MANAGING FISHERIES: EXPERTISE MATTERS

 

There was a big to-do here in New York late last year, when Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed legislation that would have prohibited the harvest of horseshoe crabs in New York’s waters. 

The legislation, dubbed the “Horseshoe Crab Protection Act,” had become a hot-button issue for various environmental organizations within and without the state.  Although it included other provisions which extended the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation’s authority to manage the various species of crab that inhabit New York’s waters (horseshoe crabs, despite their name, aren’t really crabs at all, but rather belong to an ancient family that dates back to the early Triassic period, 250 million years ago, and are the only survivors of the order Xiphosura, which originated about 445 million years ago, in the late Ordovician; they are more closely related to spiders and ticks than to the crustaceans that we know as “crabs”), the language relating to horseshoe crabs read

“No person shall take horseshoe crabs (Limulus sp.), including for commercial or biomedical purposes, from the waters of this state.  Provided, however that this section shall not apply to the taking of horseshoe crabs (Limulus sp.) for bona fide scientific or educational purposes including, but not limited to, public or not-for-profit zoos and aquaria, as determined by the Commissioner pursuant to rules and regulations.  [formatting omitted]”

The bill’s primary sponsor was Assemblywoman Deborah J Glick, Chair of the Assembly's Committee on Environmental Conservation, who represents a district on the lower West Side of Manhattan.  The Senate version of the bill was sponsored by Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who also represents a district on the West Side of Manhattan.  

It’s probably fair to say that neither district hosts a horseshoe crab fishery nor any shallow-sloping beaches where horseshoe crabs might lay their eggs, although there are undoubtedly a few of the creatures that pass by unseen in the murky olive-brown depths of the Hudson River.  It’s also probably fair to assume that neither sponsor has much practical experience with horseshoe crab biology or New York's horseshoe crab fishery, and that whatever knowledge they might have of such subjects was acquired second-hand.

People with first-hand knowledge of horseshoe crabs and horseshoe crab fisheries can be found in the Marine Division of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and among the various biologists who advise the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and it’s probably important to note that few if any of them believed it necessary to completely shut down New York’s horseshoe crab fishery, although fishery managers do believe that it should be subject to appropriate management measures.

The ASMFC developed its first horseshoe crab management plan in 1998.  That plan noted that

“The status of horseshoe crab populations along the Atlantic Seaboard is poorly understood and is based on independent spawning surveys, egg counts, and trawl surveys, primarily conducted in the Delaware Bay region.  Concern over increased exploitation of horseshoe crabs, particularly in the mid-Atlantic States, has been expressed by state and federal fishery resource agencies, conservation organizations, and fisheries interests.  Horseshoe crabs are important to migrating shorebirds and federally listed sea turtles as sources of food, and are critical to biomedical research and pharmaceutical testing.  Because horseshoe crabs are slow to mature and easily harvested with minimal financial investments, populations are sensitive to harvest pressure.”

Because, when that first management plan was drafted, there were no biological reference points that could be used to gauge the health of the horseshoe crab population, and because no such biological reference points have yet been developed, 1998 serves as the base year that is used to determine the relative abundance of horseshoe crabs.  Since the overall horseshoe crab stock is composed of a number of local populations, that display small genetic differences throughout the stock’s range, the coastwide stock is not only evaluated on a coastwide basis, but is also broken down into four regions—Northeast, New York (which also includes Connecticut), Delaware Bay, and Southeast—with the relative abundance in each region gauged separately.

According to the most recent stock assessment update, released last May, coastwide stock status is “good,” with more than two-thirds of the surveys conducted finding horseshoe crabs more abundant than they were in 1998, an improvement over the 2019 benchmark assessment, when just under half of the surveys found greater abundance.  The Delaware Bay and Southeast regions also showed the stocks at “good” levels.  Stock status in the Northeast is only rated as “neutral,” with surveys finding abundance roughly equal to what it was in 1998, and better than it was in 2009 and 2013.

But New York is the one exception to the rule of generally increasing abundance.  In New York, horseshoe crab abundance has been decreasing, with the status of the regional population falling from “good” in 2009 to “neutral” in 2013 to “poor” in 2019 and 2024, with 75 percent of last year’s surveys showing lower abundance than in 1998.

It’s clear that New York’s population of horseshoe crabs can use a helping hand, but it’s not clear that a complete closure of the fishery is justified.  The Department of Environmental Conservation has already taken significant action; although the ASMFC awards New York an annual quota of 366,272 horseshoe crabs, the state has voluntarily adopted and still maintains a quota of just 150,000 animals, less than half of what it is allowed.  In addition, to protect spawning horseshoe crabs, the state has adopted four 5-day closures during May and June, which coincide with the lunar periods with the highest tides, when the horseshoe crabs spawn.

