THE TRIALS OF A FISHERIES MANAGER: AN INSIDER'S ACCOUNT

 

I recently came across a piece on fisheries management—more specifically, Gulf of Maine cod management—that was written by a former National Marine Fisheries Service biologist, who spent a decade of his life as the lead scientist performing the assessment of Gulf of Maine cod, which might just be one of the most frustrating and thankless jobs on the East Coast.

The piece, titled "Bankers’ Hours to Bankruptcy:  The Collapse of Gulf of Maine Cod,” appeared in an unusual place, the blog of a business that calls itself the Waquoit Bay Fish Company, which sells fish-related art rather than fish, and is owned by Michael Palmer—the former NMFS scientist who wrote the piece, and also seems to be an accomplished artist inspired by his time at sea.

I have been involved in the fisheries management process and conservation advocacy for a very long time, and I’m not sure that I have ever before read anything that engaged me in the same way that “Bankers’ Hours to Bankruptcy” did, for it speaks with the voice of someone who labored within the management system for a very long time, someone who cared very much about getting things right for both fish and fishermen, and who touches on just about every aspect of why fisheries management efforts, and particularly efforts to manage cod, so often go wrong.

He begins with describing how surface appearances can often be deceiving.

“Boats [from Massachusetts and New Hampshire] were sailing at reasonable hours, towing close to home, coming back with what, on the surface, looked like solid trips.  The joke among Gloucester fishermen was that cod fishing had turned into “bankers’ hours”; no more brutal all-nighters chasing scattered fish over the horizon.  Cod seemed thick near the western Gulf of Maine ports, and for a little while the mood—if not jubilant—was at least cautiously hopeful…

“In 2008, a federal stock assessment…concluded that Gulf of Maine cod had rebuilt to about 58 percent of its target spawning biomass, with projections that the stock might be fully rebuilt by 2010.  After decades of decline and increasingly strict regulations, it was the storyline everyone wanted: sacrifice, recovery, vindication.”

But there was a problem.  Many of the assumptions underlying the 2008 assessment were too optimistic.  Thus, when Michael Palmer became the lead scientist for the 2011 stock assessment, the underlying assumptions were revisited.

“Much of what we changed would have sounded like housekeeping to anyone outside the room.  We fixed how we converted between estimated fish numbers and weights—reshaping our picture of how much cod biomass we thought was out there.  We stopped pretending every survey number was equally solid; some estimates were clearly noisier than others, so the model let them tug less on the final answer.  And we gave the model a bit more room in how it followed the catch history.  On paper, it was just a different way of reading the same history—in practice, it was better science.”

Such changes, which occur in many stock assessments, not just Gulf of Maine cod, are largely unseen by the public, although the recent Atlantic menhaden stock assessment, which corrected a previous error in the calculation of natural mortality and, as a result, reduced the size estimate of the menhaden stock by about 37%, was a well-publicized exception.

The changes included in the 2011 assessment reduced the estimated size of the Gulf of Maine cod stock, too, and by a far greater percentage, for

“once the new model was fully wired up and the data was pushed through, the stock we thought was more than halfway rebuilt suddenly shrank.  Cohorts we’d been counting on all but vanished, and historical biomass estimates fell by more than 70 percent.  The recovery narrative that had been built over the previous decade—sacrifice, rebound, vindication—collapsed in a few pages of output.”

At that point, the scientists had done their job.  They had improved the model used to estimate Gulf of Maine cod abundance, and they had developed a more accurate stock assessment as a result.  But what the scientists couldn’t do—what no fisheries scientist can do, regardless of the species involved—is translate the stock assessment into effective regulations.  That job falls to the regional fishery management councils, to NMFS and, in the case of many species (but not in the case of cod), to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and/or state regulators.

And the regulatory folks weren’t very happy with the results of the 2011 stock assessment.

“My lane in all this was narrow but well defined: assemble and vet the data, choose and run the models, and explain what the results did and didn’t mean.  I didn’t vote on quotas; I handed managers the best picture we could produce, uncertainty and all, and they decided what to do with it.

“The people holding the levers of management didn’t like what they saw.  Neither did much of the industry.  The assessment was criticized from every angle—data inputs, model choice and structure, reference points.  Under that pressure, the big cuts implied by the 2011 results were softened and delayed, and instead of fully acting on them, the system asked for a do-over.”

Because there’s a funny thing about stock assessments:  If an assessment comes out that requires a reduction in landings—and often, the reduction doesn’t have to be all that large—we hear members of the commercial, for-hire, and, more and more in recent years, the recreational fishing industries complain about “bad science,” and allege that “the numbers are wrong,” but if the assessment allows landings to increase, no one questions the science or the data at all.

It's all good if it allows them to bring home more fish, and all bad if it restricts their landings.

We saw that sort of thing happen at the recent Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel meeting, where Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council staff informed the AP that, if the usual 80% confidence interval—what a non-statistician might characterize as the margin for error—around estimates of 2026 recreational black sea bass landings was used, the 2026 landings target would remain unchanged, but if the confidence interval was reduced just a little, to 75%, to accommodate the high degree of uncertainty in the landings estimate, the landings target could be increased by 39%.  Faced with the possibility of significantly relaxed regulations, almost all of the advisors who spoke on the issue—advisors who generally represented the for-hire fishing industry—opined that using the 75% confidence interval was the right way to go, solely because it would provide the results, in the form of higher landings, that they preferred.

There was almost no discussion of what would make the most sense from a policy or management perspective.

And then there are the politicians who get involved.  In the case of the Gulf of Maine cod, Michael Perry wrote,

“Years earlier, Congress had written the law that said we would base catch limits on science and rebuild depleted stocks.  We were just doing the work the statute required.  But when the results pointed toward painful cuts, some of the same elected officials who had helped pass that framework into law turned around and attacked the science and the policies that flowed from it.

“As Senator John Kerry wrote to the Secretary of Commerce on December 14, 2011: ‘This GOM cod situation is further proof that the entire research and data process needs to be completely overhauled.  Therefore, in conjunction with the new assessment for GOM cod, I ask that you undertake an end to end review of the stock assessment process that includes the analysis and recommendation of outside parties.’”

