlantic Council would have been similarly sanguine, and done nothing to address the overage if the commercial fishing sector had exceeded its quota in even one year, much less chronically exceeded its catch limit as the recreational sector has done.

Down in the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council has been similarly reluctant to hold anglers accountable for their chronic overharvest of red snapper.

Such failure went on for many years until, in 2013, a group of commercial fishermen grew tired of anglers impairing the then-overfished red snapper’s recovery, and brought suit against NMFS to insist that the recreational sector be held accountable.  In early 2014, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia handed down its decision in Guindon v. Pritzker.  The court found that NMFS had an obligation to impose accountability measures reasonably calculated to prevent recreational overharvest, saying,

“the instant case presents an even more striking disconnect between the agency’s disconnect and the facts before it.  The administrative record is replete with references to a high degree of management uncertainty in the recreational sector, as compared with the commercial sector…

“The court will not dictate precisely which accountability measures NMFS should have required, or should require in the future.  That decision is best left to the expertise and discretion of the agency tasked with carrying out the statute…However, Section 303(a)(15) would lose all teeth and coherence if NMFS, faced with persistent overages and high management uncertainty, could claim compliance by simply identifying any control that technically qualifies as an ‘accountability measure.’  In this case, it is apparent from the record that the existing scheme does not ‘ensure accountability’ within the meaning of section 303(a)(15).”

In the end, the Gulf Council adopted a 20% buffer between the recreational annual catch limit and a lower recreational catch target in an effort to prevent recreational red snapper overharvest.  It is not difficult to understand that a similar buffer should be adopted by the Mid-Atlantic Council as an accountability measure to address management uncertainty in the recreational black sea bass fishery.  However, to date, the Mid-Atlantic Council has been steadfast in denying that any management uncertainty exists in that fishery, despite its inability to constrain recreational landings to the recreational harvest limit.  Anglers have not been held in any way accountable for their overages.

And even in the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery, the regional fishery management council has not  

The issue is particularly relevant in Mississippi and Alabama, states that, according to the best available NMFS data, have grossly overfished their state red snapper allocations.  Overfishing has been so severe that, after paying back their overages, neither state may have a red snapper fishery in 2022.  However, the Gulf Council was unwilling to acknowledge the NMFS data, and instead voted to delay calibrating the state red snapper landings data with the federal Marine Recreational Information Program.  By approving such delay, the Council effectively endorsed the state landings data, which apparently underestimates recreational catch and provides the Council with an excuse for not holding Alabama and Mississippi anglers accountable for their overharvest.

At least in this case, unlike that of mid-Atlantic black sea bass, NMFS recognizes that the Gulf Council’s decision did not reflect the best available scientific information, and there is still a chance that NMFS will disapprove the Council’s failure to hold certain Gulf states accountable for their recreational red snapper overages.

Still, the bias against holding recreational fishermen accountable for exceeding their annual catch limits remains strong.

Yet, if that remains a problem within the regional fishery management councils, the problem is worse at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which has no legal obligation to hold fishermen, including recreational fishermen, accountable when they exceed their annual catch limits.

Thus, while commercial striped bass fishermen who exceed their state quotas must repay overages on a pound-for-pound basis in the next fishing year, no similar sanction effects the recreational sector.  Thus, when 2015 recreational landings in Maryland increased by more than 50%, instead of being reduced by 20.5%, as called for in the management plan, Maryland anglers suffered no consequences, and were allowed to keep overharvesting striped bass until Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan was adopted in the fall of 2019.

Science-based fishery management measures are the key to rebuilding and maintaining the marine fishery resources of the United States.  Unless fishermen are held accountable for exceeding the annual catch limits that are an integral part of such management measures, it will be virtually impossible to compel such fishermen to comply with the measures needed to maintain healthy and sustainable fisheries.  Yet, while fishery managers usually seem more than willing to hold commercial fishermen responsible for their overages, they are far more reluctant to hold recreational fishermen equally responsible.

And that’s a mistake, particularly when anglers often catch a larger percentage of various coastal species than commercial fishermen do.