New York’s efforts seem to be yielding results; although abundance surveys are not yet showing improvement compared to 1998 levels, three out of the four state surveys conducted in 2023 showed improvement compared to 2022 and three out of the four surveys conducted in 2022 also showed improvement compared to the previous survey.

Whether that improvement is enough to maintain the status quo is open to informed debate.  But it was not such informed debate that gave birth to the bill that the governor vetoed.

Instead, the Horseshoe Crab Protection Act seemed to be born out of emotion rather than hard data, with some organizations even seemingly contradicting themselves in their efforts to close New York’s fishery.  For example, the American Bird Conservancy urged passage of the bill, emphasizing the horseshoe crab’s importance to a shorebird called the red knot, writing

“The Horseshoe Crab is a keystone species that plays a crucial role in its ecosystem.  Its nutrient-dense eggs are vital for a diverse array of shorebirds, including the Threatened Red Knot.  Unfortunately, the Horseshoe Crab population in New York has declined drastically, threatening the species and the various wildlife that rely on them.  [emphasis in original]”

Not only is there no indication that the horseshoe crab population is threatened—the latest stock assessment shows its coastwide status as “good”—but in another of the American Bird Conservancy’s web pages dedicated to the red knot, the organization notes that

“The rufa Red Knot’s spring migration is timed to coincide with the horseshoe crab’s spawning season, as the massive outlay of eggs provides a rich, easily digestible food source for the exhausted birds.  Delaware Bay shores provide the single most important spring stopover area for the Red Knot, hosting within a narrow time window up to 90 percent of the North American population.  Other key U.S. stopover sites include coastal islands off Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and Massachusetts.  [emphasis added]”

New York, and the supposed importance of its horseshoe crabs to the red knot, is most notable for its absence from the list of key feeding sites; although some red knots do feed on horseshoe crab eggs in New York’s Jamaica Bay and elsewhere along the state’s coast, from a red knot’s perspective, New York is mostly a “flyover state” that is largely ignored during the birds' jump from Delaware Bay to more northerly climes.

Yet the needs of the red knot were used to justify closing the state’s horseshoe crab fishery, with a spokesman for the National Audubon Society stating, in one of Assemblywoman Glick’s press releases, that during their northward migration,

“Red Knots rely on horseshoe crab eggs for food so they can refuel and complete their migrations…Protecting horseshoe crabs by banning their harvest in New York State is one important step we can take to ensure the survival of the Red Knot…”

Such comment grossly overstates the importance of New York’s horseshoe crab population to the red knot’s survival, which cannot be ensured by anything done in the state.

But when it comes to tugging on people’s emotions, New York’s horseshoe crab debate hit its high point—or, perhaps, its low point—with Assemblywoman Glick’s announcement that

“Dr. Jane Goodall Joins the Fight to Protect Horseshoe Crabs in New York,”

a press release which goes on to note that

“Dr. Goodall penned a letter to Governor Hochul on November 12, 2024, requesting that the Governor sign the Horseshoe Crab Protection Act.  Dr. Goodall’s letter states, ‘I believe New York has an opportunity to lead in this conservation effort.  By signing this bill, you can ensure the survival of the horseshoe crab and the many species that depend on it…”

Now, Dr. Goodall is an extremely well-known and deservedly famous researcher who, with the 1971 publication of In the Shadow of Man, literally wrote the book on chimpanzee behavior.   However, her biography reveals nothing to suggest that she has any particular insights or knowledge relating to New York’s horseshoe crab population, or to horseshoe crabs generally, that would elevate her views on the subject above those of anyone else, and given that the horseshoe crab stock is composed of local populations that range everywhere between New England and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, it’s hard to accept that a bill passed in New York can “ensure the survival of the horseshoe crab” throughout its entire range.

Yet it has been this type of emotional appeal that has driven the horseshoe crab bill.  At the January 14 meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council, Martin Gary, the Director of the DEC’s Marine Division, noted that no one on his staff was invited to address the merits of the Horseshoe Crab Protection Act before either the New York State Assembly’s or the Senate’s Environmental Conservation Committees, even though there are staff biologists fully capable of educating legislators on the issues relevant to such legislation.  

Instead of basing their actions on hard facts and good data, legislators apparently felt comfortable relying on the slanted narratives provided by various advocacy groups opposed to the horseshoe crab fishery.