That was not a unique occasion.  It is routine for politicians, who might have, at best, a rudimentary understanding of fisheries management, to try to undercut the fishery management process and impeach fisheries scientists just so their constituents can kill more fish than science or good judgment would allow. 

That sort of political interference may have reached its peak in the recreational red snapper fishery in both the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic where, a decade ago, we saw former Congressman Garret Graves (R-LA) introduce H.R. 3094, the Gulf States Red Snapper Management Authority Act which, although never passed, would have stripped NMFS of its authority to manage Gulf of Mexico red snapper, and vested that authority in a new management body composed of fisheries managers from the five Gulf states, after “anglers’ rights” organizations headquartered in the region actively opposed the science-based measures needed to rebuild the red snapper stock. 

Today, something somewhat similar is going on in the South Atlantic, where H.R. 470, the Red Snapper Act, introduced by Congressman John Rutherford (R-FL), would prevent NMFS from implementing a closed season on all recreational bottom fishing in the South Atlantic in order to reduce the level of recreational red snapper bycatch.

In both instances, the goal was to block science-based efforts to manage the recreational red snapper fishery.

Not surprisingly, in the case of Gulf of Maine cod, the fishing industry worked hard to impeach the science. 

“For years, some in the industry argued that the surveys were simply missing cod.  Their skepticism was understandable.  If you can still fill your hold in your best spots but the survey index is falling, it’s tempting—almost irresistible—to believe the survey must be wrong.

“And there were, to be fair, plenty of technical questions to point to.  The survey trawls weren’t the same as commercial gear.  Their doors spread differently; their nets fished a little higher or lower; their tows were shorter, slower, more standardized…

“Those were real, worthwhile scientific questions.  The problem is how they were used.

“A small but influential set of voices in the management process—industry representatives, academic consultants, and a few advisors—leaned hard on those uncertainties.  They highlighted every potential bias that might make the surveys look too pessimistic and treated them as proof that the stock was healthier than the assessments suggested.  Questions about gear efficiency, selectivity, calibration coefficients, and survey design became a kind of fog.  Whether intentionally or not, the effect was to keep attention focused on what might be wrong with the warning lights, rather than on the very real possibility that the engine itself was failing.”

When merely questioning the methodologies used in the cod assessment failed to impeach its conclusions, the fishing industry went a step further.

“When official assessments warned that cod were in deep trouble, segments of the industry increasingly responded by commissioning their own analyses.  Outside consultants—often respected quantitative academic scientists—were hired to critique government models, reanalyze data, or generate alternative population estimates.

“Sometimes those critiques caught real problems.  No assessment is perfect; outside eyes can be invaluable.  But over time, a pattern emerged that was hard to ignore: industry-funded science almost always bent in one direction.  It emphasized uncertainties and alternate interpretations that could justify higher catches or delay cuts, rarely the reverse.

“In public debates, phrases like ‘science for hire’ started to surface.  In council meetings, dueling narratives about stock status became weapons rather than tools.

“The erosion of precaution wasn’t abstract.  You could see it in the model choices.  Industry consultants often pressed for strongly domed selectivity in the assessment models—telling the models that mid-sized cod were easy to catch while the biggest, oldest fish mostly slipped through.  On paper, it turned the absence of large fish into ‘cryptic biomass’ lurking just out of view…

“You could see it again in the population projections built off those consultant runs.  The rebuilding deadline stayed the same on paper, but the bar for what counted as ‘rebuilt’ moved.  By swapping in different recruitment assumptions that said cod could hit peak production of young fish at a smaller stock size, it made it easier to claim we were on track without actually putting more cod in the water.

“From my seat at the science table, I watched the uncertainties I saw as reasons for caution repurposed as excuses for inaction.  If surveys might be missing cod, if models might be biased low, if a consultant could spin up an alternative set of numbers with a higher biomass line—there was always an argument for waiting one more year before making the really hard cuts.”

And once again, such industry actions were not unique to Gulf of Maine cod. 

Those who follow fisheries management in the mid-Atlantic can probably recall a group that called itself the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund, which tried very hard for a number of years to impeach NMFS recreational catch and landings data, hired consultants, and went to great lengths to convince fishery managers to reduce the minimum size for summer flounder because, they argued (unsuccessfully), higher size limits forced anglers land mostly female fish, and so negatively impacted the stock’s spawning potential.

In the Gulf of Mexico, there was the so-called Great Red Snapper Count, an effort to impeach NMFS’ red snapper data through what was touted as an “independent” study not conducted by federal fisheries scientists, although funded with about ten million taxpayer dollars.  Although the Count did find far more red snapper in the Gulf than NMFS believed were there—primarily fish widely scattered over low-profile bottom, where surveys didn’t expect the structure-loving snapper to be—when biologists considered that data, it didn’t lead to a large increase in the total allowable catch, largely because of the high level of uncertainty surrounding the Count’s findings.  One conservation group, The Ocean Conservancy, noted that

“Invited reviewers from the Center for Independent Experts, who performed the first external peer review of the Great Red Snapper Count, identified issues around methodology, calibration, sample sizes and uncertainty that warrant further review, particularly given the magnitude of changes to red snapper management being considered.”

The Coastal Conservation Association, which despite its name is, in reality, the largest anglers’ rights group in the country, complained,

“NOAA pledged to take the findings of [the Great Red Snapper Count] and incorporate them into its next assessment of red snapper which was scheduled to begin in 2021.  While it would have been reasonable to expect the results of the [Great Red Snapper Count] to simply become the new benchmark, NOAA insisted that those findings would have to be calibrated and synched up with the data streams and techniques it had used in the past.  The same data streams and techniques that the [Great Red Snapper Count] had shown to be inaccurate by a factor of at least three.”

Because in its efforts to impeach federal fisheries science, the Coastal Conservation Association, which wants to see an increase in recreational red snapper landings, naturally wants to see its preferred studies prevail, regardless of the true accuracy of their conclusions.

Now, in the South Atlantic, something called the South Atlantic Red Snapper Research Program, utilizing scientists from various universities, is conducting a similar “independent” study, which will almost certainly be used by various recreational fishing organizations to challenge federal scientists’ findings IF it develops data that seems more favorable to the recreational fishing industry.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy to come out of the whole Gulf of Maine cod affair wasn’t the failure to rebuild the cod stock, but rather that the constant battle to develop and present the best possible science ultimately wore down Michael Palmer and, despite his dedication to the effort, convinced him to give up his scientific career.

