CONFRONTING RECREATIONAL BYCATCH IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC

 

Fishery management is rife with controversy.  But if anything in that arena comes close to a universal truth, accepted by the commercial, recreational, and for-hire sectors, as well as by managers and the environmental community, it is the notion that bycatch is bad.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act defines bycatch as

“fish which are harvested in a fishery, but which are not sold or kept for personal use, and includes economic discards and regulatory discards.  Such term does not include fish released alive under a recreational catch and release fishery management program.”

Magnuson-Stevens, in establishing national standards for fishery conservation and management, states that

“Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable, (A) minimize bycatch and (B) to the extent bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch.”

Most people, and particularly anglers, tend to think of bycatch as a problem caused by commercial fisheries.  They think of things like turtles and marine mammals incidentally killed by miles-long pelagic longlines, cod unintentionally caught in trawls targeting haddock, pollock, and/or Acadian redfish, or the trail of striped bass, accidentally killed and intentionally dumped, floating in the wake of a dragger seeking other species.

In 2007, the angler-oriented Coastal Conservation Association, along with two marine fishery-oriented conservation groups, sued the Secretary of Commerce, who oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service, alleging among other things that, because approximately 90% of red snapper fishing mortality in the Gulf of Mexico was attributable to bycatch in the shrimp trawl fishery, the red snapper fishery management plan should contain provisions that addressed such bycatch.  The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in deciding the case of Coastal Conservation Association v. Gutierrez, ordered the Secretary to

“consistent with his obligations under [Magnuson-Stevens], approve a red snapper rebuilding plan, considering measures to reduce bycatch in the shrimp fishery, within the next nine months.”

 NMFS has since recognized the contribution that reducing such bycatch has made to rebuilding the Gulf red snapper population, although it doesn’t generally acknowledge the lawsuit.  The Coastal Conservation Association is far less reticent to hail the impacts of its litigation on the red snapper’s recovery, and it is not hesitant to point it’s finger at the impacts of commercial bycatch on the red snapper stock.

But what happens when the shoe finds itself on the other foot?

What happens when recreational bycatch begins to cause meaningful harm to a commercial fishery?  And in particular, to a commercial red snapper fishery?

We’re starting to see the answer to that question play out in the South Atlantic, where a group of commercial fishermen are suing the current Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, for NMFS’ failure to rein in bycatch in the recreational red snapper fishery, which failure, the plaintiffs allege, violates the clear language of Magnuson-Stevens.

The matter is Slash Creek Waterworks, Inc., et al v. Raimondo.  It was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on June 16, and challenges a recently-adopted temporary rule governing the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, alleging

“The Amendment 43 regulations, in conjunction with the temporary rule, establish and implement an annual catch limit for red snapper that is set in terms of landings only—ignoring dead discards, which represent the overwhelming majority of catch.  This approach fails to limit catch of South Atlantic red snapper, fails to prevent overfishing, and creates a de facto reallocation of red snapper to the recreational sector, each of which is contrary to law.”

The underlying facts of the case are difficult to dispute. 

The most recent South Atlantic red snapper stock assessment, designated “SEDAR 73,” was released in March 2021.  It found that the stock was both overfished and experiencing overfishing, and noted that

“…Since 2010, general recreational discards have been the dominant source of fishing mortality.

“…the exploitation rate has remained above [the fishing mortality threshold] since the late 1970s, with the exception of 2013.  Since 2010, the exploitation rate has been dominated by dead discards, especially from the general recreational fleet.

“…The general recreational fleet has been the dominant source of removals, for both landings and dead discards.  Since 2010, total landings have remained at or below [the landings level associated with fishing mortality at maximum sustainable yield], however discards have exceeded [the discard level associated with fishing mortality at maximum sustainable yield] for most of these years.”

There is thus little reason to doubt that recreational fishing mortality, and not commercial fishing activities, is the greatest single obstacle to red snapper rebuilding.  There is also little or no reason to doubt that it is recreational discard mortality, and not recreational landings, that creates the biggest and most intractable problem.  As noted by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council,

“…overfishing [is] primarily driven by the high numbers of fish in the recreational fishery released throughout the year that don’t survive.  These dead fish comprise approximately 85% of the allowable removals in the fishery.  Due to the high proportion of the removals being dead discards, reductions in landings alone, even no allowable landings, will not end the overfishing of Red Snapper.  Therefore, in order to end overfishing, the Council must also reduce dead discards.  [emphasis added]”

It's important to note that such recreational dead discards accrue “throughout the year,” in fisheries for other species, and not just during the brief recreational red snapper season.  Thus, if the argument successfully made by the Coastal Conservation Association in Coastal Conservation Association v. Gutierrez has any lasting merit, NMFS has an obligation to address red snapper bycatch in other fisheries—in this case, in other recreational fisheries—in order to discharge its statutory obligation to rebuild red snapper.

NMFS appears to have agreed.

According to the American Sportfishing Association, the primary trade association for the fishing tackle industry,

“NOAA Fisheries strongly advocated for [the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council] considering time/area bottom fishing closures for snapper grouper in the ‘short term’ to end overfishing of red snapper.  The NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Administrator noted that discard mortality needed to be reduced by 65% to end overfishing and that bottom fishing closures should be considered as a way ‘to keep people off the fish’…They specifically discussed options such as depth limits, seasonal closures, and/or area closures of snapper grouper fishing in federal waters.”

That the American Sportfishing Association opposed such regulations isn’t particularly surprising, given its job of promoting fishing tackle sales and protecting the profits of the fishing tackle industry.  However, it turns out that the Coastal Conservation Association—the very same association that went to court in an effort to place additional burdens on the commercial shrimp industry, in order to promote red snapper rebuilding in the Gulf of Mexico—is opposed to such measures as well.

I suppose “coastal conservation” doesn’t look so attractive when the fishery that someone is trying to burden happens to be your own.  It is, after all, far more appealing, and far less troublesome, to conserve someone else’s fish.

“…Off the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, a booming red snapper population is threatening to close all bottom fishing in the region for years.  Red snapper are currently in a rebuilding plan that won’t conclude for more than two decades, but they are already so numerous that NOAA Fisheries calculates that just what anglers catch as bycatch is overfishing red snapper…

“What’s driving this dilemma is a requirement that the Council end overfishing within two years of being notified of the condition.  NOAA Fisheries notified the Council over a year ago that based on the last stock assessment red snapper were undergoing overfishing, so the regulatory clock is ticking—loudly.  NOAA says a complete ban on directed harvest will not end the overfishing, so it believes something must be done to substantially decrease the discards (and discard mortality) to end overfishing.”

Recreational opposition to the closures was so substantial that the South Atlantic Council backed off any plans that it might have had to impose time and area restrictions, thus assuring that overfishing will continue in the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, and that recreational fishermen will, despite clear language in Magnuson-Stevens, to remain unaccountable for their overages.

In response, the commercial fishermen sued, making three related claims.

Their first claim is very simple.  Despite Magnuson-Stevens’ clear mandate that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry,  [emphasis added]”

the Council and agency has allowed overfishing to continue, even though use of the word “shall” takes away all Council discretion; neither the regional fishery management councils nor NMFS have any authority to permit overfishing in a fishery management plan, plan amendment, or other management measure.