Thus, Governor Hochul was put into a position where she was forced to veto the horseshoe crab bill.

In her veto message, Governor Hochul noted that

“While this bill is well-intentioned, the management of marine species is better left to the experts at DEC.”

And that’s the key point.

Maybe there is a good argument for closing New York’s horseshoe crab fishery, at least until local abundance returns to something approaching its 1998 level.  And if that’s the case, advocates for such a closure should assemble their data, bring it to the experts at the DEC, and make whatever rational arguments they can muster, based on fact and not on emotional, overblown arguments that New York’s actions will decide the fate of the horseshoe crab or of the red knot, a bird that makes a 9,000 mile migration from southern South America to its arctic nesting grounds, and faces far greater threats than the health of the horseshoe crab population in a state that most red knots pass over without ever stopping to land.

Whether we’re talking about managing horseshoe crabs, menhaden, striped bass, or any other living marine resource, management decisions should be based on good science and good data, not emotion.  Management decisions should be made by professional wildlife managers, and not by politicians who seek to provide unneeded protections for charismatic species or try to remove needed protections from species that happen to vex constituents and campaign contributors.

There are occasional exceptions to the rule, but far more often than not, when natural resources are managed by largely uninformed legislators rather than by professional wildlife managers, things don’t turn out very well.

 

ASMFC STALLS STRIPED BASS REBUILDING EFFORT

 

On December 16, 2024, conservation-minded striped bass anglers waited to see whether the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Striped Bass Management Board (Management Board) would vote to reduce 2025 striped bass landings, and so make it more likely that the currently overfished striped bass stock would be rebuilt by 2029, the deadline set by the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan.

Those anglers were also eager to see whether the Management Board would take any action to protect the 2018 year class of striped bass, which will be the focus of recreational harvest in 2025. Such harvest may prove problematic, as striped bass have experienced poor spawning success in every year since 2019; removing a substantial portion of the 2018 year class from the population could have a profound negative impact on the future health of the striped bass stock and the future sustainability of the striped bass fishery.

Concerned anglers were ultimately disappointed, as the Management Board decided against imposing any new harvest reductions and chose to leave the 2018 year class vulnerable to recreational fishermen in 2025. Instead, it voted to initiate a new addendum to the management plan, which might include new management measures for the 2026 season.

The Management Board’s failure to take any immediate action at its December meeting could be attributed to confusing and inadequate information received by the fisheries managers, insufficient time to develop clear management options, and a recreational fishing industry that is becoming increasingly opposed to striped bass conservation efforts. But in many anglers’ eyes, the inaction was due to the Management Board relapsing into its former habits of deferral and delay, as it used the ambiguity in the available data as an excuse to sit on its hands and do nothing.

Ambiguity pervaded the 2024 stock assessment update (2024 Update). Because Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (Addendum II) had been adopted less than a year earlier, the ASMFC’s Striped Bass Technical Committee (Technical Committee), which prepared the 2024 Update, didn’t yet have enough data to determine whether the measures contained in that addendum would make it likely that the stock would rebuild by 2029.

The Technical Committee did know that recreational landings for the first half of 2024 were substantially lower than expected. If that trend continued through the rest of the year, there was a 50-50 chance that the stock would rebuild even if no management changes were made. But in 2025, the strong 2018 year class would enter the 28- to 31-inch coastal recreational slot size limit. That could cause recreational landings to increase significantly, making it unlikely that the stock would rebuild on time.

Addendum II gave the Management Board the authority to adopt measures to make rebuilding more likely by a simple Board vote, without having to go through the formal public comment process that is normally required before it adopts a new addendum. Thus, at the Management Board’s October meeting, Nichola Meserve, a Massachusetts fisheries manager, declared that “The only error I see is doing nothing…some type of action is necessary,” and moved to hold an additional meeting in December 2024, to discuss new measures for 2025. The motion passed with strong support, but also met with strong opposition from a few Management Board members who preferred to delay any management action until 2026.

Prior to the December meeting, the Technical Committee produced a report that presented three possible scenarios, all equally likely and all based on slightly different assumptions. Depending on which scenario one chose to believe, the stock either had a 57 percent chance of rebuilding on time, even if no additional management measures were adopted, or had only a 43 or 46 percent chance of rebuilding by 2029 unless landings cuts were imposed.