“I never stopped believing in the work itself.  I trusted the science, respected the skill and hard-won knowledge of working fishermen, and believed in the colleagues in the trenches with me—survey technicians, modelers, analysts, port samplers, observers—doing their best to wrestle meaning from noisy data, not script a convenient answer.  What wore me down wasn’t some grand conspiracy; it was seeing how, when uncomfortable results landed, uncertainty could be amplified while what we did know slipped into the background.  Support from senior leadership often felt thin, and the hardest conversations fell to the people closest to the work.  In that kind of environment, the science often felt like background noise instead of the basis for decisions.”

We can only surmise how many other scientists, dedicated to the truth as Michael Palmer was, have chosen the same route rather than see their work constantly derided by industry spokesmen who, seeking to put more dead fish on the dock regardless of the long-term cost to the public and to the resource, claim that the science-based federal fishery management system is “broken” and needs to be replaced by state fishery managers, knowing that such state managers are much more susceptible to political pressure and, unlike federal fishery managers, are generally not legally bound to prevent overfishing or to rebuild overfished stocks.

We can only guess how many stocks of fish—not only Gulf of Maine cod, but winter flounder, striped bass, red snapper, and others—have fallen victim to the sort of obstructionism that hindered the implementation of effective, science-based rebuilding plans, became overfished or, in the case of winter flounder, collapsed altogether.

Michael Palmer’s writing gives us a look into the real world of the professional fishery manager, a world where scientists are castigated, rather than rewarded, for doing their jobs well, and where science is too often shunted aside when political and industry forces combine to suppress what should be the guiding principle of fisheries management.

In this blog, I often make special efforts to recognize, and offer special respect toward, the fisheries scientists who seek to rebuild and maintain healthy fish stocks.  Michael Palmer’s story helps to explain why.

CONSIDER THE EEL

 

Consider the American eel.

I stole the title for this post from author Richard Schweid, who published the book, Consider the Eel:  A Natural and Gastronomic History, over two decades ago.  But the truth is, eels really do deserve some consideration, as both a highly evolved species of fish with a fascinating natural history, and as a troubled diadromous species that is finding itself increasingly stressed as time goes on.

When I was a boy during the 1960s, fishing from shore, from docks, and from boats along the Greenwich, Connecticut coast, eels were everywhere, and not particularly respected.  Back then, before striped bass became a fish for the masses, most casual saltwater anglers in our part of the world—folks like my own family—were bottom fishermen trying to bring home some food. 

Our primary target was winter flounder which, despite their name, were available all through the summer, although their numbers thinned out a bit during the dog days of August.  Depending on where we were fishing and the time of the year, our sandworm-baited hooks sometimes also attracted blowfish (a/k/a “northern puffer”), porgies (more properly, “scup”), blackfish (properly called “tautog”), tomcod, smelt, spot (we called them “Lafayettes”), northern kingfish, young-of-the-year “snapper” bluefish, and a host of undesirables, including bergalls (more formally, “cunner”), “sundials” (windowpane flounder), oyster toadfish, sea robins, smooth dogfish, and such.

But mostly, aside from the flounder, we caught eels.

Lots and lots of eels.

If we fished anywhere near a sod bank, on a mud flat, or in a shallow channel, at any time between late April and mid-October, the eels often far outnumbered the flounder.  They often snatched the small killifish that we used to catch the young snapper blues that flooded the creeks, harbors, and coves just before the start of a new school year signaled summer’s end.  And when an eel grabbed the inch-long piece of sandworm that we had impaled on the small “flounder hooks” designed to fit into the flatfish’s tiny mouth, it often swallowed the hook deep down in its gut before the angler ever knew it was there.

And that was more than a little problematic, because, for the most part, we didn’t want to take the eels home.

That wasn’t a universal sentiment, of course.  Eels were always a valued foodstuff in Europe, and many of the more recent immigrants, largely from Poland and Italy, and perhaps also the first generation born in this land, tpp, still ate eels as a matter of course.  But among everyone else, they had a somewhat unsavory reputation, partly because of their slimy, snakelike bodies and partly because eels aren’t too choosy about what they choose to dine on.

Back in those days, when sewage treatment was far less advanced than it is today, one of the best places to catch a bucketful of eels (“bucketful” being more of an expression than an accurate description, for if one tried to fill a bucket with eels, it wouldn’t take long before the ones on the top of the pile would begin to climb out and start crawling around the boat, dock, or shore, seeking a way back into the water) was in front of the sewage treatment plant discharge at Grass Island, a Greenwich town park, which also hosts the town’s sewage treatment facility.  Yes, you would have to deal with all of the paper flooding out of the pipe getting caught on your hook, but that seemed a small price to pay when you were a 9- or 10-year old boy seeking to catch a bunch of eels while enjoying the warmth of the midsummer sun (and yes, we always did give those eels away).

But while eels’ affinity for sewer discharges was certainly a turnoff for many, it was the eel’s sense of smell, and how it was used, that was the source of the greatest disgust.  For an eel has the keenest sense of smell in the ocean, it uses that sense of smell to find food and, at times, that food took the form of the bodies of drowning victims. 

When I was growing up, hanging around the town dock on warm summer evenings, I often heard the old timers on the waterfront talking about “the eels coming out” when drowned men’s bodies were dragged from the water.  I didn’t think about too much about those tales until one April afternoon in 1968, when I was fishing off the Grass Island riprap and heard a commotion from the boat launching ramp.  Curious, I walked over, and saw police and some other people pulling something which, I was shocked to realize, was a body, out of the water.  I later learned that someone had committed suicide the previous winter, jumping off the wall into Greenwich Harbor and, as the waters warmed, his body floated to the surface, where someone noted an arm sticking out from under the dock.

And yes, the eels began to come out.

When word of that sort of thing gets out, it can really hurt eels’ reputation as a food fish.

