TAKING THINGS A LITTLE TOO PERSONALLY

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post for the Marine Fish Conservation Network.  The thrust of the piece was that legislators who introduce bills to circumvent management efforts are doing both fish and fishermen a disservice.

The blog ended up on Facebook.  It drew a comment from one angler who seemed to disagree with the premise of the piece, writing

“We have been pushed around enough by limits for years we get less and less each year when does it stop”.

The commenting angler seemed to take regulations as a personal affront, a matter of a government bureaucracy intentionally “push[ing] around” anglers and arbitrarily reducing catch limits, rather than seeing them for what they really are—an effort by fisheries managers to prevent overharvest, so that anglers will have a better chance of catching something when they venture out into the water.

Such sentiments are nothing new, nor are they limited to the fishermen themselves.  A 2009 article by Karen Wall, published in The Fisherman, is subtitled

“NOAA finally reveals its punitive side with a closure that could cripple a struggling industry [emphasis added]”

suggesting that, in closing the black sea bass fishery after estimates of excessive harvest earlier in the year, the agency was acting to punish anglers and related industries, rather than merely trying to conserve the black sea bass resource.  

The same article quotes Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and the late Congressman Frank Adler (D-NJ) declaring that

“to continue this assault on recreational fisheries…is not acceptable.  [emphasis added]”

Apparently, allowing fishermen to overfish would have been completely acceptable, and would not have constituted an “assault” on the black sea bass resource…

Fisheries regulators aren’t the only people viewed as threats by the paranoid wing of the angling community.  In another article in The Fisherman, this one published last January, the author whines

“that’s pretty much how the law works; NOAA Fisheries holds all the cards, with the environmental non-governmental organizations (they call ‘em ENGO’s) set to legally close down the entire game anytime the fishermen get dealt a kind hand.”

Again, an unreasoning sense of persecution distorted reality almost past recognition.  The only way an ENGO can “legally close down” a fishery is if the fishermen were doing something illegal, which almost always translates into harvesting fish at unsustainable levels. 

What the writer terms “get[ting] dealt a kind hand” the rest of the world sees as “overfishing.”

And then there is the other aspect of taking fisheries regulations personally—the tendency to look at how a particular person or industry might be affected by regulations, and a failure to consider how the fish that such person or industry might depend on will be affected by a lack of regulation.

After news of a pending 30% cutback in the summer flounder catch limit spread through the angling community late last year, CBS News reported fishing industry representatives making comments such as

“A lot of boats have been put out of business already and more to follow if these rules go into effect,”

“Fluke are the bread and butter on Long Island, so we really can’t take anymore [sic] restrictions,”

and

“It can’t happen.  It’ll cripple the industry, and it affects everybody in the industry.  It affects all the tackle shops.  It affects tourism.”

Yet biologists tell us that the summer flounder spawning stock has already decreased to just 58% of the level needed to produce maximum sustainable yield.  

Furthermore, unless restrictions very like those proposed are put in place, they warn that the stock could become overfished as soon as this year, which would require that a rebuilding plan, and even more restrictive regulations, be put in place.

If fluke become more and more difficult to find, will anglers still bother to chase them?  While it can certainly get frustrating when you catch nothing but undersized fish, it’s far worse to catch nothing at all.

And if the summer flounder population continues to decline, nothing is exactly what more and more anglers will be putting in the boat.  Anyone who believes that a dearth of fish won’t cripple the industry as badly—or worse—than increased regulation hasn’t been paying much attention to what has gone on in recent years.

Here on Long Island, we've lost our once-booming winter flounder fishery.  We lost the Coxe's Ledge party boat fishery for summer cod.  We lost the spring pollock run at Block Island and the winter whiting run in New York bight.  

Tautog is a mere shadow of what it once was, weakfish are scarce and the spring mackerel run, which once flooded our waters, now exists only in memory.

Losing all of those fisheries did real harm to anglers and the businesses that serve them, afloat and ashore.

So maybe, instead of worrying about how much short-term inconvenience regulations might cause, fishermen and the fishing industry might be better off worrying about how a lack of regulations affect the fish.

Because without the fish, fishing is not any fun.

Yet, despite that obvious truth, people continue to view regulations needed to conserve and maintain sustainable fish populations as personal attacks on their freedom and their economic well-being.  Perhaps the most rational comment on such attitudes was recently published on the Florida website FlaglerLive.com, which addressed an unpopular decision not to open the South Atlantic red snapper season in 2017.

“Federal regulation isn’t a popularity contest…

“There’s no question that [for-hire] boaters would feel an economic impact [because of the continued red snapper closure].  But that impact is a matter of now or later.  If the red snapper is being overfished, it will crash.  If it does (as other species have), it will hurt [for-hire] boaters’ bottom lines (as many [for-hire] boaters have been bankrupted by other species’ crashes).  Protecting the red snapper isn’t just about protecting the red snapper.  It’s about protecting the future health of the fisheries that depend on the snapper.  [emphasis added]”

Take out the words “red snapper” and replace them with “summer flounder,” “winter flounder,” “gray triggerfish,” “cobia,” “tautog” or any other species, on any section of the coast, which is subject to controversial regulation, and the foregoing paragraph is no less true.