And the term “overfishing” addresses all fishing mortality, not merely landings.  Magnuson-Stevens defines overfishing as

“a rate or level of fishing mortality that jeopardizes the capacity of a fishery to produce the maximum sustainable yield on a continuing basis.”

Magnuson-Stevens also requires that every regional fishery management council

“develop annual catch limits for each of its managed fisheries that may not exceed the fishing level recommendations of its scientific and statistical committee or the peer review process described [elsewhere in the law].”

To provide additional guidance to the regional fishery management councils charged with implementing such requirement, NMFS must publish guidelines (which do not have the force of law, but are nonetheless persuasive authority) addressing annual catch limits and related issues.  Some of the guidelines relevant to the South Atlantic red snapper situation state

“Each Council shall develop [annual catch limits] for each of its managed fisheries that may not exceed the ‘fishing level recommendations’ of its [scientific and statistical committee] or peer review process (Magnuson-Stevens Act Section 302(h)((6)).  The SSC recommendation that is most relevant to the ACLs is [acceptable biological catch], as both ACL and ABC are levels of annual catch.”

“Acceptable biological catch” is defined as

“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,”

while the “overfishing limit” is defined as

“the annual amount of catch that corresponds to the estimate of [the maximum fishing mortality threshold] applied to a stock or stock complex’s abundance and is expressed in terms of numbers or weight of fish.  [emphasis added]”

When we apply that statutory and regulatory language to the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, we find that Amendment 43 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region doesn’t seem to comply.  Instead of basing the annual catch limit on the annual catch—that is, both dead discards and landings—the South Atlantic Council based it on landings alone, ignoring the dead recreational discards that comprise 85% of all fishing mortality.

The plaintiffs in the commercial fishermen’s lawsuit thus, not unreasonably, argue that the annual catch limit set in Amendment 43, and in the recently issued temporary regulation, violates the clear language of Magnuson-Stevens.  It seems somewhat difficult to disagree.

The plaintiffs' second claim is very similar to the first.

Plaintiffs’ third claim is that, because dead recreational discards make up such a large percentage of the overall catch—far more than the 71.93% allocated in the management plan, even before recreational landings are taken into account—both Amendment 43 and the temporary regulation constitute a de facto reallocation of the red snapper resource, and that such reallocation does not meet the “fairness” standard established by Magnuson-Stevens.

This claim is a tricky one.  It has been made in challenges to management actions affecting other species, but a definitive ruling on the “de facto reallocation” theory has not yet been made.  The relevant NMFS guidelines define an allocation as

“a direct and deliberate distribution of the opportunity to participate in a fishery among identifiable, discrete user groups or individuals.  Any management measure (or lack of management) has incidental allocative effects, but only those measures that result in direct distributions of fishing privileges will be judged against the allocation requirements of [National] Standard 4…”

It seems simple for NMFS to successfully argue that, because it didn’t explicitly increase the 71.93% recreational share of the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, it did not reallocate the resource.  On the other hand, the South Atlantic Council and the agency both decided that it was acceptable to ignore dead recreational discards, which constitute 85% of all fishing mortality, and only apply the established allocation to the other 15% of fishing mortality represented by recreational and commercial landings.

Could that decision to ignore dead discards constitute a “direct and deliberate distribution of the opportunity to participate in” the red snapper fishery?  That’s something a judge must still decide, but it is somewhat difficult to believe that NMFS may endorse a regional fishery management council’s decision to take actions which would have a profound impact on a sector’s ability to participate in a fishery, to the benefit of another sector, and be exempt from any judicial review of the fairness and equity of such action just because the word “allocation” was never used.

Hopefully, the District Court down in Washington will finally provide some clarity on that issue.

In the meantime, the lawsuit brought by the commercial plaintiffs is likely to cause some real consternation among recreational fishermen, and recreational advocacy groups, in the southeast, who have long acted as if the commercial sector was solely responsible for overfishing and overfished stocks.  We can probably expect such organizations to file amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs in the matter, seeking to uphold the current management approach.

In time, we'll find out whether the plaintiffs prevail, or whether the courts will bless NMFS’ and the Council’s decision to ignore dead recreational discards.

In the meantime, the suit serves as a potent reminder that harmful bycatch isn’t limited to the commercial sector, and that sometimes, recreational anglers can, just by fishing, cause meaningful harm.

 

 

 

.. 

 

 

 

SCENES FROM A STOCK COLLAPSE

 

Everyone who has gotten involved with fisheries issues has heard the term “stock collapse,” yet beyond a general agreement that stock collapse is bad, there’s not too much agreement on what the term means.

The Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences defines stock collapse as

“a rapid reduction in stock abundance, …distinguished from short-term natural fluctuations,”

but that doesn’t provide too much guidance.  While it tells us that any decline in abundance must be “rapid,” it doesn’t tell us anything about how significant such decline must be to earn “collapse” status.  Intuitively, we recognize that a five or ten percent decline isn’t good enough, but is 25% good enough?  Does the population have to decline by more than half before “collapse” becomes an accurate description?  Or is even that not good enough?  Is something like a 75%, or even a 90%, decline needed before the term “stock collapse” applies?

And how, exactly, does one distinguish a stock collapse from “short-term natural fluctuations?”

There is no generally accepted formula.

Five years ago, a group of sixteen scientists attempted to provide meaningful guidance.  They published a paper titled “When is a fish stock collapsed?” which can be accessed through the ResearchGate website.  In the paper, the authors noted that

“numerous definitions exist for classifying stocks as collapsed, and that the classification of a stock’s status is sensitive to changes in the collapse definition’s formulation.”

In an attempt to bring some consistency to how “stock collapse” is defined, the authors wrote,

“The definition we propose views a collapse as an abrupt change to an undesired state.  It consists of two sequential, interlinked criteria that capture the collapse process; an abrupt decline, and an ensuing period of prolonged depletion.  Indicative of impaired production, prolonged depletion is an undesired state for a fish stock.  Each criteria is defined as follows:

1.  Abrupt decline:  a stock’s adult biomass declines by 70% within a maximum of three generations or 10 years.

2.  Prolonged depletion:  a stock’s mean adult biomass over a succeeding generation remains below the 70% abrupt decline.”

While that definition is not generally accepted either, it provides a good starting point for a discussion, allowing us to assume that, to qualify as a stock collapse, the abundance of adult fish has to fall by far more than half, and has to stay at low levels for a while; a stock that falls quickly and bounces back just as fast is merely experiencing a temporary fluctuation.

With that in mind, let’s go back in time, to get an idea what a stock collapse looks like.

It’s 1968.  My family had purchased a new boat that year, a 15-foot no-name outboard—if I recall, the brand was something like “Glasscraft,” made in some ramshackle facility in Norwalk, CT—with a 33 hp Evinrude hanging on the back.  But it was the day after Thanksgiving, the town dock was officially closed, and the boat was sitting on blocks in our back yard.  Striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, mackerel, and just about everything else was already in the year’s rear-view mirror, which is why I was sitting on the supposedly shut-down town dock, with one line down on the bottom for flounder and tomcod, and the other suspending baits just a few feet below the surface, where they’d hopefully attract my main target—smelt.