Thus, as the tide of eastern and southern European immigrants, who began to flow into this country around the start of the 20^th Century, waned, and the descendants of those immigrants largely integrated into the United States’ population, the popularity for eels as food has waned as well.  According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, anglers landed just 31,000 American eels in 2024, down from a peak of 680,000 in 1982, and it’s not clear how many of those 31,000 eels were caught for food, and how many would be used as bait for striped bass, cobia, and other popular recreational species.

Commercial landings show a similar trend, with landings peaking at just under 4 millon pounds in 1979, compared to just under 91,000 pounds in 2024.  The nature of commercial eel landings has changed as well, with most of the eel landings intended for export, not domestic consumption.  About 10,000 pounds of the exported eels consist of tiny “glass eels” transitioning from their larval to juvenile form, which regularly sell for well over $1,000 per pound.

Unfortunately, while some of the decrease in recreational and commercial landings can be attributed to a decline in demand, much of the decrease is probably due to the fact that eels are far less common than they used to be.  The 2023 benchmark stock assessment notes that

“American eels were formerly extremely abundant in inland waters of eastern North America, occupying lakes, rivers, streams, and estuaries…

“There is substantial evidence that the American eel stock is reduced from historic levels.  The cause for the reduction is a combination of habitat impacts and fishing pressure.  In the last half of the 20^th century, a suite of stressors including habitat loss from dams or urbanization, turbine mortality, the nonnative swim bladder parasite Anguillicolla, toxic pollutants, non-native fish species, and climate change are all factors that act in concert with fishing mortality on American eel.  The American eel does not have a federal US protected status.  It has been on the [International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s] endangered list since 2013.  [citations omitted]”

 There was an effort to list the American eel under the federal Endangered Species Act, but in February 2007, the United States Fish & Wildlife Service decided against a listing, saying, in part that

“we find that the American eel remains widely distributed over their vast range including most of their historical freshwater habitat, eels are not solely dependent on freshwater habitat to complete their lifecycle utilizing marine and estuarine habitats as well, they remain in the millions, that recruitment trends appear variable but stable, and that threats acting individually or in combination do not threaten the species at a population level.  On the basis of the best scientific and commercial information, we conclude that the American eel is not likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range and is not in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range.  Therefore, listing of the American eel as threatened or endangered is not warranted.”

Unfortunately, determining the status of the American eel stock is a very difficult thing to do.  The 2023 benchmark assessment stated that

“The primary model used in the assessment…does not allow the determination of stock or fishery status with respect to traditional [maximum sustainable yield]-based biological reference points.  The evaluation of the coastwide index, presented by the [Stock Assessment Subcommittee], does indicate the stock has declined.  The Review Panel concludes that the term ‘depleted’ is appropriate to describe the stock biomass for the yellow eel stage.  This is a qualitative term used only as a descriptor and not as a determinant of status.”

So, the American eel is probably not doing too well, but just how “not well” isn’t completely clear. 

In an effort to provide the eel with some level of protection, Panama and the European Union proposed listing both the American eel (Anguilla rostrata) and the related Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica) on Appendix II to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, more commonly known as “CITES”.  The issue was placed on the agenda of the CITES meeting held earlier this month.

As part of the explanation of why such a listing was needed, the proposal noted, in part,

“Historically, A. japonica was the primary species supplying East Asian eel farms, but declines in this species led to increased reliance on A. anguilla [the European eel] and A. rostrata, particularly in farms in China.  Following the inclusion of A. anguilla in Appendix II and the introduction of trade restrictions by the European Union in 2010, combined with catastrophic declines (>90%) in recruitment of this species, A. rostrata has become a key source of juvenile eels to supply the farms in recent years…A recent analysis of East Asian customs datasets highlighted that glass eel and elver imports from the region from the Americas increased from 2 tonnes in 2004 to 157 tonnes in 2022…The United States of America…and Canada have domestic management frameworks in place for A. rostrata.  Across the Caribbean nations where the majority of glass eels in the Caribbean region are harvested (Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Haiti), there is a less consistent approach to regulatory measures.

“A. japonica and A. rostrata were categorized as Endangered in 2018 and 2020 IUCN Red List assessments, respectively, on the basis of declines in abundance of approximately 50% across their respective ranges over three generation lengths…”

An Appendix II listing would neither prohibit the harvest of American eels, nor prohibit them from being purchased and sold internationally.  However, such listing would require that the exporter’s nation provide an export permit, which may only be issued if the eels (or other Appendix II-listed species) were legally obtained, and their export won’t threaten the species’ survival.

Even such modest restrictions on trade in American eels met with significant opposition, with not only members of the seafood industry, but also the governments of the United States, China, and Japan speaking against the Appendix II listing.  One big North American eel dealer went so far as to characterize CITES as

“an international body dominated by volunteer scientists and unelected bureaucrats,”

while a coalition of fishing industry organizations in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan argued that the allegation that international trade was leading to a decline in American eel populations was

“not supported by sufficient evidence.”

The opposition was strong enough to successfully prevent CITES from approving the listing.

That result was decried by conservation groups such as the Wildlife Conservation Society, which announced that

“CITES Parties Miss a Chance to Ensure a Future for Endangered Eels,”

and went on to say that

“WCS is deeply disappointed that Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) failed to support Proposal 35 to list all Anguillid eels, including the American eel (Anguilla rostrata) on CITES Appendix II…The proposal, submitted by the European Union and its 27 Member States and Panama, was unfortunately defeated today at the CITES meeting.  There were strong lobbying interests against this scientifically sound effort to regulate the global eel trade…

“The decision leaves this iconic migratory fish—already threatened by overfishing, illegal trade, habitat fragmentation from dams, pollution, disease, and climate change—without the international oversight urgently needed to support recovery and prevent further decline…

“WCS urges governments to continue advancing science-based policies and international cooperation to conserve the American eel and indeed all anguillid species.  The fate of these extraordinary fish reflects the health of our rivers, coasts, and oceans—and the consequences of inaction will be felt far beyond their waters.”

So, the American eel remains much where it began the 21^st century—ignored by many, and unloved by most who cross its path.  Here in the United States, it enjoys better protections than it had when the century began, but it also is facing challenges that were notably less severe 25 years ago.

The plain fact is that, to the general public, the American eel lacks the charisma of a bluefin tuna, white shark, or Atlantic salmon—or even the humble menhaden—and lacks the benefits—including the public relations campaigns—that such charisma supports.