Thus, it is time for fishermen and the fishing industry to stop viewing needed regulations as some sort of personal attack, and to start viewing them as what they really are:  The only chance that their sport and their businesses will still be alive a decade or two from now.

CONFLICT ON THE COUNCILS

I recently read an opinion piece that appeared on the website of Sport Fishing magazine.

It was written by Jeff Angers, who is the President of an organization called the Center for Sportfishing Policy (formerly, the Center for Coastal Conservation), an alliance made up of representatives of the fishing tackle industry, the boatbuilding industry and several “anglers’ rights” organizations.

The Center for Sportfishing Policy has declared that

“Our mission is to maximize opportunity for saltwater recreational anglers by organizing, focusing and engaging recreational fishing stakeholders to speak with one voice to shape federal marine fisheries management policy.”

In other words, the Center for Sportfishing Policy exists solely to protect and further the interests of tackle dealers, boatbuilders and recreational fishermen.

That’s important to remember as you read Mr. Angers’ op-ed, because he is essentially complaining that representatives of the commercial and for-hire fishing communities sit on regional fishery management councils where, according to Mr. Angers, they seek to promote their best interests.

In his op-ed piece, Mr. Angers asks,

“Why are people who profit from the harvest and sale of America’s marine resources allowed to sit on management bodies that make regulations governing those resources?”

To answer Mr. Anger’s question, the first place to turn would be the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which states that one of its purposes is to create and maintain fishery management plans

“which will enable the States, the fishing industry, consumer and environmental organizations, and other interested persons to participate in, and advise on, the establishment and administration of such plans.  [emphasis added]”

Magnuson-Stevens further states that

“The members of each Council required to be appointed by the Secretary [of Commerce] must be individuals who, by reason of their occupational or other experience, scientific expertise, or training, are knowledgeable regarding the conservation and management, or the commercial or recreational harvest, of the fishery resources of the geographical area concerned.  [emphasis added]”

More specifically, with respect to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council,

“The Governor of a State submitting a list of names of individuals for appointment...shall include at least 1 nominee each from the commercial, recreational and charter fishing sectors…  [emphasis added]”

Thus, the easy answer to Mr. Angers’ question is “Because the law not only allows, but requires that people engaged in commercial and for-hire fishing sit on the various regional fishery management councils.”

But that answer, while true, doesn’t really do justice to the question.  

To give the question the sort of attention it truly deserves, one must ask a question in return.  

That question would be, “Who would sit on the management councils, and make the decisions, if those “who profit from the harvest and sale of…marine resources” were not allowed to do so.

For lo and behold, if the commercial and for-hire sectors couldn’t sit on such councils, the only folks left, outside of the state fisheries directors, would be the very same people represented by Mr. Angers’ organization.

Now, isn’t that something to keep in mind when reading the op-ed in Sport Fishing?

There’s no question that conflict of interests is a real problem on the fishery management councils.

When a person is seated on a regional fishery management council, he or she is required to take an oath in which that person swears

“to conserve and manage the living marine resources of the United States of America…for the greatest overall benefit of the Nation…being careful to balance competing private or regional interests, and always aware and protective of the public interest in such resources...”

Magnuson-Stevens also requires Council members to disclose 

“any financial interest held by that individual, the spouse, minor child, or partner of that individual, and any organization (other than the Council) in which that individual is serving as an officer, director trustee, partner, or employee; in any harvesting, processing, lobbying, advocacy, or marketing activity that is being, or will be, undertaken in any fishery over which the Council concerned has jurisdiction, or with respect to an individual or organization with a financial interest in such activity.”

However, once a council member makes such disclosure, nothing prevents such member from fully taking part in all council votes and deliberations.  There are times when the law does require a council member to recuse him- or herself from a vote, but the circumstances under which that must occur are very rare.  Recusal is only required when

“a Council decision..would have a significant and predictable effect on such [Council member’s] financial interest.  A Council decision shall be considered to have a significant and predictable effect on a financial interest if there is a close causal link between the Council decision and an expected and substantially disproportionate benefit to the financial interest of the affected individual relative to the financial interests of other participants in the same gear type or sector of the fishery.”

Taken together, the oath and the disclosure requirements help to assure that members of the council actually work together to find a solution that benefits everyone, and don’t merely try to advance their own interests at the expense of the fish, other sectors and the nation as a whole.

Of course, as Mr. Angers’ op-ed inadvertently points out, things often don’t work out that way.

For Mr. Angers reserves his wrath for council members who are commercial fishermen or operators of for-hire vessels.  

He complains that

“someone who owns red snapper shares can sit on the Gulf Council and vote on every aspect of that fishery,”

and that

“on the Gulf Council, people who own charter businesses and stand to directly benefit from the [catch share] program are never required to recuse themselves from votes on that program.”

But there are plenty of other interests out there.

While some are indirect, and don't involve profit from the harvest of fish, they are nonetheless very real.

For example, the Coastal Conservation Association, an “anglers’ rights” group that was one of the Center’s founders and remains one of its most important constituent organizations, has criticized the current allocation of Gulf of Mexico red snapper between recreational and commercial fishermen.  