I wasn’t alone.  There were a few older guys—and by “older,” I mean retirees, or men who owned seasonal business who could sneak away to fish during the day with no one complaining—who were also hoping that the smelt would appear, but the real show wouldn’t begin until after dark, when the after-work crowd would arrive, armed with rods, Coleman lanterns, and maybe a bottle or two to stave off the cold.  Those were the serious smelt fishermen, and from late October until the creek froze over, they’d be lining the dock—and just about every other dock and seawall along the Connecticut and Westchester shores—with some just stopping by for an hour or two and others planning to stay until midnight or the wee hours of morning, seeking the small, silvery fish that were crowding into estuaries all along the north shore of Long Island Sound.

I don’t recall how many smelt I caught that day—I know that there were a few, along with some flounder and tomcod—but I do know that it was the last time I caught any at all.  The river began to ice over shortly thereafter, and when the autumn of ’69 came around—the smelt didn’t.  They didn’t show up at all.  They just disappeared, and a quirky fishery that attracted far more anglers than one might expect—and helped pay tackle shops’ bills at the end of the year—vanished over the course of a single season, with few people alive today even remembering that it ever existed.

We never figured out why the smelt collapsed.  At the time, a lot of fishermen blamed it on predation by bluefish, which had only recently begun to flood into our inshore waters.  In retrospect, I suspect that increasing development cut off access to most of the streams where they spawned, and with fewer new fish entering the stock, they could no longer support existing mortality levels—both fishing and natural—and so disappeared.

Whatever the cause, the stock collapsed, although I don’t think that was the stock collapse that you expected me to describe.

So let’s go back to 1968, but start a little sooner.  It is April.  The new boat is in the water, and we’re headed out for winter flounder.

Flounder had actually started to bite during March, but the town dock didn’t open until April 15, so we couldn’t start fishing until the month was almost done.  I can’t provide the details of any one trip, but I can say that from April through the end of May, we did a lot of flounder fishing and caught a lot of fish—most weighing well under a pound—without bothering to use any chum or pay particular attention to the tides.  Flounder were just about everywhere.

Things stayed like that for another decade.  But in the fall of ’79, we suddenly started catching a lot of big flounder, many over a pound and some weighing close to two, where there were only small fish before.  Excited to be catching bigger flounder, we didn’t really notice that the small fish were getting scarce.  The good fishing continued for a few years, but in 1983, my wife and I moved to the South Shore of Long Island, where the same pattern was repeating itself.

We caught lots of flounder, and at first, there were more small fish than large.  But by 1990, the small fish were disappearing on Long Island, too; 2-pound flounder became more common than hand-sized fish, and numbers were starting to drop. 

In the late ‘80s, state regulators tried to adopt regulations to halt the decline, but faced a lot of pushback from the recreational fishing industry, with for-hire boats complaining that a low bag limit would take away anglers’ perception that they might enjoy a “big day”—that is, take home a pailful of fish—and hurt business, while the shops were complaining that regulations would impact their bottom line.

Recruitment of young fish into the stock began declining sharply, but every attempt to constrain harvest met stiff opposition from the fishing industry, which couldn’t see beyond the short term.  By 2005, the fish were just about gone.  Restrictive regulations were eventually adopted, but they came too late to do very much good.  New York’s recreational landings fell from about 14.5 million fish in 1984 to just about 100 in 2022.

That certainly qualifies as a collapse.

But I’m guessing that’s not the stock collapse you were expecting me to write about, either, even though, between the loss of the smelt and the loss of the winter flounder, inshore anglers probably lost at least six weeks of good fishing at the beginning of the season, and about the same amount at the end, and the angling industry lost close to three months of previously dependable income. 

To provide some idea of how the loss of the flounder impacted the industry, in the ‘80s, in my part of Great South Bay, I could drive over the bridge to Fire Island and see the local channels lined with private and for-hire boats, all soaking bloodworms, clams, and sandworms, and chumming with mussels and clams, in pursuit of winter flounder; this April, when I was planning to run offshore for cod, I went to every tackle shop within a reasonable drive and couldn’t find even one that had started carrying bait, because so few folks were fishing that early in the season.

Still, let’s go back to 1968 one more time, and this time, we’ll talk about the collapse you’ve been waiting for—striped bass. 

Of course, that collapse didn’t start in ’68.  1968 was the year that I became a dedicated striped bass fisherman, because we finally had a boat small enough to sneak around the rocks and along the sod banks where bass were most likely to be.  My father and I were out every weekend, trolling the sandworm and spinner combinations that everyone used at the time.  We weren’t the best anglers in our part of the Sound, but there were enough bass around, in sizes ranging from shorts (the size limit back then was just 16 inches) to the occasional 50-pounder, that we managed to put quite a few fish in the boat, although none were particularly large.

In 1970, I got my driver’s license and, shortly thereafter, a well-used car.  Now able to drive myself to the dock, I began fishing after school—at least on nights when I didn’t have to work—and throughout the  summer, expanding my experience and my success as I began fishing not only with bait, but with plugs, bucktails, and the new soft plastic lures that were appearing in the shops.

In the same year, Maryland produced the largest year class of striped bass that had ever been seen.  The juvenile abundance index for 1970 was 30.52, and thought we’ve had four larger spawns since, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen striped bass available in as many different sizes as I did in the mid-1970s.NB

Beginning in 1972, the ’70 year class swarmed into Long Island Sound, first as 14-inchers, then growing larger every year.  Bigger bass, spawned during the 1950s and 1960s, were also readily available.  Thus, on one July morning, I could take out the owner of a local tackle shop, have him hook a couple of rats on poppers at the same time that I was fighting a 17 hooked on a bucktail, and then run to another spot  and put a 51 in the boat.

Fishing was very, very good back then.

But then we started noticing that our small fish were steadily getting bigger.  That is, we saw the 1970s getting bigger and, for a while, a few somewhat smaller bass coming up behind them.  But then we stopped seeing shorts, and then stopped seeing anything under 20 inches or so, and then…

The funny thing is, no one thought much about it until Bob Pond, a legendary striped bass fisherman and creator of the Atom line of artificial lures, started trying to call people’s attention to the fact that the Maryland juvenile abundance index was in sharp decline.  From its record-high level in 1970, it fell to 6.69 in ’75, 4.91 and 4.85 in ’76 and ’77.  It came up to 8.45 in ’78, but then sounded new lows, recording JAIs of 4.24, 1.98 and 1.22 over the next three years. 

While few new fish were entering the stock, too many older, spawning-age fish were still being removed.  Because there were still a lot of large bass being taken, neither striped bass fishermen nor fishery managers paid much attention to the poor Maryland spawns until the stock, stressed beyond any hope of resilience, collapsed.

Every now and again, I hear people say that the striped bass stock is collapsing today. 

While I respect such people’s concerns for the fishery, and know that their hearts are in the right place, they have no idea of what a striped bass stock collapse really looks like.  Right now, spawning stock biomass is three or four times larger than it was in the first half of the 1980s, when the collapse drove it to lows that I hope we will never see again.

There are things that you have to live through to truly comprehend, and a striped bass collapse is probably one of them. 