The only way to make fishery regulations work is to hold all fishermen accountable for their overages, and admit that a fish killed by a recreational fisherman is just as dead as any fish landed by the commercial fleet.

Accountability measures work, but only if they are imposed against everyone who exceeds their quotan of any species of fish.

For accountability measures are for everyone, and are not just for the commercial fleet.

JUST ONE BIT OF DATA IN THE RED SNAPPER'S SEA

When it comes to fisheries issues, data always makes a difference, although that difference may not be the one that people expect.

For example, when the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Marine Recreational Information Program changed the way it estimated recreational effort, and so recreational catch and landings, from the venerable Coastal Household Telephone Survey to the mail-based Fishing Effort Survey, the new methodology revealed that anglers, and particularly shore-based anglers, were catching many more fish than managers had previously believed.

That revelation initially caused some panic in the angling community, with one near-hysterical for-hire captain writing

“We’re About To Go WAY Over Quota In Almost Every Fishery (according to soon-worsening catch data)

I Anticipate Many Recreational Fisheries Will See Closures.

I Promise: An EMERGENCY is brewing in our recreational catch estimates.

NOAA’s MRIP recreational catch estimates are about to increase many-fold.  They call it ‘re-calibration.’

If you are a For-Hire operator anywhere from Maine to Texas,

I believe your business model is about to implode.

If you own or work at a saltwater-oriented tackle shop or marina, sales may get mighty slim.

If you own a salt-water capable boat, you may soon question the wisdom of all those maintenance, insurance, license & marina fees—all the monies paid regardless of whether you ever go fishing.

If you are simply a recreational angler, I believe your seasons & bag limits are about to become incredibly smaller, your size limits larger: You May Not Be Allowed To Fish At ALL For Some Species…

If ‘Re-calibration takes effect,

these last few years of regulatory battles

will seem a cakewalk…

We’ll soon be so over quota, in every fishery, that our rod-racks will become wall-mounted spider farms well before we’re allowed to fish again...”

Of course, none of that ever happened.

The new recreational effort, catch, and landings data were incorporated into each species’ stock assessment.  Without exception, so far as I am aware, that resulted in estimates of greater biomass for recreationally-fished stocks, and usually also resulted in an increase in the biomass target—the amount of fish needed to produce maximum sustainable yield—and in commercial and recreational quotas.

The impacts on important northeastern/mid-Atlantic fisheries were mixed. 

The new data was enough to find striped bass and bluefish to be overfished, a finding that was probably inevitable, given the steadily decreasing abundance of both species even if MRIP hadn’t changed, and led to more restrictive regulations. 

On the other hand, the new MRIP estimates, coupled with new biological data related to the productivity of the stock, caused scientists to find that the summer flounder was not doing as badly as some fishermen had thought.  Faced with that finding, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board approved a bigger annual catch limit and relaxed regulations for both the recreational and commercial sectors.

In the case of black sea bass, the new MRIP data resulted in a higher biomass estimate and an increase in  commercial and recreational catch limits of more than 50%.  It also revealed that anglers were exceeding even such higher limit, but the Mid-Atlantic Council and Management Board have, so far, looked the other way and allowed recreational overages to continue.  For black sea bass anglers, the new data made no practical difference at all.

Thus, while the new data affected the management of every stock, the impact was not necessarily what fishermen might intuitively expect, and certainly didn’t result in the sort of marine Gotterdammerung that the above-quoted party boat captain predicted.

Down in the Gulf of Mexico, we’re now seeing the same kind of premature predictions going on in the case of red snapper, and the data produced by what people are calling the Great Red Snapper Count, although the would-be prophets down there aren’t predicting an angling Armageddon, but instead, a sort of piscine Paradise, at least as far as red snapper are concerned.