In a letter to the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Southeast Regional Office, CCA complained,  after the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council increased the recreational share of such allocation from 49% to 51.5% of all landings, that such change

“is not a reallocation…It is not a change that addresses the vastly higher value found in the recreational sector for harvesting a red snapper…

“It should be clearly understood that the allocation of Gulf red snapper has been static for more than two decades in the face of vast economic and demographic changes, and it remains static today regardless of the outcome of this amendment…

“CCA strongly supports the shift of 2.5 percent of the quota to the recreational sector.  However, there should be no illusion that the process that produced the shift is a true reallocation process or that this flawed result is evidence that an allocation process is working.  On the contrary, this experience demonstrates that the allocation process could not be more flawed.  [It] devolved into a purely political exercise and the results represent an injustice to all participants in the fishery, as well as the coastal economies of the Gulf Coast states.”

That statement is interesting, given that at least two members of the Coastal Conservation Association, and by extension, at least two representatives of a Center for Sportfishing Policy constituent organization, currently sit on the Gulf Council, and will be eligible to vote on any allocation matters that come before that body. 

Although such CCA members/Center representatives don’t directly profit from the harvest of red snapper, they and the organizations that they represent certainly do have a very real interest in shifting more red snapper to the recreational sector, and in preventing the charter fishing sector from being allocated fish that might otherwise have been caught by private-boat anglers.

In fact, when the Gulf Council voted to set aside a portion of the recreational allocation for the federally-permitted for-hire fleet, the CCA members on the Council, who had vehemently opposed the action, issued aminority report urging NMFS to reject the Council’s actions, because

“private anglers will be extremely disappointed next year when they begin planning their trips.  If current projections remain true, they may be faced with a one day fishing season for red snapper in federal waters…

“Amendment 40 [which created the set-aside for the for-hire fleet] disproportionately harms private anglers.  While their 2015 season may shrink to just one day, the for-hire charter boat season will grow by up to 266.7%.  Private recreational anglers who fish from their own vessels will be extremely limited in their fishing opportunities.  As a result, they will be forced to pay for charter services, which will have more than 30 days in fishing from federal waters…  [emphasis added]”

In drafting their report, the CCA members and their fellow dissenters conveniently ignored the fact that while private boat anglers could enjoy long state-waters seasons—seasons that could run for as long as 365 days each year, when private boat anglers land a large proportion of the total red snapper catch, and so force managers to shorten the season in federal waters—federally-permitted charter and party boats were not allowed to fish in state waters when the federal season was closed. 

The minority report never acknowledged that, when both the state and federal seasons were taken into account, for-hire vessels had far fewer days to fish than did private boats, even with the for-hire set aside.

Just as Mr. Angers, in his op-ed, is eager to chastise NMFS for allowing commercial and for-hire operators to vote on issues that impact their businesses, yet fails to point out that, by concentrating on the wants of the private recreational sector while never acknowledging the needs of the for-hire operators, the CCA members on the Gulf Council violated their oath to be “careful to balance competing private…interests.”

The regional fishery management councils are intended to be peopled by stakeholders, who all have some sort of interest in the fisheries that they help to manage.  The plain language of Magnuson-Stevens makes that abundantly clear.

And it is true that far too many council members, on every coast, ignore the words of their oath to manage “for the greatest overall benefit to the Nation,” and instead vote to support themselves and their sector, at the expense of everyone else.

That is unfortunate, but it is impossible to deny that there is conflict of interests on the councils.

However, it is the purest hypocrisy to point out the failings of other sectors’ representatives, while ignoring the failings of the folks whom you favor.  Such is Mr. Angers’ mistake.

“Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother , let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Luke 6:42)

That pretty much says it all…  

FISH AS AN ASSET

Most of us spend the bulk of our lives holding down a job, trying to meet our daily expenses and hoping to put enough money aside that we will be able to stop working before we tip headfirst into a grave. 

Different folks find different degrees of success in achieving those goals. 

Some never make enough to get by, and spend all of their lives struggling against crushing poverty.  Others live right at the edge, repeatedly shifting across the thin line that divides need from sufficiency.  And then there are some who make lots of money, but spend even more, and are condemned to debt by their lack of discipline.

Finally, there are those, from all walks of life, who allow numbers to guide their lives, budgeting expenses to match their incomes, while holding cash in reserve for unexpected contingencies and, should they live that long, to let them live comfortably once they retire.

The latter folks tend to live less tumultuous lives.  While they may never know the bacchanalian joys experienced by those inclined to free-spending sprees, they also don’t need to spend much of their time hiding from bill collectors.

Fisheries management is a highly technical, data-dependent discipline, which requires years of training and more years of hands-on experience to practice competently.  Because of that, fishermen often view it as a sort of arcane science that is beyond their understanding, and thus are unfortunately susceptible to those who seek to manipulate their opinions, and claim that management efforts are about as valid as voodoo.

Fishermen thus need a basic understanding of the management system, so that they will be able to tell the difference between real science and disinformation spread by people trying to warp public perceptions of the management process.

Few fishermen will want to delve deep into the scientific literature, and it’s likely that none will ever develop the knowledge and skills needed to create, or even responsibly critique, a stock assessment.  However, the concepts needed to understand the basics of management are no farther away than an angler’s checkbook.