Imagine heading out before dawn, fishing for stripers because that’s what you do, knowing before you cast off from the dock that your efforts will almost certainly prove fruitless.  Morning after morning, you try, casting to waters that you have fished almost since you first learned how to walk, waters you knew so well that if someone handed you a pen and a blank sheet of paper, you could draw in every ledge and boulder, and show how they appeared at every phase of the tide.  Morning after morning, there’s no sign of even a single striped bass.

Then, one day, that changes. 

The sun is still below the horizon, and everything is windless and still, wrapped in the sort of silver-gray light that you only get on soft, early summer mornings.  There are wisps of haze hanging over the water, enough that you can’t really tell where the sky stops and Long Island Sound begins.  You’re fishing a mile of bouldered shoreline; once a score of boats—maybe more—would have been working the points and rockpiles, but now, there is only one other boat, maybe two hundred yards away, to share the empty water.  But you cast, as you have cast so many times before, retrieving the bucktail with practiced motions, but without any hope.

But this time, something interrupts the lure’s return to boatside.  You lean back on the rod and set your hook into the jaw of a decent fish which you fight to the boat, then quickly unhook and release.

And just then, as you straighten up and reach for your rod, you notice the haunting sound of a single man clapping coming across the water from the other boat.  Whether he was clapping because you released the fish, or simply because you simply managed to find one, is something that you’ll never know.

But you’ll always remember.

That is what a stock collapse looks like.

Last Friday, in the dark before dawn, I met Mike Mucha at his boat on the Mianus River, and we fished my old home waters.  I still know where every rock resides, and how the current wraps around each one at various stages of tide.  We worked from Cos Cob to Greenwich, and found a few bass along the way.  None were very large—Mike had one that might have gone 10 or 12 pounds, from the big Maryland year class of 2015—but we knew that there were bigger fish around, from the strong year classes produced in 2011, 2003, and even 1996.  Anglers are celebrating the abundance of 2015s, and praising the health of the stock.

But of all the fish that we caught, there almost none were smaller than 24 inches or so, probably fish spawned in 2018.

Since then, the Maryland juvenile abundance index has tanked.  For the years 2019-2022, it was 3.37, 2.48, 3.20, and 3.62, the lowest four-year average ever recorded in the 65-year life of the survey.  Predictions for the 2023 year class are not good.

We drifted along the rocks and sod banks, and bass were still hitting our lures.

I’ve cast to those stones for most of my life, and know them well.  But lately, it’s not the rocks that have been giving me an eerie feeling of déjà vu.

 

THE UNREPRESENTED ANGLER

 

Saltwater angling has, of necessity, become a highly-regulated activity.

When I was a boy—let’s say, during the 1960s—fishing along the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, there were no closed seasons or bag limits, and the only size limit that we had to worry about was the 16-inch (fork length) minimum for striped bass.  But the U.S. population has added 150 million people since then, most of whom live near the coast, placing a substantial burden on fisheries resources.

Regulation became inevitable.

The next question, of course, was who would set the rules.

Fifty years ago, a lot of the regulation was done by state legislatures, which adopted laws setting fishery management measures.  As the need for active fishery management grew, the legislative process became unwieldy, so legislatures began to delegate management authority to state conservation agencies.  

In many cases, legislatures also set up fishery management bodies, designated “commissions,” “councils,” or “boards,” which gave selected stakeholders a chance to directly influence the management process.  Some of those bodies, such as New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council, are strictly advisory.  Some, perhaps best exemplified by New Jersey’s Marine Fisheries Council, have veto authority over agency actions, while others, such as North Carolina’s Marine Fisheries Commission, have the power to not only to suggest, but to implement, fishery management measures.

At the federal level, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act created eight regional fishery management councils, peopled by a National Marine Fisheries Service regional administrator, state fisheries administrators, and stakeholders representing the commercial fishery, the recreational fishery, and other marine interests.  

Congress also passed the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, which empowered the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to manage inshore fish stocks (and also offshore stocks under certain circumstances); the Commission includes two representatives from federal agencies (NMFS and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service), state fishery managers, and stakeholder representatives.

Given the role that the various councils, commissions, and boards play in the fishery management process, it is important that anglers have a seat at the table, so that their concerns will be heard and their management needs recognized, at least so far as prudence will allow.

Unfortunately, on most of such management bodies, individual anglers have almost no voice at all. 

That’s not a good situation, for in most recreational fisheries, individual anglers generate the largest share of recreational fishing trips, and probably (I say “probably” because I don’t have access to the economic data needed to be more certain) the greatest share of the economic and social benefits accruing from such fisheries. 

If we look at the six recreational fisheries most important to New York, striped bass, summer flounder, scup, bluefish, tautog, and black sea bass, we find that in 2022, private anglers were responsible for nearly 99% of all trips primarily targeting striped bass, 97% of summer flounder trips, 98% of scup trips, 99.9% of trips primarily targeting bluefish (had to use the decimal there, to avoid saying 100%), 97% of tautog trips, and 94% of all black sea bass trips.  

Given how private anglers dominate the state’s fisheries, one might think that such anglers would dominate the recreational seats on New York's Marine Resources Advisory Council, but that’s not the case.  Of the seven seats held by recreational interests, only two are held by private anglers.  Three of the other seats are held by members of the for-hire fleet, one by a representative of the boating industry, and one by a representative of the bait and tackle industry.  At least two of the ostensibly recreational members also have close ties to the commercial fishing industry.

As a result, although surfcasters and private boat anglers are responsible for more than 95% of the state’s saltwater recreational fishing activity, votes at MRAC almost always favor the outcome preferred by the fishing industry—as opposed to the fishermen themselves--and more particularly, outcomes favored by the for-hire fleet.  

We most recently saw that in March, when a possible black sea bass regulation that was broadly favored by the private sector—keeping the size limit at 16 inches, in exchange for shortening the season by just eight days—was overwhelmingly defeated in favor of one favored by industry, which increased the size limit by ½ inch but left the current season intact.

Past votes on striped bass, winter flounder, and other species resulted in similar industry-favored outcomes.

We see the same thing occurring at the federal level, at the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

There, the four most important recreational species are bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass.  Because the Council includes states between North Carolina and New York, the proportion of trips taken by private anglers and for-hire boats differs somewhat from the New York figures, but the basic pattern remains unchanged.  Private anglers—surfcasters and private boat fishermen—accounted for 99.8% of all mid-Atlantic trips primarily targeting bluefish, 98% of summer flounder and scup trips, and 94% of trips targeting black sea bass.

Yet, with respect to representation, the situation at the Mid-Atlantic Council is even worse than it is at New York’s MRAC.  Not a single private angler, unaffiliated with the angling industry, holds a seat on the Council.  Instead, the recreational sector is represented by three members of the for-hire fleet, some of whom also have commercial affiliations, and three individuals who, although they fish recreationally, are also involved with various forms of outdoor media as writers, seminar speakers, and/or operators of angling websites, and thus have close ties to a fishing industry that does not tolerate media members who disagree with its fishery management goals.  Private anglers’ interests, to the extent that they are protected at all, are represented by the two Council members who are formally trained in fisheries science, and once worked as state fisheries managers.