There was no clear path forward. The way was further obscured by the report’s proposed season closures, which considered neither the length nor the timing of recreational striped bass fisheries in different states, and so would place a materially greater burden on some states than on others. The report also presented options for both traditional no-harvest closures, which still allowed catch-and-release fishing, and closures which prohibited directed catch-and-release fishing as well, even though various law enforcement officials noted that such “no-targeting” closures were, as a practical matter, unenforceable.

Despite having only five days after the release of the Technical Committee’s report to respond, the public provided 4,360 comments to guide the Management Board. 3,370 of those comments called for the Management Board to adopt new management measures for the 2025 season, while just 517 supported the status quo, making it clear that stakeholders preferred immediate action over delay or inaction by at least a 6.5 to 1 ratio.

2,726 of the commenters believed that any reduction that was imposed should apply to both the commercial and recreational sectors, while only five asked that it apply solely to anglers. Emile Franke, the Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for striped bass, noted in a memo to the Management Board that “Most comments supported both sectors taking even reductions (same percent reduction for each sector). A small number of comments supported each sector taking a reduction based on its contribution to total removals (e.g., commercial 1.5% and recreational 16%).”

Ms. Franke’s memo also noted strong opposition to no-targeting closures in the ocean fishery, with 2,252 comments opposing closures of any kind (perhaps an unreasonable position, given the few alternatives available to the Management Board) and 640 specifically opposing no-targeting closures. Of the 746 comments supporting no-targeting closures, 700 only wanted such closures applied to anglers fishing within the Chesapeake Bay.

As the December 16 webinar meeting began, more than 550 people were listening in.

The Technical Committee presented its report to the Management Board and answered a number of questions. Immediately thereafter, Adam Nowalsky, New Jersey’s Legislative Proxy, made a motion

to initiate an addendum to support striped bass rebuilding by 2029 in consideration of 2024 recreational and commercial mortality while balancing socioeconomic impacts. Options should include, if needed, a range of overall reductions, consideration of rec vs comm contributions to the reductions, rec season and size changes taking into account regional variability of availability, and no harvest vs no target closures. Final action shall be taken by the Summer 2025 meeting to be in place for the 2026 rec and comm fisheries.

The motion was seconded by John Clark, a Delaware fisheries manager who had long opposed any reductions in striped bass landings.

Both Nowalsky and Clark cited uncertainty in the Technical Committee’s report as justification for delaying action, arguing that such delay gave scientists more time to gauge the impact of Amendment II. They also observed that, if the most optimistic of the Technical Committee’s three possible scenarios proved accurate, the striped bass stock would probably rebuild on time without the need for additional action.

Nichola Meserve responded with an elaborate substitute motion which proposed a nine percent reduction in recreational and commercial striped bass landings, and also addressed the perceived inequities in the seasons proposed by the Technical Committee, split the coast into two regions divided by the Connecticut/Rhode Island border, and set other state- or region-specific requirements. Her motion was seconded by Cheri Patterson, a fishery manager from New Hampshire.

Megan Ware, the Maine fishery manager who chairs the Management Board, then initiated a general discussion, and invited amendments to both the main and the substitute motions.

Ray Kane, Massachusetts’ Governor’s appointee, reminded the Management Board that “We’ve heard from the public already that they want action from this Board,” and noted that delay would earn the Management Board little new information. Despite his comment, it soon became evident that many of Management Board members were deaf to the public comments.

An initial motion to limit the commercial quota reduction to a meaningless one percent barely failed on a seven-to-seven vote. A second motion, to limit such reduction to five percent, made by Emerson Hasbrouck, the Governor’s appointee from New York, passed with 10 votes in favor and just four opposed.

Soon after, New Jersey’s Nowalsky ignored both law enforcement advice and 3,000 public comments, moving to amend the substitute motion so as to allow the use of no-targeting closures in coastal fisheries and in Virginia’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay. Nowalsky, long an adamant opponent of more restrictive management measures, effectively admitted that his motion was meant to be a thumb in the eye of conservation advocates, noting that “People who support conservation at any cost are backing off” once no-targeting closures are put on the table.

Hasbrouck seconded the motion, saying that it “addresses an issue that has been concerning me, and that issue is equity versus inequity;” he felt that it is unfair to allow catch-and-release fishing when harvest-oriented anglers can’t put dead fish on the dock. Somewhat surprisingly, given the unenforceability of no-targeting closures and the strong public opposition, the motion passed with nine votes in favor and five opposed.

At that point, debate on the amended substitute motion began.

Doug Grout, New Hampshire’s Governor’s appointee, citing both the need to meet the rebuilding deadline and the threat posed by recent years of low recruitment, warned “If we don’t approve an action today we will do nothing to address the increase in harvest that will occur in 2025.” Chris Batsavage, a North Carolina fishery manager, expressed concern about the future, observing that “we could be looking at some pretty lean times after 2029.”