As I’ve noted in earlier posts, the Great Red Snapper Count estimated that there are about 118 million adult (age 2+) red snapper in the U.S. portion of the Gulf of Mexico, a number more than three-times higher than the 36 million fish estimated in the last stock assessment.  The Count was able to arrive at that number because its participating scientists were granted a level of funding that Congress has long denied their counterparts at the National Marine Fisheries Service and, with such greater resources at their disposal, were able to search for snapper in areas not surveyed before.  That wider search led to their findings that about two-thirds of the red snapper stock was located on relatively featureless, low-profile bottom, and not on the natural and artificial structure that was previously surveyed, and where nearly all of the fishing effort is focused.

There is no doubt that the data provided by the Great Red Snapper Count will have an impact on red snapper management.  But if folks choose to be honest, they’ll admit that we don’t yet know what that impact will be.

The Executive Summary of the final report on the Count properly states that

“The primary goal of this initiative was to estimate the absolute abundance of age-2+ Red Snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) in the U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico…study findings offer a unique opportunity for other approaches to be integrated into the assessment framework…a robust understanding of absolute abundance will increase our scientific understanding of the population dynamics of Red Snapper across its range and distribution.  Science is a building process, and the independent estimate of abundance derived from this research is not a replacement or in contention with the official SEDAR Red Snapper Stock Assessment.  It will supplement and enhance ongoing analyses by allowing for validation, calibration, and further refinement of those models, given that absolute abundance has now been estimated independently from the assessment model.  [emphasis added]”
 

In other words, the findings of the Great Red Snapper Count will be combined with everything else that fishery managers know about Gulf red snapper, and until that is done, and assessment models run, no one really knows what the impact of the Count’s data might be.

But, as in the case of that mid-Atlantic for-hire captain erroneously anticipating the impacts of the recalibrated MRIP data on recreational fisheries, there are those along the Gulf who aren’t prepared to wait until the next stock assessment, and want to use stand-alone Count data right now.

And, not unexpectedly, they want to use it to significantly increase the recreational red snapper kill, without first finding out whether such increase is actually warranted.

Jeff Angers, President of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, a coalition of fishing tackle industry, marine manufacturing, and “anglers’ rights” organizations, argued last April that

“Based on The Great Red Snapper Count, Gulf Coast anglers are due an increase in [red snapper] quota,”

even though the Count’s results had not yet been given a thorough scientific review.  While Angers’ prediction was ultimately proven correct—the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, after reviewing the Count’s results, increased the acceptable biological catch by 300,000 pounds at about the same time that he made his statement—the relatively small increase that was approved, compared to the Count’s estimates of red snapper abundance, is a clear signal that there is a lot of work yet to be done before the implications of the Count’s estimates can be fully known.

 Yet the need for more research and understanding as to just what the Count means for red snapper fishermen was also lost on Ted Venker, spokesman for the Coastal Conservation Association, who has claimed that

“the Great Red Snapper Count shows very plainly that the stock isn’t overfished,”

and inaccurately stated that

“NOAA Fisheries can overlook more than 700 million pounds of red snapper [revealed by the Count] in the Gulf,”

(which, in reality, as noted earlier, were acknowledged by the Gulf Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, which decided, because of associated scientific uncertainty, not to significantly increase commercial or recreational landings until the implications of a larger snapper stock became more clear).

The angling industry’s haste to act on the findings of the Great Red Snapper Count, without first understanding how the new estimate of absolute red snapper abundance will mesh with other available data, stands in stark contrast to the comments of the Count’s lead researcher, Dr. Gregory Stunz, who noted, upon the Count’s completion, that

“This is just the beginning of future assessment meetings and activities with managing agencies, Scientific and Statistical Committees, the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center, and the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council.  These activities will facilitate direct incorporation of these data into the management process.”

What are the sort of things that still need to be figured out, as that the Great Red Snapper Count’s data is incorporated into the next stock assessment, before higher harvest levels could be considered?

The biological reference points will almost certainly be revisited. 

Currently, some of the most important reference points, including the minimum spawning stock threshold, maximum fishing mortality threshold, the fishing mortality level that will produce maximum sustainable yield, the fishing mortality target, and the biomass target, are all tied to the spawning potential ratio of the red snapper stock; more precisely, to a spawning potential that is 26% of the potential of an unfished stock.