Thus, we again see private anglers’ perspectives and interests largely ignored.  That has been particularly obvious in the case of bluefish.  The Council (and the ASMFC’s Bluefish Management Board) agreed to grant passengers on for-hire vessels a privileged, 5-bluefish bag limit, as opposed to the 3-fish bag imposed on private anglers.  When finalizing a recent amendment to the bluefish management plan, Council and Management Board members ignored anglers’ entreaties to manage the recreational bluefish fishery for abundance and recreational opportunities, and instead decided that, once the stock was rebuilt, any uncaught recreational quota resulting from anglers’ conservation efforts should be transferred to and harvested by the commercial sector.  And even when discussing the size of the bluefish released by anglers, something that caused disagreement between scientists at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and those at the Greater Atlantic Region Fisheries Office a few years ago, not a single recreational representative would admit what any angler knows to be true—that recreational fishermen typically release the larger, stronger-tasting bluefish and keep the smaller ones, if they keep any bluefish at all.  Instead they stayed silent and tacitly endorsed the assumption that released bluefish averaged the same size as the bluefish that are kept, and in doing so, minimized the estimate of dead discards while allowing a greater amount of fish to be landed.

Later this year, the Council will begin investigating the concept of “sector separation,” which will, if implemented, again likely grant passengers on for-hire vessels special privileges, in the form of larger bag limits or smaller minimum sizes than those imposed on shore-based and private-boat anglers.  Given the makeup of the Council, and the private anglers’ lack of representation, it’s not hard to predict how that will go.

Quite honestly, I’m not sure how to fix the problem.

Appointment to the various councils, commissions, and boards is a political process.  The for-hire fleet, and other elements of the angling industry, are willing and able to work the political system to achieve their desired results.

The New York for-hire fleet, for example, may be responsible for less than 2% of all striped bass trips made in state waters, but they have managed to get at least two state legislators to contact New York’s governor and ask her not to implement the ASMFC’s recent emergency measures.  And they have convinced a Long Island congressman to pen a sign-on letter to the Secretary of Commerce, asking her to intervene with the ASMFC itself.

The same savvy (and campaign contributions) that convinces legislators to write such letters comes in handy when it’s time for a stakeholder to be appointed to a commission, council, or board.  The industry folks have the knowledge—and, perhaps more important, the determination—to push for their chosen candidates, while the private anglers are disorganized and never developed the institutional knowledge needed to promote their own interests.  State national angling organizations claim to represent private anglers’ interests but, with a few notable exceptions, promote their own interests instead, knowing that a good relationship with the for-hire and tackle industries guarantees more of the donations that they need to keep such organizations alive.

Thus, until anglers develop the determination necessary to adequately represent themselves, their sole hope lies in the consciences of those state and federal fishery managers who understand the need for everyone to have a seat at the table, and will reach out to stakeholders in an effort to find and support promising candidates.

The good news is that there are folks like that out there.  The bad news is that their numbers are still far too low.

SOME REAL WORK WILL BE NEEDED TO REBUILD STRIPED BASS

 

On June 5, 2023, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Plan Development Team and Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee discussed the next steps in rebuilding the striped bass spawning stock.

The stock is currently overfished, but slowly recovering.  Unfortunately, poor recruitment of young fish into the striped bass population is hampering rebuilding efforts; the Technical Committee’s most recent projections show that, beginning around 2027 such low recruitment will cause the spawning stock to begin a gradual decline, unless fishing mortality is reduced enough offset the lack of recruits.

Thus, the June 5 meeting focused on the level of harvest reductions that might have been achieved by recent management actions, as well as the additional reductions that will be needed to rebuild the stock by 2029, the deadline mandated in the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan.  It was a three-step process, in which the Technical Committee first estimated the effects of the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board’s recent emergency action, which established a 31-inch maximum size for all recreationally-caught striped bass, then considered the sort of management measures that might be included in the draft Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which will be presented to the Management Board at its August meeting, and finally discussed, in very general terms, what might have to be done to rebuild the spawning stock by the 2029 deadline.

By the time the meeting had ended, no concrete management measures had been proposed, although both the PDT and the Technical Committee had a good idea of how the emergency measures would impact 2023 striped bass fishing mortality, and how Addendum II would likely affect striped bass rebuilding. 

Sitting on the sidelines, listening to the various scientists discuss the issues, it was clear that while rebuilding the spawning stock is possible, every sector of the fishery is going to have to invest a lot of work, and a lot of shared pain, to get the job done.

As we all should have known from the beginning, the emergency measures, even if adopted on a permanent basis, won’t be enough to rebuild the stock.  They were never intended to do so.  The Management Board’s adoption of the emergency measures can best be likened to someone grabbing an old, grimy rag and using it to put pressure on, and staunch the bleeding from, a gaping arterial wound.  It’s not a perfect solution, there might be some leakage, and the risk of infection is high.  But the first priority is to stop the bleeding, regardless of how, or else the patient is going to die, making those other concerns more or less irrelevant.

The emergency measures were only intended to stop the bleeding--the increasing recreational landings--until something more permanent could be contrived.  Even so, the Technical Committee estimated that the emergency measures will reduce recreational striped bass fishing mortality by about 29 percent, compared to 2022. 

That estimate includes substantial uncertainty when it comes to how recreational release mortality will be affected by the emergency measure.  

Under the former 28- to 35-inch slot limit, some anglers might have released sub-31-inch fish, hoping to catch and retain a somewhat larger bass; if that was the case, by removing the option of keeping a larger fish, the emergency measure might conceivably reduce the number of fish released, and so slightly reduce fishing mortality.  On the other hand, striped bass don’t bite in any sort of size order, with smaller fish taking the hook before large ones.  To the extent that an angler who might have had the opportunity to retain a larger, 31- to 35-inch bass can no longer do so, it is possible that such angler will release a substantial number of large fish before finding one that fits within the emergency slot, in which case release mortality could increase somewhat.

And then there are the more extreme situations.  It is possible that the narrow, emergency slot might make landing a legal fish difficult enough that some anglers will no longer consider striped bass fishing worthwhile; in such cases, both landings and release mortality would decline.  But there are also anglers who rarely if ever take home a striped bass; the emergency slot would have no impact on them at all, and the fishing mortality attributable to them would remain exactly the same.

A final consideration is that, outside of the very slightly above-average 2017 and 2018 year classes, the year classes produced after 2015 have all been very small, which means that, with most of the 2015 year class now falling within the slot, anglers will catch far fewer undersized bass, resulting in less release mortality, simply because there will be fewer small bass in the water for anglers to catch.

In their efforts to estimate 2023 release mortality, Technical Committee members need to take all of the foregoing scenarios into consideration, and try to predict which ones will prevail.  History, and particularly the history of the 2011 year class, can provide substantial guidance but, in the end, a lot of uncertainty remains.

Taking all things into account, the Technical Committee projected that the emergency measures would reduce 2023 removals by a little less than 4.9 million fish, which falls short of the 5.7 million fish reduction needed to lower fishing mortality to the target fishing mortality rate.

Even if the target fishing mortality rate was achieved, rebuilding would remain unlikely.  The Technical Committee projected that reducing the fishing mortality rate to 0.17 would still only provide a 28 percent probability of rebuilding by 2029.