It starts by recognizing fish stocks for what they are, a public asset that needs to be conserved and managed, and not merely a gift from the sea that can be wantonly exploited without restraint or thought for the future.

Most of us have gotten that far.  But to fully realize the potential of the “fish as financial asset” analogy, that’s only the first step.

We next have to appreciate that the everyday needs of recreational and commercial fishermen make demands on our fish stocks, just as the everyday expenses of life—food, clothing, housing—place constant demands on our bank accounts.  If there isn’t enough cash available to meet those everyday demands, people buy lower-quality foods, wear shoddy clothes and perhaps find themselves evicted from their homes; their creditors also suffer, as they may not be paid for goods and services already provided.

Similarly, if there aren’t enough fish around to support the needs of the fishing community, not only are fish stocks likely to be overharvested and driven down to even lower levels, as occurred with Gulf of Maine cod, but the fishermen themselves will suffer.  Anglers soon lose interest if they have nothing to catch, and even though prices often spike higher when fish are scarce, commercial fishermen still need to be able to find enough fish to sell if they are to make a viable living.

Of course, some folks turn to credit cards when short of cash, hoping that they’ll soon have enough income to pay their bills when as they come due, and pay off the credit card companies, too.  Sometimes that works; more often, such folks only end up digging deeper holes for themselves, and end up in bankruptcy court.  Similarly, some folks will argue to keep harvests high when fish stocks decline, trusting that, in its own time, nature will return such stocks to abundance.  That, too, was tried in New England, and that’s when the groundfish stocks crashed.

So the trick, with a business, with personal finances and with fish stocks, is to treat them as going concerns, which must not only supply current income, but which will retain sufficient principal to assure a good income in the future, even if there are some unexpected adverse events.

To do that, you first have to figure out how much money you have, how much money you’ll need in a typical year, and how much you ought to set aside for unexpected contingencies.  If you’re managing a fish stock, you need to know the size of that stock and how much will be harvested each season, padding the latter figure a bit to allow for scientific unknowns and uncertainties.    

Then you have to look at other factors to determine whether the pool of assets—or stock of fish—is large enough to provide for your annual needs.  If you’re dealing with financial assets, you need to know what your likely annual return is, and how much that return will be taxed.  If you’re dealing with fish, you need to figure in average recruitment and natural mortality from predation, disease and other causes.  And you have to remember that returns, recruitment, taxation and natural mortality are all subject to change, and that an after-tax income that merely matches expenses, but doesn’t exceed them, or recruitment rate that barely equals mortality, is an accident waiting to happen as soon as conditions change.

As most of us have learned to our dismay, it’s not unusual for expenses to be greater than income.  At such times, people and businesses who are willing and able to cut expenses and invest in new ways to grow income will overcome the hard times; those who merely proceed blindly, hoping and assuming that the financial cycle will right itself without any effort on their part will usually go broke.  And when businesses go broke, they don’t just bring themselves down.  Employees, customers, suppliers and even the lunch cart that parks outside its doors can be badly hurt as well.

Fish stocks are no different.  When they are too small to meet fishermen’s demands, managers have only two choices.  They can either insist that harvests be reduced enough to prevent a decline in abundance, or they can adopt measures that will grow abundance and, in time, allow higher levels of harvest.  If they fail to take such action, and heed those fishermen who are only concerned with short-term profits or argue that “fish run in cycles” and will soon be abundant again, stock collapse is a virtual certainty.  And when fish stocks collapse, recreational and commercial fishing businesses collapse with them.  Ecosystems can be thrown out of whack, and coastal economies harmed.

I can speak from personal knowledge about both sorts of collapses, because I was a lawyer at Lehman Brothers, Inc. in September 2008, when the markets came tumbling down, and I was a striped bass fishermen in the late 1970s and 1980s, when the bass stock suffered a collapse far worse than anything that the markets experienced a decade ago.

Both could have been avoided with a little less focus on maximizing yield, and a little more precautionary management.

We ought to think of that now, as we look at summer flounder.  Recruitment—the stock’s income—has been down for the past six consecutive years, and spawning stock biomass—the stock’s principal—is down to just 58% of the level needed to maximize yield.

Yet there are some folks out there who want to completely ignore those factors, and are calling for status quo harvest, rather than reducing the amount that the remove from the population each year.

Even in today’s world, and to an administration in Washington that thinks of nothing but business, that should look like a foolish idea.

As I said, I was at Lehman Brothers.  I know how such thinking turns out.

HOPE IN A TIME OF CHANGE

Wilbur J. Ross, Jr. has been confirmed as the new Secretary of Commerce, and so is now the head of the agency that includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its subsidiary, the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Thus, anyone concerned with fisheries management is looking through Secretary Ross’ past comments, to see whether he has said anything that might suggest what his approach to fisheries issues might be.

Yesterday, he introduced himself to the people who work for the Department of Commerce.  His speech was necessarily broad, and included a list of “challenges” that the department must meet, including

“obtaining maximum sustainable yield for our fisheries.”

That was the only time that fish were mentioned in the speech, and it doesn’t tell us too much about how the new Secretary of Commerce views fisheries management. 