That’s unfortunate.

The American eel deserves a little consideration, too.

 

 

ICCAT INCREASES WESTERN ATLANTIC BLUEFIN QUOTA, TO MIXED REVIEWS

 

The recreational fishing community was generally unhappy with this year’s early closure of the bluefin tuna fishery.  The recreational fishing industry—both the for-hire fleet and the fishing tackle purveyors—were particularly upset, with many calling for an increase in the United States’ quota of western Atlantic bluefin tuna.  When the closure occurred, such increase seemed unlikely, as no other nation was likely to yield part of its own quota to the United States.  As I noted at the time,

“About the best we can hope for is that, when a new stock assessment is released in 2026 or 2027, it will suggest that everyone’s quotas can be increased, and that such rising tide will float the United States’ anglers’ boat along with everyone else’s.”

However, in writing that, I didn’t consider another possibility: that even though a new stock assessment has not yet been released, other scientific work might be used to justify a quota increase.

That is what happened this year.

Dr. Walter Golet is an Associate Professor at the University of Maine, who serves as the Lead Principal Investigator at the Pelagic Fisheries Lab at the university’s School of Marine Sciences, where he has done extensive work researching Atlantic bluefin tuna.  His expertise has resulted in him heading up the United States’ ICCAT Advisory Committee; he also sits on the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel, where I have an opportunity to meet him and have some brief conversations about various fisheries issues.

One of the projects that his team is working on is something they call “Genetics for Giants and Juvies,” a cooperative research project that employs recreational and commercial fishermen willing to provide fin clips from the bluefin tuna that they catch.  The project involves something called “Close-Kin Mark Recapture,” which the lab describes as

“a new technique used to determine the ratio of genetically matched fish to larvae (i.e. parent-offspring pairs or POPs).  In other words, we are using DNA to map out the family tree of [Atlantic bluefin tuna] in the Western Atlantic!”

The lab goes on to say that using the new technique,

“we can estimate where the fish come from (Western or Eastern stock), the absolute population abundance, and the future productivity of the stock.  This information will provide managers with more accurate and real-time data to sustainably manage the Atlantic bluefin fishery!”

(As an aside, active bluefin fishermen who might like to assist Dr. Golet with his work can sign up at the project webpage, which can be found at https://umaine.edu/pelagicfisherieslab/2025/06/05/genetics-for-giants-juvies/).

Each year, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas holds its regular meeting in November.  Well before that occurs, sometime during the spring and summer, the various “species groups” hold what ICCAT deems “intersessional meetings,” where biologists review scientific information regarding the various ICCAT-managed species.  At last April’s intersessional meeting for the Bluefin Tuna Species Group, Close-Kin Mark-Recapture data was considered for the first time.

The data didn’t result in any startling new revelations.  It’s estimate for the size of the western Atlantic bluefin population fell within the range or earlier estimates, although it was toward the higher end of that range.  As noted in the report of the intersessional meeting,

“Overall, the [western Atlantic bluefin tuna close-kin mark recapture] study analyzed approximately 9000 adults from the West Atlantic mixed fisheries paired with [about] 4000 larvae from the Gulf of Mexico western spawning area, and found 56 parent-offspring matches, which provided estimates of spawner detection probability in the US and Canadian fisheries, and in turn, an estimate of the absolute abundance of the western spawning population for 2018.

“The analysts explained that the [western Atlantic bluefin tuna close-kin mark recapture] analysis provided an abundance estimate of adults age 8+ potentially spawning in the West Atlantic, either Gulf of Mexico (GOM) or other areas, including the Slope Sea…

“The [Close-Kin Mark Recapture] model formally estimates a quantity known as Total Reproductive Output (TRO), which is not strictly comparable to estimates from the operating models (OMs).  The TRO was converted to a comparable metric of spawning stock biomass (SSB) using known age structure and the total biomass of all fish age 8+.

“The Group initially saw a comparison of [close-kin mark recapture] SSB with the actual spawning biomass from the OMs.  During the meeting the actual biomass of age 8+ fish was extracted from the OMs.  The Group discussed the comparison shown between the estimate of SSB in 2028 obtained from the [close-kin mark recapture] analysis (21 kt with a CV-0.19) with the 48 values of SSB in 2018 corresponding to the OMs used in the Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE).  Although the SSB estimate from [the western Atlantic bluefin tuna close-kin mark recapture] is inside the range of values from the OMs, its value is larger than the majority of values from the OMs.  Despite this difference, the Group noted that a major benefit is that the [close-kin mark recapture] results can considerably reduce the spread of uncertainty in population scale (the most influential axis of uncertainty in the MSE) with respect to what was assumed in the OMs...”

Thus, it seemed that, while the close-kin mark recapture data suggested that the size of the western Atlantic bluefin tuna population probably did fall within the range of previous estimates, it also served to narrow that range of estimates, presumably eliminating some estimates from the lower end of the range.

But there was still a question of what to do with the data.

In 2022, ICCAT had adopted a Management Procedure for Atlantic bluefin tuna which, complementing the Management Strategy Evaluation adopted in the same year, was intended to automatically calculate the total allowable catch for both the eastern and western stocks, requiring that such TAC be set at a level that had at least a 60% probability that the stock would neither become overfished nor be subject to overfishing.  The Management Procedure specifies that the total allowable catch be calculated by removing a fixed proportion of the bluefin from each of the East or West areas, with overall abundance of bluefin in each area being estimated based on a weighted average of each abundance index that exists for the relevant area.

Based on such calculations, the western Atlantic bluefin tuna quotas for 2026, 2027, and 2028 would probably be substantially the same as they were for the three previous years.

However, the Management Procedure also includes the concept of “exceptional circumstances,” which might occur if

“there is evidence that the stock and/or fishery dynamics are in states not previously considered to be plausible in the context of the management strategy evaluation,…there is evidence that the data required to apply the management procedure are not available or sufficient, or are no longer appropriate, and/or…there is evidence that the total catch for either the West area or the East area is above the total allowable catch for the respective area set using the [management procedure].  [formatting and internal references omitted]”

If one or more exceptional circumstances exist, the total allowable catch calculated by application of the Management Procedure might still be adopted, but if the

“[Standing Committee on Research and Statistics] determines that [the exceptional circumstance or circumstances] precludes the application of the [Management Procedure] or makes the application of the [Management Procedure] or the implementation of its results (i.e., TACs) unadvisable,”

alternative management options may be adopted.