Having said that, the wording of the motion made at the May 2^nd Management Board meeting, which initiated the work on Addendum II, made rebuilding more difficult, as it reads in relevant part

“Move to initiate an Addendum to implement commercial and recreational measures for the ocean and Chesapeake Bay fisheries in 2024 that in aggregate are projected to achieve F-target from the 2022 stock assessment update (F=0.17)…”

Such unfortunate wording limits Addendum II management actions to those which achieve the target fishing mortality rate, and does not contemplate reducing fishing mortality to the rate needed to rebuild the stock by the 2029 deadline.  That issue was recognized at the June 5 meeting, when those present acknowledged that, following the 2024 stock assessment update, it will probably be necessary to take yet another management action that goes beyond Addendum II, and finally adopts the measures needed to rebuild the stock in a timely fashion.

Of course, the time lag between the release of the 2022 assessment update, the emergency action, Addendum II and, ultimately, the final rebuilding plan will mean that each management action is going to be more restrictive than the rebuilding measures would have been, had the Management Board initiated a rebuilding plan in 2019, as part of Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to theAtlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, instead of waiting until last fall to take its first serious look at the rebuilding process.

But dwelling on the past, and lamenting over missed opportunities, isn’t going to get the striped bass stock rebuilt. 

What will it take to get that done?

We don’t really know yet, as the Technical Committee hasn’t had a chance to crunch all of the numbers.    

To achieve the goal of Addendum II, reducing the fishing mortality rate to 0.17, probably won’t be too difficult.  It’s possible that moving the slot around a little bit, from 28 to 31 inches to some other bracket, might do it, but my guess—and it’s only a guess—is that just adjusting the recreational slot limit won’t be good enough.  Something more will be required. 

That something will probably include a cap on the size of fish caught in the commercial fishery, which may in turn require revisiting state quotas, to assure that catching the same poundage of smaller fish—meaning that more fish will be killed—won’t impair the spawning potential of the stock.  I strongly suspect that it will also include some sort of recreational season when striped bass harvest is not allowed.

To actually rebuild the stock, and not merely reduce fishing mortality to the target, will require further reductions.  At that point, I suspect—but, of course, can't know until the Technical Committee works out the numbers after the 2024 stock assessment update—that significant no-harvest recreational seasons and reduced commercial quotas will have to be considered.

Until we learn what the rebuilding plan will look like, we can take solace in the fact that managers at the ASMFC seem to be willing to adapt management measures to meet the stock’s needs.  Not long ago, they would set management measures after each benchmark stock assessment, then take no further action until the next benchmark assessment came around.  The days of such inaction appear to be over, for as one influential Technical Committee member, Dr. Katie Drew, noted at last Monday’s meeting, the folks at the ASMFC have learned that a “set it and forget it” approach to management measures just doesn’t work.

So long as managers retain that willingness to adjust management measures to the needs of the stock, as soon as such needs become manifest, and so long as fishermen are willing to make the sacrifices needed to rebuild the spawning stock and maintain it at a sustainable level, there is reason to hope--there is even reason to believe--that the striped bass population will, in fact, be rebuilt before the next decade dawns.

 

 

STRIPED BASS: EMBRACING RELEASE MORTALITY

 

If you listen to current discussions about striped bass management, you’ll quickly learn that there is a real need to reduce overall fishing mortality. 

But listen a little closer, and the nuances begin to come through.  It’s not only fishing mortality, some people will tell you, that is the problem, but a specific kind of fishing mortality—the mortality that occurs when recreationally-caught fish are returned to the water.

They call it “release mortality,” and sometimes “dead discards/”   But whatever you call it, in the case of striped bass you largely mean the same thing—fish returned to the water by anglers which, despite the anglers' best efforts and intentions, fail to survive.

If we look at the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, we learn that there are two kinds of discards, “economic discards” and “regulatory discards.”  Magnuson-Stevens tells us that

“The term ‘economic discards’ means fish which are the target of a fishery, but which are not retained because they are of an undesirable size, sex, or quality, or for other economic reasons,”

while

“The term ‘regulatory discards’ means fish harvested in a fishery which fishermen are required by regulation to discard whenever caught, or are required by regulation to retain but not sell.”

If we apply those definitions to the recreational striped bass fishery, it’s clear that anglers don’t typically produce economic discards, since economic considerations don’t generally dictate whether or not recreational fishermen keep a fish.  On the other hand, striped bass anglers can and do produce regulatory discards, when they return a fish to the water because it does not comply with the existing size limit, bag limit, or season.

While it is nice to think that all discarded fish returned to the water survive, we know that’s not the case.  Some fish inevitably die after being released.  There is a general consensus that reducing discards to the extent practical, and thus reducing discard mortality, is a responsible goal.  That makes perfect sense, as discards, whether economic or regulatory, provide no economic benefit, and are not valued by fishermen.  The presence of discards only causes fishermen unneeded work while placing additional stress on fish populations.

However, in recreational fisheries—and particularly in the recreational striped bass fishery—many fish are caught that do not easily fit into either category of discards.  They are targeted, and caught, by anglers, who have no intent to retain them.  

While some of those fish might arguably be regulatory discards, others are fish that anglers may keep but choose not to, because they value the act of catching fish far more than they value keeping such fish and taking them home.  

Such intentionally released fish fall outside the definitions of economic or regulatory discards.  The very term “discard” connotes something unwanted, while the fish we’re discussing here were fish that the angler very much wanted to catch, but did not want to keep.  What we’re talking about are preplanned, intentional releases of fish that the angler never intended to retain..

In the case of striped bass, we are talking about a release fishery which, by its existence, generates substantial social and economic benefits that are separate and apart from—and arguably substantially greater than—the benefits derived from harvest.  Yet even if fish are not intentionally harvested, some released fish will not survive.  In the striped bass fishery, managers have not yet comfortably come to grips with such release mortality.

Instead, they often try to make an inappropriate value judgement, and equate such releases to discards.

Discards, or at least dead discards, represent unalloyed waste.  Undersized, over-limit, or out-of-season fish that are shoveled off a trawler's deck, often already dead or dying, do no one any good, although various scavengers might get an easy meal. Similarly, sharks dumped off a longliner because they’d take up space in the hold that might otherwise be used for more valuable tuna or swordfish are killed without providing any countervailing benefit to anyone.

Release mortality is often conflated with such discard mortality, and is too often seen as something equally bad, to be minimized whenever possible.  In the hierarchy of management outcomes, fish intentionally killed and harvested by anglers are held in higher regard than those unintentionally killed during release.  Managers seek to maximize landings, while minimizing release mortality.

Thus, the fact that release mortality accounts for about half of all striped bass fishing mortality causes consternation, while the fact that the combined recreational and commercial striped bass harvest accounts for 48%--also about half—of such mortality does not.  

Yet, from a biological perspective, there is no qualitative difference between a fish that dies after release and a fish that dies after being thrown into a cooler.  Both have been removed from the population, both have been removed from the spawning stock, neither will contribute to future reproduction.

To put it succinctly, dead is dead.  To a fish population, or to an ecosystem, the details of the death don’t matter. 

However, from the perspective of the fishery, maybe how a bass dies really does make a difference.  Perhaps a high level of release mortality, far from being the great bugaboo, is a sign that the fishery is maximizing its social and economic returns.