Optimists might argue—or at least hope—that the statement implies an intent to build depleted fisheries back to the point where they are capable of producing their maximum sustainable yield.   They may also see good news in Secretary Ross’ comment that

“One of the first steps in supporting these efforts will be securing adequate appropriations from the Congress,”

as inadequate funding has always been one of NMFS’ biggest problems.

Pessimists will see the reference to maximum sustainable yield as evidence of an intent to elevate harvest and immediate economic gain over the sort of precautionary management that better assures the long-term health of fish stocks and the ecosystems which support them.  They will argue that a recent article in Politico, which said that Secretary Ross has

“already singled out a surprising pet project:  Reducing America’s reliance on seafood imports,”

is further evidence that harvest will probably be increased beyond scientifically supportable levels.

Yet, despite people’s inevitable tendency to draw snap conclusions, about the only thing that anyone can be sure of is that the Department of Commerce, and by extension NOAA and NMFS, is going to undergo change.  Exactly what that change will ultimately look like remains to be seen.

Politico quotes Secretary Ross as saying

“Given the enormity of our coastlines, given the enormity of our freshwater, I would like to try to figure out how we can become much more self-sufficient in fishing and perhaps even a net exporter.”

That certainly should cause conservationists some concern.

But what does it really mean?

Secretary Ross is a well-educated man, having earned an undergraduate degree from Yale and an M.B.A. from Harvard.  He earned his billions the hard way, identifying opportunities offered by financially troubled companies that, with hard work and good management, could be made profitable again.  Though he is not a scientist, his success in reviving bankrupt companies  suggests that he appreciates the need for good data and careful analysis.

That could be a good thing.

While he “would like to try” to increase the country’s fish landings, we can hope that once he learns that most fish stocks are already being harvested at or above optimum levels, he will realize that the only way to increase landings in the long term will be to fully rebuild currently depleted populations.  We can hope that a person astute enough to see the long-term potential in bankrupt and supposedly doomed corporations will also see see the long-term benefits of rebuilding depleted fish stocks and keeping healthy stocks from falling into the sort of decline that will impair their economic potential.

Sure, that may be just wishful thinking, but whether Secretary Ross ultimately turns out to be a successful or a failed steward of America’s marine resources may depend, in large part, on whether the advocates for sound fisheries management can gain access to him, and whether they can make a convincing argument that healthy, rebuilt fish stocks ultimately provide greater commercial benefits to the nation than do stocks that are fished on a boom-and-bust basis. 

Representatives from the slash-and-burn side of the ledger are already making their feelings known. 

An article that appeared on The Fisherman Magazine’s website shortly after the Senate confirmed Secretary Ross’ appointment bore the title “A New Fisheries Sheriff Comes to Town”.  Its author observed that

“The ongoing fluke fiasco took a critical turn on Monday night when the U.S. Senate confirmed Wilbur L. Ross as the nation’s new Secretary of Commerce…

“the confirmation of Ross as Commerce Secretary should represent a transition in federal fisheries management under the Trump administration and opens the next chapter in the 2017 fight for summer flounder…

“New Jersey governor Chris Christie has been defiantly hoping to gain Secretary Ross’s support for status quo measures which would leave the 2016 limits in place for another season until new data could be integrated into the NOAA Fisheries decision-making, and thus far refusing to accept the ASMFC vote [to reduce the bag limit from 5 fluke to 3 and increase the minimum size from 18 to 19 inches].”

At this point, no one (or at least no one willing to speak on the record) knows whether Secretary Ross would be inclined to ignore the scientific advice and carry 2016 summer flounder regulations over for the duration of the 2017 season.  If he did so, the action would be patently illegal, and a violation of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act’s mandate to avoid overfishing and use the best scientific information available when managing fisheries. 

Maintaining status quo regulations for 2017 could also drive summer flounder abundance below the threshold that defines an overfished stock, and trigger requirements to initiate a new rebuilding plan, an action that could lead to regulations far more onerous than those proposed for the upcoming season.

However, such prospects don’t daunt the most rabid opponents of science-based fisheries management.   The same Fisherman article quotes Jim Donofrio, Executive Director of the Recreational Fisheries Alliance, who declared that

“A great place to start draining some of that swamp is down in Maryland at Silver Spring [where NMFS’ headquarters is located].  The ideological appointments of our last president, flooding NOAA Fisheries for eight years with anti-fishing policies, it was bad for fishing, and just shows the need for a major housecleaning this spring.”

It’s clear that Donofrio would like to see Secretary Ross replace NMFS employees who believe in science and healthy fish stocks with folks who share more of a rape-and-pillage mentality.

And that may very well happen.

But then again, maybe it won’t.

If Secretary Ross has made anything clear, it’s that he intends to run a Department of Commerce that benefits American business.  And the fishing business, whether recreational or commercial, does a lot better when folks can catch fish.

An empty ocean benefits no one.

While restrictions needed to rebuild some fish stocks can curb income for a few years, in the end, abundant fish stocks put more money in everyone’s pockets, while regulations that allow boom-and-bust fishing end up hurting the industry in the end.