So the question became:  Do the results of the Close-Kin Mark Recapture study rise to the level of an exceptional circumstance?

At last April’s Bluefin Tuna Study Group intersessional meeting, opinions on that were split.

“While the Group agreed [the western Atlantic bluefin close-kin mark recapture study] was a large step forward in the knowledge of the scale of the western stock, the Group struggled to reach consensus on if this new information fell within the definition of [exceptional circumstances]…Some participants felt the [western Atlantic bluefin tuna close-kin mark recapture] results were a large step forward in the knowledge of western scale and a substantially different understanding of stock scale compared to the assumptions incorporated in the 2022 [Management Strategy Evaluation] results.  Others felt that while the [close-kin mark recapture study] was a solid new piece of information, the results were not beyond anything seen in the full range of the 2022 [Operating Models] results and, therefore, they did not consider that these new [close-kin mark recapture] results warranted triggering [exceptional circumstances.”

But, in the end, after what ICCAT characterized as “long and intense discussions” at the recently-concluded meeting, the Commission agreed to increase the western Atlantic bluefin tuna quota by 17%, to 3,081.6 metric tons, for the period 2026-2028.  That would increase the United States quota from 1,316.14 metric tons during the period 2023-2025 to 1,490.38 metric tons, plus an additional bycatch allowance for longline vessels fishing near the boundary delineating the eastern and western management areas, for the period 2026-2028.

While some fishing industry organizations expressed low-key approval of that outcome, more conservation-focused organizations criticized both the decision and how it was reached.

A post on the website Harveststrategies.org, which is supported by multiple conservation organizations, voiced concern that, after

“ICCAT scientists could not agree on whether the new [close-kin mark recapture] information constituted an official exceptional circumstance…[they] did a light revision of the [Management Strategy Evaluation] and subsequently updated the original [Management Procedure], providing two separate [Management Procedures] and associated TACs to the Commission as the scientific advice—BR, the officially adopted [Management Procedure], and BR*, the new revised [Management Procedure].

“This unfortunately opened the door to extensive negotiations…on the [Management Procedure] and how to implement it.  After days of debate on 10 separate formal proposals, ICCAT ended by continuing to operate under the originally adopted BR [Management Procedure], but with incomplete implementation…[I]n the West, the new measure sets a TAC 20% higher than allowed under the originally implemented [Management Procedure], with an extra 100 [metric ton] from the East to the West to use for bycatch in the vicinity of the West/East management boundary.  The final TAC represents a 17% increase in the western TAC, counter to the [Management Procedure].

“This is not how the [Management Procedure] process is supposed to work.  First, the [exceptional circumstances protocol] for Atlantic bluefin tuna is very clear.  The first step is to answer the question, ‘Is there evidence of an exceptional circumstance?’  If the answer is yes, then further investigations should be considered, such as revising the [Management Procedure].  But ICCAT scientists did the revision before first answering the question…Thankfully, there is [a Management Procedure] review scheduled for the next few years that provides an opportunity to get back on course with a bluefin [Management Procedure] that is likely to achieve Commission objectives.”

The World Wildlife Fund was more sharply critical, complaining that

“WWF hailed the 2022 adoption of the Management Procedure for Atlantic bluefin tuna as a landmark achievement—a science-based tool designed to both secure the long-term sustainability of stocks and to showcase the Atlantic bluefin tuna as an ICCAT success story.  Yet, just after completing the first management cycle, it is deeply disappointing to see political pressure overriding and threatening to compromise science-based, sustainable management.  We strongly believe that deviating from the agreed management framework—developed through such an extensive and resource-intensive process—would set a negative example potentially undermining the future governance of other stocks managed under this Convention.”

And that may be the real lesson to be taken from ICCAT’s recent action.

Right now, there seem to be a lot of bluefin tuna in the western Atlantic.  East Coast anglers caught their bluefin quota so quickly last year precisely because there were a lot of fish available for them to catch.

That wasn’t true a couple of decades ago, when bluefin were much harder to come by.  It was only thanks to concerted, international action that the western Atlantic bluefin population began to rebuild.

ICCAT’s decision to increase the bluefin tuna quota for the next three-year period was less an affront to the bluefin—the fish are abundant enough, and the increase was small enough, that it probably won’t do significant harm to the stock before remedial action can be taken—than to the management process itself.

Because, whether the species in question is bluefin tuna, striped bass, or something else, once managers begin to ignore their established management protocols, and instead either sidestep them, or use dubious excuses to create exceptions to the established rules when an opportunity to increase yield arises, then discipline is lost, and it becomes ever easier to sidestep the management process again.

Hopefully, Dr. Golet’s data, which suggests that western Atlantic bluefin are somewhat more abundant than previously believed, will prove to be correct, and the tuna will suffer no harm at all.

And hopefully, the lax process used to increase the western Atlantic bluefin quota for the upcoming three years, and the criticism that laxness engendered will serve as a warning to ICCAT to be more hesitant to amend an established procedure again, just because it seems to be the politically popular thing to do.

IMPROVIDENCE

 

About a year and a half ago, I became a member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel.  While I spend most of my time chasing sharks and tuna offshore, I also get a lot of enjoyment out of wreck fishing for black sea bass and scup, and do it enough, and have done it for long enough, that I have a lot of thoughts about how those species ought to be managed.

That’s particularly true of black sea bass, which is one of my favorite “inshore” species—with “inshore” in quotations marks because I usually fish for them in the ocean, well outside of state waters, although almost always inside the 20-fathom line.

I’ve fished for black sea bass for long enough to have seen massive changes in the fishery, dating back to the days when the overfished stock provided few and generally small fish, to the rebuilding years when good-sized black sea bass—sea bass between three and four pounds, with the occasional fish even larger—were a regular part of midsummer trips, to today’s situation, when black sea bass are extremely abundant, but have also drawn so much fishing effort that it has become difficult to find many that exceed New York’s current 16 ½-inch minimum size.