Let me pause for a second to be sure that everyone understands:  I am not saying that a high release mortality rate is a good thing.  Right now, the release mortality rate for striped bass is believed to be 9 percent, which is one of the lowest release mortality rates on the East Coast.  Even so, any realistic ways to drop the rate even lower are worthy of pursuit.

Instead, I am arguing that it’s not necessarily a bad thing when recreational release mortality is the greatest single component of striped bass fishing mortality.

That’s because the striped bass is fishery primarily a recreational fishery, with 85 to 90 percent of all fishing mortality attributable to the recreational sector.  Furthermore, it is not merely a recreational fishery, but a recreational release fishery that, since 1990, has seen about 90 percent of the fish caught by anglers returned to the water.

The benefits of such a fishery are optimized by maximizing recreational effort, although always within sustainable limits, and not by maximizing recreational yield.

When effort increases, the number of releases increases, so the number of fish that die after release will increase as well.  But that’s fine, so long as the increase in release mortality is offset by more restrictive management measures that result in a corresponding reduction in landings.

Yes, I know that’s heresy to saltwater fisheries managers, who have long worshipped at the altar of yield, and still quest after the highest sustainable level of landings.  But it’s not a new concept; managing fisheries for recreational effort, rather than yield, is something that has been done for years, in both fresh and salt water.

No-kill trout streams are probably the best-known example.  In such rivers, trout are often larger and more abundant than they are in waters where harvest is allowed.  While recreational release mortality accounts for 100 percent of all fishing mortality in such waters, few if any fisheries managers see any problem with that.

A similar situation exists in the Florida tarpon fishery, where all tarpon caught must be released; the only exception comes in the form of a permit, issued to anglers seeking a state or world record fish, which allows them to retain a single contending tarpon each year.  Once again, release mortality is, by far, the primary component of fishing mortality, but no one seems too concerned.

And those are merely two examples.  In many purely recreational fisheries—bonefish, permit, largemouth bass, muskellunge—catch-and-release angling is widely practiced, and is the single largest source of fishing mortality, yet no one complains.

Why should the striped bass fishery be viewed any differently?

If striped bass were managed to maximize yield, pursuant to size and perhaps bag limits that made it relatively easy for anglers to catch and take home a legal-sized fish, effort would have to be sharply curtailed, probably by substantial closed seasons, to prevent overfishing.  Managers would need to closely regulate catch-and-release fishing, and almost certainly prohibiting it during any closed seasons, in order to reduce release mortality to a sustainable level.  Because no one spends money on trips they can’t take, such a reduction in effort would result in a sharp reduction in the economic benefits gleaned from the striped bass fishery.  People might be keeping more bass, but they would be catching (and releasing) fewer of them, and spending less money on each harvested fish.

On the other hand, if bass were managed to maximize angler effort, probably through the use of very restrictive size and bag limits, release mortality would increase.  Because it takes 11 released fish to equal the harm done to the bass population by harvesting a single individual, anglers would be able to take many more trips, and spend far more money, than they would in a harvest-oriented fishery.

Contrary to what people often say at management meetings, managing the striped bass fishery in a way that maximizes effort will provide greater economic benefits to angling-related businesses, and provide anglers with greater recreational opportunities, than will managing the fishery for yield.

A higher level of release mortality is merely the price that managers must pay to maximize the fishery’s social and economic returns. 

Thus, the members of the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board must learn to stop worrying about, and fearing, release mortality.  Instead, they must learn to embrace it, and realize that such mortality, and not that attributable to landings, is the key to maximizing the social and economic values of the most important inshore fishery in the United States.

 

 

 

 

 

DIMINISHING RETURNS

 

I didn’t fish as much as I wanted to this spring.  The season started out well, with a run to a couple of offshore wrecks toward the end of April, but on the way home I noticed a leak in my hydraulic steering, and between turkey season and some traveling, I didn’t get it fixed until toward the end of May, when I learned that someone, earlier in the life of the boat, must have faced the same problem, decided to fix it themselves, and ended up putting the main seal in backwards, resulting in a repair that didn’t last quite as long as it should have.

I finally managed to get out yesterday, finding the predawn bay covered in fog that knocked visibility down to a hundred or so yards and forced me to throttle back and trust GPS and radar to get me to where I was headed, turning what should have been a 25-minute run into a 2-hour trek.  By the time that I got to the grounds, I had lost the tide, and spent an hour or so in fruitless casting until the current picked up and began running out.  But by that time, it was already close to nine in the morning, and there was work to be done, so my wife and I began fishing our way back toward the dock.

Between the fog and the slack tide, it wasn’t a productive trip.  We had hoped to find a few weakfish, which have been slowly increasing in numbers over the past few years, and maybe a bluefish or two.  As it was, we saw another boat net something of very modest size—we were too far away to see what it was, although I’m guessing weakfish—and my wife had a couple of hits that were certainly blues, as they sheared away the back end of her soft plastic lure.

But then again, it hasn't been a particularly productive season so far--for anyone.  There have been a few striped bass, some decent, if on-and-off, fishing for bluefish, and an acceptable showing of weaks, but fluke have been spotty and legal fluke scarce.  

I live fairly close to Captree State Park, which hosts a large party and charter boat fleet.  The folks who run the boats are, for the most part, capable captains who have years of experience fishing local waters, and can usually find fish if there are any around.  The boats themselves range from slow, vintage hulls dating back many decades, which usually remain in the bay, to large, modern vessels that can fish anywhere between their dock and the edge of the continental shelf.

Thus, when I'm not catching too much and want a fast snapshot of what’s going on, I often take a look at the party boats’ fishing reports, which generally provide a rosy review of what people are catching.

One fleet’s (two boats') report for the last few days read like this:  Yesterday,

“Today’s 7AM trip caught 29 fluke to 5.46 LBS…Today’s 1pm trip had 6 fishermen.  They caught 1 Fluke, 2 Bluefish, 1 Weakfish and 5 Cape Shark [the boat’s favorite euphemism for dogfish, either spiny or smooth].  Tonight’s 6pm trip caught 6 Striped Bass, 2 Bluefish and 1 Weakfish.”

For May 30, the same boat reported,

“Today’s 7am trip caught 8 Fluke.  Today’s 1pm trip caught 2 Fluke and 4 Bluefish.  Tonight’s 6pm trip caught 1 Striper and 3 Bluefish.”

And then there was Memorial Day (which, to be fair, was very windy):

“…Today’s 7am trip caught 2 Fluke, 6 Hake, 50 seabass [which, being out of season, had to be released], 2 mackerel and 15 Cape Shark.  Tonight’s 6pm trip is cancelled for lack of interest.  Today’s 1pm trip caught 2 Fluke…”

That’s not exactly setting the world on fire.  Of course, no matter where you might be, fishing isn’t always good; two weeks ago, things seemed a bit better.  On May 15

“Today’s 7am trip caught 22 Fluke, 2 Sea Robins, 2 Cape Shark and 1 Sand Tiger Shark.  Tonight’s 6PM trip is cancelled due to lack of interest.  Today’s 1pm trip caught 12 Fluke and 1 Bluefish.”