Now that the Count has estimated absolute red snapper abundance to be about 300% higher than previously believed, biologists will have to find answers to a number of questions:  What would an unfished stock look like, both in absolute numbers, and in spawning potential?  Would the values be greater than those currently used?  And once they figure that out, what is the current spawning potential of the red snapper stock?

If the current spawning potential is greater than 26%, does that mean that the stock is fully recovered, and management measures need to be relaxed?  

Or, does the Count’s current estimate of red snapper abundance mean that the reference points need to be changed, because the ones currently used underestimate the spawning potential needed to maintain the stock at sustainable levels, and overestimate the fishing mortality level that will produce maximum sustainable yield?

In the last stock assessment, biologists noted that there was no strong relationship between the size of the spawning stock and the number of young red snapper recruited into the population.  Is that truly the case?  Or could the newly discovered red snapper explain why good recruitment could occur when spawning stock biomass on high-profile structure had previously appeared to be low?  The report from the Great Red Snapper Count notes,

“A large percentage of Red Snapper occurred over the uncharacterized bottom habitat type, which may represent a pool of cryptic biomass not previously accounted for in Red Snapper stock assessments.  A high abundance of Red Snapper occurring over these areas that are largely unexploited by the fishery may also explain the weak stock-recruit relationship consistently observed in this fishery.  [emphasis added]”

 In other words, maintaining the spawning potential of the newly discovered red snapper could be an important aspect of maintaining a sustainable red snapper stock.  Determining whether that’s the case is just one more thing that scientists need to do before the impacts of the Great Red Snapper Count’s findings can be understood.

If the fish discovered over low-profile bottom are needed to maintain the health of the stock, other unknowns arise.  The most important of those may be the relationship between the newly-discovered fish and those that congregate around high-profile natural and artificial structure.

While the anglers’ rights crowd is quick to point to the Count’s findings of high absolute red snapper abundance, one thing that they are, not surprisingly, more reluctant to discuss is the high level of red snapper removals.  

The Great Red Snapper Count tagged about 4,000 fish, and offered a $250 to $500 reward to best assure that fishermen would report any tagged fish that were recaptured.  It turned out that 31% of all tagged fish were eventually caught again; such high recapture rate suggests that nearly one-third of all adult red snapper present on high-profile structure are also being caught.  Although some of those fish are undoubtedly being released, fishing mortality of red snapper utilizing such structure is probably very high.

If the angling industry and anglers’ rights groups get their way, fishing mortality would become higher still.

The Great Red Snapper Count report makes it clear that the fish living over low-profile bottom are, on average, of larger size than those found on high-profile structure, at least in the eastern Gulf (similar data for the western Gulf is not available).  The mean length of fish on low-profile bottom was 761 millimeters (30 inches), substantially larger than the mean 499 millimeter (19.5 inches) length of fish caught on natural structures or the mean 453 millimeter (18 inches) length of fish caught on artificial reefs.

Does that size difference suggest that, at some point in their lives, fish move off high-profile bottom to scatter across the mud and gravel expanses of the Gulf?  

If that is the case and, given that the larger female red snapper produce far more eggs each year than the smaller ones do, if the number of such large, fecund fish on open bottom has an impact on red snapper recruitment, then increasing the already high number of red snapper removed from high-profile structure could negatively impact the health of the stock.

Of course, we don’t know whether either of those “ifs” are really true, but that’s exactly the point—until scientists integrate the results of the Great Red Snapper Count into a formal stock assessment, no one really knows whether increasing landings would do long term harm to the stock.

When that integration takes place, maybe there really will be a fairy tale ending, where landings are increased by 200% or more, bag limits are upped, the season runs for at least six months, and everyone lives happily ever after.

But fairy tales aren’t real.  Science is.  And until the scientists tell us that the Great Red Snapper Count’s data justifies substantially higher landings, no one should be expecting their own happy endings, and acting prematurely as a result.

Good science takes time.  After so many years of debate over red snapper management, it makes sense for everyone to just sit back and wait a little bit longer, to better assure that, this time, the Gulf Council gets everything right.