If anyone wants a good example of that, they only need to turn to the recreational winter flounder fishery here in New York.  Until the late 1980s, Great South Bay hosted a vital flounder fishery that supported a large fleets of private and for-hire boats.  Action would begin early in March, and really get going by St. Patrick’s Day, the unofficial start of the season.  When the fishery peaked in late April, the weekend bay would be clogged with boats that lined the channels and spread out over the flats, each one filling up buckets with flounder.

Not too much later, the stocks showed signs of decline, but the recreational fishing industry fought against meaningful restrictions, resulting in regulations that were always too little and too late to reverse the decline and allow the stock to rebuild—the very sort of regulations that some people would now like to see adopted for summer flounder.

Now, fishing can’t legally begin until April 1, and lasts for only 60 days.  During most of that time, anglers consider themselves lucky if they can catch a 2-fish limit of winter flounder.  Waters that were once filled with boats are now nearly empty; April sees only a few scattered anglers seeking the last remnants of the flounder population.  Party boats that once had anglers standing elbow to elbow along their rails now sail with skeleton crowds that often barely cover their expenses.  Many boats have so few customers that they don’t sail at all.

In the end, the customers follow the fish, and when the fish disappear, the customers vanish as well.

That’s the message that Secretary Ross needs to hear.  

The big conservation groups, as well as individual anglers hoping that there will be a few fish left for their kids and their grandkids to catch, need to let him know that healthy fishing businesses, whether recreational or commercial, require healthy fish populations.  He needs to understand that overly large harvests today mean little or no harvest tomorrow.

For Secretary Ross is, in the end, a businessman, who should and hopefully will understand that no business can thrive unless it has something to sell.

THE DARK SIDE OF ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT

Fish have traditionally been managed on a single-species basis.  That is, biologists calculate a target level of abundance for each species, along with a lower threshold biomass that is used to determine whether a stock is or is not overfished.

To maintain a stock at its target level, or to rebuild it if abundance has fallen too far, biologists also calculate a target fishing mortality rate, and a threshold rate that, if exceeded, warns that overfishing is taking place.

Such calculations  are made without reference to any other species that shares the managed stock’s environment, except to the extent that a lack of forage fish, or an abundance of predators and competing species, might impact that part of the overall mortality rate not attributable to fishing.

On the whole, single-species management has worked pretty well, although it may not be adequate to calculate the number of forage fish, such as Atlantic menhaden, that should be left in the sea to provide food for predatory fish, birds and marine mammals.  Even so, a number of biologists have suggested that it is time to move on from single-species management to a more holistic approach generally referred to as “ecosystem management” although, given how many different factors impact any given ecosystem, that title suggests a more comprehensive management program will probably ever be practical.

A position paper issued by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2015 argues that

“The current U.S. fisheries management system regulates fishing on individual populations or groups of similar populations.  Although improvements to the law have helped to end overfishing on many species and to rebuild a number of depleted populations, they do not address the bigger picture.  Each fish is a link in overlapping food chains that form an interconnected food web of places, plants, and animals.  Ignoring these connections can lead to serious consequences and cause dramatic shifts in the health of the ocean.”

Recently, a number of similar arguments have been made by various marine conservation advocacy groups.

Yet, even though ecosystem management has been getting a lot more attention in recent years, the concept is nothing new.  The Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 mandated the creation of an Ecosystem Principles Advisory Panel, which completed its report to Congress, entitled “Ecosystem-based Fishery Management,” late in 1998. That report noted that

“Seeking solutions to reverse the decline of New England’s fisheries in 1871, Congress created the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries.  The first appointed Commissioner, Spencer Baird, initiated marine ecological studies as one of his first priorities.  According to Baird, our understanding of fish ‘…would not be complete without a thorough knowledge of their associates in the sea, especially of such as prey upon them or constitute their food…’  [emphasis added]”

Thus, it’s clear that neither the concept of ecosystem management nor the reality of troubled New England fisheries are recent developments.

However, there is a big difference between talking about ecosystem management and putting ecosystem-based programs into practice.  When I sat on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council from 2002-2005, I was asked to become the first Chair of the Council’s newly-created Ecosystem Management Committee (since renamed the Ecosystem and Ocean Planning Committee).  A dozen years would pass before the Council would approve its “Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management Guidance Document,” which was just posted to the Council website earlier this month.

So progress in this area doesn’t exactly progress with lightning speed.

One of the reasons for that is that people just don’t agree on precisely what “ecosystem management” means.  The Mid-Atlantic Council’s Guidance Document states that

“An ecosystem approach to fisheries management recognizes the biological, economic, social, and physical interactions among the components of ecosystems and attempts to manage fisheries to achieve optimum yield taking those interactions into account.”

That’s a very broad definition, certainly larger than the Pew position paper’s concentration on “overlapping food chains that create an interconnected food web of places, plants, and animals,” or Fish and Fisheries Commissioner Baird’s concerns with managed species’ prey and predators.  Once economic and social factors are considered, they can become wild cards that upset any emphasis on biological relationships.