Throughout that time, I’ve watched fisheries managers at the Mid-Atlantic Council and at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission struggle to properly manage the species.  That, too, has changed, from the arguably over-cautious approach employed prior to 2016, when there was no reliable stock assessment available to guide the management process; to the data-driven, yet uncertainty-plagued approach used for a few years after the 2016 stock assessment passed peer review; to the overly risk-prone stance taken by managers, beginning in the 2020 season, when they repeatedly found excuses not to respond to anglers chronically exceeding the recreational harvest limit; and, finally, to the current management mode, which began in the 2023 season, when managers adopted something that they called the “Percent Change Approach” which allowed anglers to legally exceed both the recreational harvest limit and the sector annual catch limit with near-complete impunity, so long as the spawning stock biomass remained sufficiently high.

Managers’ excuse for allowing such high recreational harvest limits was the black sea bass’ very high spawning stock biomass which, according to the most recent management track stock assessment, was estimated to be 29,934 metric tons, about 275% of the spawning stock biomass target of 10,877 metric tons, in 2025.  However, the same management track assessment predicts that spawning stock biomass will decline sharply in the near future, falling to 22,809 metric tons (210% of target) in 2026 and 17,563 metric tons (161% of target) in 2017.

Despite the declining trend, even a spawning stock biomass that is “just” 161% of the target level is still very high, particularly in a world where the summer flounder SSB hovers somewhere between its target and the threshold that defines an overfished stock (although, fortunately, a little closer to the target) and the striped bass stock, which supports the most important recreational fishery on the East Coast, remains overfished.

Fishing mortality is also relatively low, with the 2024 fishing mortality rate the lowest it has been over the last 10 years.

So it is easy to understand why managers might be willing to take an optimistic view of stock health, and allow anglers to kill more black sea bass than they ought to, and why they might be unwilling to place additional restrictions on landings, at a time when spokesmen for the recreational fishing industry are not hesitant to point out the size of the spawning stock biomass and call for more relaxed regulations.

Yet there is one reason to believe that the black sea bass stock might not be facing quite as rosy a future as everyone seems to believe, and that is the very small number of older, larger fish in a population.

Generally, a healthy fish stock, regardless of species, will include many different year classes of fish.  The number of different year classes depends on the species in question—shorter-lived species will, naturally, contain fewer year classes than those that live longer—but a perfectly healthy stock, which is experiencing no fishing  mortality at all, would consist of individuals ranging from Year 0s, which were produced only a few months before, to a handful of individuals representing the maximum age that the species can reach.

We can envision such a population represented as a triangle, with the youngest, and most abundant, individuals making up the triangle’s broad base, with the preceding year classes, which grow smaller with time, stacked atop it, until the triangle’s very narrow tip is made up of the handful of fish that have managed to reach their maximum age potential.  (Because some year classes are larger or smaller than average, a better analogue would be a child’s jagged drawing of a Christmas tree, with strong year classes represented by the branches jutting far from the trunk and weaker ones the spaces in between such branches, but for the purposes of this discussion, the triangle’s image will serve.)

Once a population is subject to fishing mortality, the shape and size of the triangle changes.

Intuitively, one might think that the triangle of a stock that’s being fished would stay just as tall, but become skinnier, with a narrower base, as fishing activity removes a similar proportion of fish from all of the different year classes.

But that’s not what happens.

Instead, imagine someone making a cut parallel to one of the triangle’s sides.

Such a cut would remove the top of the triangle completely, reducing the triangle’s height, while also narrowing the base.  That means, in the context of a fish population, that because of fishing mortality,  fish would no longer be able to reach their full age potential; the oldest year classes would probably be lost completely, while the older, larger fish that remained would make up a smaller proportion of the overall population.

Because the oldest, largest fish would no longer be present, and the older year classes that remain would be removed from the population at a higher rate, the spawning stock biomass would be  composed primarily of younger individuals, and perhaps by only a very few year classes.  Such a population might still sustain itself for years, and perhaps indefinitely, provided that the recruitment of new fish into the spawning stock remains strong.

However, such a population is also more vulnerable to periods of poor recruitment.  With fishing mortality removing most of the older fish from the population and truncating its age structure, there are fewer age-classes in the spawning stock biomass, so if the stock experiences a few consecutive years of below-average spawns, its spawning potential could quickly be reduced.

On October 24, biologists produced Recreational Demand Model predictions of what the black sea bass population will look like on January 1, 2026, assuming that regulations remain unchanged.  Those predictions include a chart which shows that, at the beginning of the next year, three age-classes of sea bass—the five-year-olds, the six-year-olds, and those fish that are seven years old and older—each make up less than 5% of the black sea bass population.  The chart is denoted in intervals of 20%, so the precise contribution each age-class makes to the overall population is difficult to determine by eye, but none seem to rise above 3% or so.

To put that in context, consider this length-at-age chart that I recently received from a biologist who sometimes follows this blog, which I understand was developed by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection:

age 1: 5”
age 2: 10”
age 3: 12”
age 4: 13.5”
age 5: 15”
age 6: 17”
age 7: 18.5”
age 8: 19”
age 9: 20”
age 10: 21”

That chart isn’t completely precise, because fish, just like people, grow at different rates and, particularly as they get older, the size difference between individuals of the same age can be marked.  However, it proves as a good general guide, and what it tells us is that, for a black sea bass to be large enough to meet the 16 and 16 ½ inch size limits that prevail in New York and New England, that fish will probably have to be between five and six years old. 

The chart of relative age-class abundance suggests that black sea bass of that age make up only a very, very small proportion of the population, and corroborates the anecdotal information provided by a number of fishermen and for-hire captains in the region—including myself—that legal-sized black sea bass have become very hard to find.

It also shows that the black sea bass population is largely dependent upon three age-classes—the two-year-old (when about 50% of females are mature), three-year-old, and four-year-old fish—to maintain the health of the stock, particularly that portion of the stock that spends most of its time north of Hudson Canyon.

Such dependence on just a few year classes might not matter quite as much with black sea bass as it does with most other species, as black sea bass are considered “atypical protogynous hermaphrodites,” which means that most—but not all—of the fish start life as females, and most—but not all—of the females later transitioning to males, so the majority of the egg production is concentrated in the younger age-classes.   However, it still makes black sea bass vulnerable to poor recruitment, should it occur.