On May 16,

“…Today’s 7am trip caught 11 Fluke, 1 Bluefish and 2 Cape Shark.  Today’s 1pm trip caught 2 Fluke, 1 Bluefish, and 1 Blowfish.  Tonight’s 6pm trip caught 3 Weakfish, 1 Striped Bass, and 1 Cape Shark.”

And for May 17,

“…Today’s 1pm trip is cancelled…Tonight’s 6pm trip is cancelled due to lack of interest.  Today’s 7am trip caught 5 Fluke, 2 Sea Robins, and 1 Cape Shark.”

Arguably better action than the last few days, but still not particularly good.  And it’s important to note that while the report notes how many fluke and striped bass were caught, it didn’t mention how many were large enough that they might have been legally kept (as I noted above, these reports tend to be rosy). 

That makes a big difference, particularly with “meat fish” such as fluke.

While there were better days—on May 2, one boat, carrying 11 anglers, reportedly caught 125 striped bass, with every person aboard taking home a legal fish, while on May 3, a dozen fishermen were said to have caught 48 fluke up to 5.42 pounds—the fishing has been, by and large, unspectacular.

It’s actually been that way for some years.

Today's fishing is a stark contrast to the way it was when I first moved to Long Island in 1983.  Back then, May was the month when it all broke wide open.

Winter flounder were still widely available.  As the bay warmed, flounder would move out of the backwaters and into the main channels, with what seemed to be most of the fish eventually moving out of the inlets and into the ocean.  Throughout the month, both private and for-hire boats intercepted the concentration of fish, taking what we now know was far too many flounder home. 

That fishery collapsed long ago, and no longer exists.

As winter flounder were exiting the bays, summer flounder were rolling in.  I still remember my first May morning in Fire Island Inlet, back in '84.  We had just moved my boat to the South Shore, and I was just begining to feel out the water, drifting through the inlet on the outgoing tide, using supermarket squid for bait.  While I don’t recall exactly how many fluke I caught that morning, I recall that it was probably something like eight or ten or maybe a dozen—more than the number of fish supposedly caught by the entire boat in some of the reports reproduced above.

Granted, the fluke are bigger these days—back in the ‘80s, the size limit was just 14 inches, yet we still mostly caught undersized fish—but they are also significantly harder to come by during most of the year.

Then there were blackfish (a/k/a tautog).  In the mid1980sBack then, there were enough blackfish around to justify a May season; in fact, in the ’80s, there was no closed season at all.  Anglers could find fish on mussel beds and around hard structure within the bay, while those willing to take a ride to an inshore wreck—the Roda, which sits partially exposed at low tide off eastern Nassau County, was my favorite at the time—often managed to catch a good mess of fish.  Today, theNew York Bight blackfish stock remains overfished, and the season is closed during May, in part to protect spawning fish.

And, of course, there were bluefish, flooding into the bays as the water warmed.  Little fish—up to five pounds or so—might pop up anywhere between the inlets and the backwaters, while larger blues stacked up in the inlets when the outgoing tide brought warm water, or lay quiet on the flats, unseen but willing to explode on a surface plug splashing over their heads.

There are still some blues moving through—we had some fairlyu big fish this year, and some fairly big schools of small ones—but nothing like it was years ago, when so many bluefish chased bait in the bay that there weren’t enough terns and laughing gulls to wheel and feed over every separate school.

Just outside the inlets, in the early part of the month, a vast body of Atlantic mackerel streamed past, so many fish that anglers using multi-hooked rigs caught them three, four, even five at a time, and could fill a freezer with shark and tuna bait in just one or two trips.

We haven’t seen those big mackerel schools in more than 30 years.

Yet, to me, those fish are all sideshows, for May has always belonged to the weakfish.

There are still some around.  Although the population has fallen to very low numbers, for reasons that scientists haven’t completely discerned (one recent hypothesis concerns increasing predation by bottlenose dolphins), it has made a comeback in recent years,  In Great South Bay, at least, we’re probably seeing more, if somewhat smaller, fish than we have at any point since the late 1990s.  As a result, it’s not unusual to see a score or more boats on the traditional weakfishing grounds.

Yet that is, again, a far cry from what it looked like in ’84, when portions of Great South Bay resembled a mooring area, because so many boats were drifting for weakfish in the first grey light before dawn.

All told, the fishing on the South Shore of Long Island is badly diminished from what it was forty years ago.  We may have faster boats, better electronics, and more technologically advanced tackle to support our quest, but even with such assistance, we have to work harder to catch fewer fish.

One of my closest and oldest friends, who has fished with me for near 50 years, often comments that if he was young, and had to start over again, he doesn’t know whether he’d get into fishing.  He admits that maybe—just maybe—he might buy a kayak, but given how badly fishing has declined, he’s not sure that it would be worth getting into the sport, and spending the many thousands of dollars he's spent on boats and fishing gear, just to partake of a badly diminished resource.

The one exception to that diminution, of course, is striped bass, which even in their current, overfished state are far more abundant than they were in ’84.  But fisheries managers at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission managed to fully rebuild the stock by the mid-1990s, and even though we’re not seeing the abundance we saw twenty years ago, after the stock had been completely restored, there are enough fish around to keep people happy—for now.

Although still overfished, the population is rebuilding slowly, but a combination of increased recreational landings and poor recruitment in the Chesapeake Bay—the single most important spawning area on the coast—will cause it to go into further decline if current regulations remain intact, beginning around 2027.  The ASMFC has taken steps to prevent thatfrom happening, but as of now, not all states—and New York is one of the laggards—have implemented the emergency management measures, and it’s hard to predict what shape the pending Addendum II is going to take.

One thing that is probably certain is that New York’s anglers, as well as its angling-related businesses, can’t afford to lose the striped bass, which has now become the most popular saltwater recreational fish in the state.  Last year, New York anglers took over 5.8 million trips primarily targeting striped bass, which was more than a third of all saltwater fishing trips taken by such anglers.  No other species comes close (summer flounder, at 3.1 million trips, was next in line).

Over the years, New York anglers have experienced continually diminishing returns on their investments in recreational fishing.  They’ve lost the winter flounder, lost the spring blackfish season, lost the Atlantic mackerel.  Fluke, bluefish, and weakfish are still around, but in much lower numbers.  Farther offshore, we lost the spring pollock run at Block Island 35 years ago, local cod are not doing well, and mako sharks are faring so badly that they must be released; shark fishermen no longer head offshore on Memorial Day weekend, vying to catch that first mako.

If we lose the striped bass, then a lot of young anglers may very well feel that it’s no longer worth spending money on fish that are no longer there.  There will be very little reason for new anglers—young or old—to enter the sport, and good reason for many existing anglers to find a new pastime.

Yet more than a few people in New York’s angling industry oppose the emergency striped bass measures, which don’t impose seasons when people can’t fish, but merely carve a few inches off the top of the current slot limit, so that a legal fish must measure between 28 and 31 inches, rather than the current 28 to 35.  Such people fear that such measures might cost them some business.

And maybe they will.

But losing a little is still better than losing everything. 

Given the current importance of striped bass to New York’s recreational fishery, if poor recruitment and excessive harvest combine to cause a new stock collapse, the collapse of the state’s recreational fishing industry probably won’t be too far behind.