The Guidance Document eases those concerns by stating that it is focusing on four issues primarily linked to biological/oceanographic considerations, including

“1.          Forage/low trophic level species considerations;

  2.          Incorporation of ecosystem level habitat conservation and management objectives in the current management process;

  3.          Effects of systematic changes in oceanographic conditions on abundance and distribution of fish stocks and ramifications for existing management approaches/programs; and

  4.          Interactions (species, fleet, habitat, and climate) and their effects on sustainable harvest policy and achievement of [optimum yield],”

with a footnote indicating that

“Social and economic considerations were integrated throughout the analysis of the four topic areas.”

That’s important, because there is a very thin line between “ecosystem management,” that takes a holistic approach to management by striving to maintain sustainably-harvested fish stocks within an intact ecosystem, and by adopting management measures to changing ecosystem conditions, and “ecosystem engineering” which makes an effort to maximize social and economic benefits by reducing the abundance of organisms deemed “less desirable” or “less valuable” while artificially increasing the abundance of those that, for one reason or another, are more valued, and change the natural structure of the ecosystem along the way.

Fishermen tend to confuse the two concepts.  When I sat on the Mid-Atlantic Council, I remember hearing comments from both Council members and the public to the effect that the Council shouldn’t try to manage spiny dogfish, because they only take up space and resources in the ocean that could better be utilized by more valuable species.

And whatever the species being managed, there is always someone willing to argue either 1) fishermen aren’t the cause of a species’ decline; the real problem is that they’re being eaten by something else (which should thus be killed off in greater numbers), or 2) restrictions on the harvest of a particular species should be relaxed, because “they’re eating everything in the ocean.”  

Comments of the latter sort can devolve to the level reached by one of New York’s representatives to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel, who said—with a straight face—that

“All those scup are eating lobster roe, small crabs, shellfish, and baby flounder…When one species grows so much, it’s going to wipe out some other species…Sea bass and scup are growing enormously and need to be contained to a reasonable amount.  You can’t allow one species to devour everything else…

“The biomass for sea bass is so much higher than what we have recorded.  They’re wiping out other species.  If we don’t act soon you’re going to lose the lobster fishery throughout the northeast.  We need an emergency opening of both the commercial and recreational black sea bass fishery…”

Of course, scup and black sea bass have been living alongside lobster, crabs, shellfish, flounder and many other creatures for tens of thousands, if not millions, of years without fishermen to keep them from “devour[ing] everything else," and the local ecosystem seems to have gotten along pretty well.

If anything, it was an overpopulation of fishermen, not fish, that put various species at risk.  

Off the coast of China, a strange and very dark sort of ecosystem management, that may be replacing the natural order that evolved over the ages, is playing out right now.   

According to a recent article in Hakai Magazine, despite at least twenty years of essentially unregulated industrial fishing, China has been able to maintain consistently high levels of harvest.

That seemed so unlikely that the folks who make their living studying fisheries and their impacts on fish stocks thought that the Chinese government was inflating the landings numbers.  Now, according to Hakai, researchers in British Columbia are looking at the Chinese numbers in a different light.  They believe that the harvest numbers are more-or-less accurate, and think that they can be sustained because the Chinese have effectively, if unintentionally, created a sort of engineered ecosystem in which fishermen eliminated most of the large oceanic predators in the region.

The article explains that

“Killing predators allows prey numbers to boom and, much like how deer populations have exploded in the United States since humans extirpated wolves from much of their range, this approach has allowed fish species lower on the food chain to retain high numbers.  And because predators typically need to eat 10 kilograms of prey to add one kilogram to their own weight, fishing out predators tends to increase prey catches by much more than it reduces predator catches, the study authors say.

“…China’s approach—which is similar to that of other Asian countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines—has downsides, such as degrading ecosystems and lowering biodiversity…

“But if [Chinese fisheries managers] follow the US practice and implement single-species management, their catches will decrease…That’s because single-species management in effect creates extra competition for fishers…Allowing some fish to grow larger means more big fish eating more of the fish that humans also target.”

The sort of “ecosystem management”—or, perhaps, “ecosystem non-management”—is the conservationists’ nightmare, and it effectively reduces the ocean into a sort of food-fish factory in which the naturally-established food web has been almost completely disrupted.  It is a far cry from the sort of ecosystem management envisioned by Pew and other conservation advocates, the late Commissioner Baird or the Mid-Atlantic Council’s Guidance Document.  And as consistent as yields have supposedly been, some scientists warn that a crash will inevitably come.

However, it is easy to see how such “management” might be attractive to a government that seems to care nothing for natural processes or wild places, and is obsessed with the rubric of “creating jobs” and “economic gain.”

Thus, as we move down the road toward ecosystem management, it is essential that we keep our eyes on the ultimate goal of healthy, intact ecosystems that can provide fisheries that are sustainable in the long term.  

We must not allow ourselves to be seduced by the promise of engineered ecosystems that strip natural systems of their essential integrity and replace it with a structure that may or may not be sustainable, but is designed solely to reflect current social and economic values.

WHAT WILL BE LEFT TO CATCH IF THE "TRASH FISH" ARE GONE

A lot of anglers won’t even consider eating a sea robin.

The reddish-brown fish with gold-rimmed blue eyes and broad pectoral fins, which “flies” over bay bottoms in its quest for food, has been historically shunned and reviled by most anglers who catch them while seeking summer flounder and other, more traditionally attractive species.