So while the stock isn’t facing any immediate problems, managers probably shouldn’t become too sanguine about what the population might look like five or ten years from now.

And that’s where the November 19 meeting of the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel comes in.

Ahead of the Advisory Panel meeting, we were provided with four documents, which included a memorandum addressing 2026-2027 black sea bass recreational measures.  Among other things, that memorandum noted that

“The updated Recreational Demand Model predicts that if 2025 measures were to remain in place in 2026, this would result in 5.86 million pounds of black sea bass harvest, with an 80% confidence interval of 4.22-8.50 million pounds.  The 2026-2027 [recreational harvest limit] of 8.14 million pounds is within this confidence interval.  Therefore, given that the stock is not overfished, the Percent Change Approach requires a ‘no liberalization/reduction’ outcome…”

That probably makes sense.  Yes, the decline in the number of older, larger black sea bass is troubling, and could foreshadow problems with the stock, and the size of the spawning stock biomass is expected to decline in the upcoming years.  But with the spawning stock biomass nearly triple the SSB target, and a fishing mortality rate that is almost 25% below the overfishing threshold, managers could easily maintain current regulations and, even if landings are a little too high, not do any real harm to the stock before the 2027 management track assessment gives them an updated look at where things are heading.

But at the Advisory Panel meeting, we learned that some members of the Summer Flounder, Scup,  and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee, which is composed of biologists employed by the ASMFC, National Marine Fisheries Service, and various states, have looked at the uncertainty surrounding the Recreational Demand Model’s estimates, particularly its estimates of relative abundance-at-age, and have concluded that the 80% confidence interval—which has been used for all Percent Change Approach-related calculations since that approach was adopted a few years ago, because it

“balances consideration of certainty in estimates with responsiveness to changing conditions”

—created too great a spread of possible values, a spread that was not only “much larger” than spreads for black sea bass estimates in the past, but also wider than the current spreads for summer flounder and scup.  That led some Monitoring Committee members to become concerned that

“Too wide of a [confidence interval] mean measures remain unchanged for too long,”

and could result in forgoing yield that might otherwise be landed.

Such Monitoring Committee members recommended using a 75% confidence interval instead, suggesting that a 75% confidence interval was still close to 80%, but led to a narrower estimate of possible 2026 black sea bass landings, which might range between 4.29 and 8.06 million pounds.

While there is only about a 5% difference between the upper bound of the 80% confidence interval for 2025 landings—8.50 million pounds—and the upper bound of the 75% confidence interval, because of how the Percent Change Approach works, that 5% difference would, if a 75% CI was adopted, result in a 39% increase in the 2026-2027 black sea bass recreational landings target, because the 2026 recreational harvest limit of 8.14 million pounds would be just above the upper bound of the 75% confidence interval, and so permit such drastic liberalization.

Not all of the members of the Monitoring Committee supported such result.  Some argued that there was no “thorough analysis” to support dropping the confidence interval to 75%.  Some believed that

“any CI [other than 80%] would appear arbitrary without strong justification,”

while others maintained that it was

“preferable to discuss appropriate [confidence intervals] when it can be independent of the outcome.”

But most members of the Advisory Panel pounced on the 75% confidence interval, and the 39% increase in the recreational landings target, like a barn cat pouncing on pigeon with a bad wing.

The Advisory Panel, or at least its recreational component, is dominated by the for-hire industry.  I’m one of the very few private-boat anglers on the panel, and I’m not sure that any of the members spend their time fishing from shore.  Thus, the Advisory Panel’s comments largely focused on the prospect of higher landings and relaxed regulations attracting more customers to the party and charter boat fleet. 

With the exception of one very experienced New Jersey party boat operator, who emphasized the need for a large and abundant black sea bass population, none of the industry comments expressed any concern for the future of the black sea bass stock.

In fact, another New Jersey party boat operator argued for the 39% increase because, if landings needed to be reduced at some point in the future, any reduction would be made from a recreational landings target 39% higher than the one in place today, so that even after such prospective cut, recreational landings would still remain relatively high.

Again, the impact on the black sea bass population was not a major concern.

That is a foolish way to proceed.

Should recreational fishing mortality increase as a result of the possible 39% increase, the oldest black sea bass age-classes would quickly be reduced in size, which would have a decided negative impact on the black sea bass fishery in New York and New England, which is largely dependent on those older, bigger fish.  Should the 2027 management track assessment find that recreational landings must be reduced—which would not be a surprising outcome, given the upcoming revisions to recreational catch and effort data—the northeastern black sea bass fishery could be destroyed.

That’s a big price to pay for just two years of profligacy.

And given that black sea bass thrive, and produce the largest year classes, when the young of the year encounter warm, saline water while spending their first winter, and given that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is warning that the Gulf Stream has temporarily shifted south, and that cold, less saline northern water is flowing over the edge of the shelf off New England and the upper mid-Atlantic, a condition that might persist for the next decade or so, the likelihood of lower recruitment, and the need for landings cuts, might be pretty high.

But just about everyone—or, at least, just about everyone who spoke at the Advisory Panel meeting—was firmly focused on the here and now.

That’s not unusual in fisheries meetings, especially when the recreational industry is involved.

In December, the Mid-Atlantic Council and the ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board will meet in a joint session to decide on recreational black sea bass regulations for the 2026 and 2027 fishing years.  One of the key aspects of that decision is to determine whether an 80% or a 75% confidence interval should be used to estimate 2026 black sea bass landings (assuming status quo regulations).

It would be nice to believe that they will maintain the 80% confidence level, along with the current level of recreational landings.

Unfortunately, the recreational seats on the Mid-Atlantic Council are effectively owned by the for-hire fleet, and the for-hire fleet will almost certainly support the 75% confidence interval, so that they can offer more dead fish to their customers. 

At least for the next couple of years.

Their planning rarely goes out any farther than that.

Providing for the future of the black sea bass fishery—or any other fishery, as far as that goes—has never been their strong point.  But improvidence always has a cost, and one day—maybe not too long from now—their bill will come due.