Yet there are increasing numbers of anglers who know better, and look forward to taking sea robins home for dinner.

My wife and I began eating sea robin years ago, when fluke were scarce and there was little else to eat in the bay.  Porgies were small and hardly worth cleaning, when you could find them at all, and the tiny “pin” black sea bass that we caught in those days, before bag and size limits were imposed, provided smaller fillets than a duck-pond bluegill.  We filleted a few sea robins, and found that they were good.

As the years passed, more anglers jumped onto the sea robin bandwagon.  National Marine Fisheries Service recreational catch estimates show that, for the period 2007-2011, anglers in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions harvested an average of 61,700 striped sea robins each year; for the period 2012-2016, that average more than doubled to nearly 155,000 sea robins landed.

There is clearly an upward trend.

It was only a matter of time before sea robins began to be harvested commercially, and made the leap into the marketplace.  That seems to be happening now, as reported commercial landings also show an increase over the past decade.  For the period 2007-2011, commercial fishermen on the Atlantic coast landed an average of 93,200 pounds of sea robins each year; that figure increased to an average of 140,400 pounds for the period 2012-2015.

Further evidence that sea robins may be entering the mealtime mainstream recently emerged on the Internet, where the website Eater.com posted a video of a New York seafood shop owner demonstrating how to clean and cook them.

In some ways that’s good, because diversifying the kinds of fish that we eat will take some of the pressure off the most heavily harvested species.

But it’s also bad, because there is currently no management plan to protect sea robins.  There are no closed seasons, no limits on harvest and, if we want to be honest, probably no data to suggest what such seasons and limits might be.  

Should eating sea robin ever become a dining fad, it is not impossible that the fish that now seem to sometimes carpet the bay could become overfished in a very short time.

There is certainly precedent for such a thing happening.

For years, oyster toadfish were common in New York’s bays.  

Looking like a sort of mutant tadpole, with slimy skin, a wide mouth filled with mollusk-crunching teeth and a willingness to eat anything that might fit in their mouths, they were one of the last things that anglers wanted to see at the end of their lines.

When they were caught—and they were caught frequently in the soft-bottomed back bays—fishermen tended to handle them with rags and/or pliers, and wanted nothing more than to drop them back over the side.

And then, more than two decades ago, something changed.

A new wave of immigrants entered the nation, who didn’t find toadfish repulsive at all.  They were accustomed to eating somewhat similar creatures that lived in their former home waters, and to them, toadfish weren't just something ugly. 

Instead, they were good food. 

Suddenly, baymen who had been trying to eke through the summer catching killies and a few blowfish had a chance to create a completely new fishery, targeting a species that was abundant, valuable—big toadfish, sold live, were worth at least $2.50 per pound, which was good money back then—and not subject to any regulations at all.

The outcome was predictable.

Some folks made for two or three years, selling toadfish to urban live-fish markets as fast as they could be caught.  Then things began to slow down, and get slower yet, until, at some point in the late 1990s, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation finally regulated the fishery to keep the toadfish population from falling into a state of complete collapse.

Today, a bayman on Long Island may harvest no more than 25 toadfish per day, must observe a 10-inch size limit and can’t keep them at all between May 15 and July 15.    Such regulations were better than nothing, but the damage was already done. 

New York’s commercial fishermen reported landing 13,000 pounds of toadfish in 1992, 35,000 pounds in 1993 and an all-time high of more than 42,600 pounds in 1994.  By 1996, that figure had fallen to just 2,000 pounds, then crashed even farther, to 169 pounds, the following year.  Despite the current regulations, annual landings have not exceeded 1,000 pounds since, coming the closest in 2014, when 837 pounds of toadfish were reportedly sold.

It would probably be close to impossible to find a better example of a boom-and-bust fishery, in which unregulated fishermen harvested so many previously underutilized fish that they collapsed the population in a very short time. 

The result of such overharvest was typical as well.  Twenty years after New York’s toadfish population crashed, that population remains far too depleted to support a viable fishery.

Populations of some once-abundant food fish, such as New England cod and winter flounder, are badly depleted, and the populations of many others, while healthy, are under significant pressure.  There is a temptation to seek out so-called “underutilized species”—what fishermen will sometimes thoughtlessly deem “trash fish”—and try to develop markets for them, in order to help fill the demand for local seafood.

While creating markets for erstwhile “trash” species sounds like a good idea, engaging in a fishery for any largely unregulated species is always a risky undertaking.  

Government agencies rarely spend money to research species without any significant economic value.  As a result, fishery managers have little idea what to do when a fishery for a previously underutilized species begins to take off.

For that reason alone, new fisheries should always be developed cautiously, with precautionary regulations put in place to help assure that the sad saga of New York’s toadfish is not reenacted at another time and place, with another species playing the toadfish’s role.

Today, when more desirable species aren’t available, anglers can still find so-called “trash fish” such as sea robins to provide some action and a few fillets.

But if markets for such species are developed, and regulations aren’t adopted at the same time, anglers may one day find themselves asking the question “What do we fish for now, when even the trash fish are gone?”