Other members of the Management Board had no such worries. Joseph Cimino, New Jersey’s fisheries manager, said that because of Nowalsky’s amendment, his views on the substitute motion were “going from strongly opposed to opposed,” and felt that “the stock can handle” the consequences of any delay. Maryland’s Luisi argued that the various management measures adopted since the early 2000s “added complexity” to the management plan, and said that the substitute motion constituted “complex analyses piecemealed together,” while an addendum provided the opportunity to be “creative” with new management approaches.

But perhaps the most remarkable opposition to the substitute motion came from Michael Waine, a spokesman for the American Sportfishing Association (ASA), the recreational fishing industry’s largest trade organization. Following up on the ASA’s comments opposing landings reductions in 2025, Waine said:

…I think the public process is really important for such a significant decision of season closures…And so, I think giving the addendum the opportunity to consider this more thoroughly, really develop options out that the public can consume and provide input on is the best way best path [sic] forward. You know, I think about [sic] you guys know I am a part of a lot of these fisheries management discussions, and this is probably the most unique fishery that ASMFC manages, especially recreationally. And I look at the public comments, and I know there’s millions of striped bass anglers out there. Millions. And I’m only seeing twenty five hundred comments from a lot of the same people that we know have been commenting. And so, as an organization, we’re going to work with our members to try to get more people integrated into this process. We know that the recreational fishery is very diverse, and I don’t feel the public comments really are a good reflection of that diversity. And so, where is the opportunity to get those individuals into this process? Where is the opportunity to give folks the chance to get involved and engaged? I don’t think it’s on the fly with this substitute motion, and I challenge the Board to go the addendum route and reach out to the constituents that they haven’t heard from. Don’t talk to the same folks that you’ve been talking to all the time. Find the people who care about this resource and value it in a way that their voices should be heard, too. And that’s what we’ll do as an organization ourselves. [emphasis added]

There was unintended irony, as Waine seemingly told the Management Board to ignore what he was saying (“I am a part of a lot of these fisheries management discussions…Don’t talk to the same folks that you’ve been talking to all the time”). But his request that the Management Board ignore stakeholders who had taken the time to learn about the issues and make their views known, because some imagined, Nixonian silent majority might disagree, was sincere and a cause for concern.

Dennis Abbott, New Hampshire’s legislative proxy, who noted that the Management Board had received 4,000 public comments, asserted that “contrary to Mike Waine, you’ll never get one million comments.” He warned that the public has already blamed the ASMFC for “kicking the can down the road” with respect to striped bass management, and that they’d blame the ASMFC once again if no action was taken.

In the end, whether because the various amendments to the substitute motion had turned what had been an elegant solution to a multifaceted problem into a quagmire likely to cause intense and possibly fruitless debate between the states in each region, or whether the proponents of the proposed new addendum simply convinced a majority of the Management Board that their approach was best, the substitute motion failed on a vote of four in favor and eleven opposed, while the original motion to begin the addendum process found broad support, with only Maine and New Hampshire voting against it.

Waine’s supposed silent majority notwithstanding, many striped bass anglers were disappointed by the outcome. Nelson Sigelman, an angler and outdoor writer from Martha’s Vineyard, observed, “The history of fisheries management is a tale of half-measures taken to appease various interest groups who all want a slice of a diminishing pie. Tough action is put off every year, and the pie gets smaller.”

His words were kind compared to some on the popular striped bass fishing website Stripersonline.com, where anglers made such comments as:

“and the word today is Malfeasance, wrongdoing or misconduct especially by a public official.”

“The states did not have the courage to vote for conservation today. They did nothing.”

“Pathetic. Congrats to all involved.”

“Somehow, someway the asmfc needs to go. I don’t know how that happens but there is not a path forward with them running things.”

Responding to such public sentiment, Megan Ware said:

We want to thank the thousands of members of the public who took the time to provide thoughtful comments ahead of the Board meeting. We understand that many will be disappointed in the Board’s decision to initiate an addendum versus taking immediate action. However, after deliberating for more than three hours about the path forward, the Board came to the conclusion that that the best course of action is to proceed with an addendum which will allow for clarity on 2024 removals and additional analyses.

While her attempt at damage control will probably do little to assuage the public, a more important question is what the decision to delay management action means for the striped bass.

At this point, it’s impossible to say.

If the Technical Committee’s most optimistic scenario proves true, the striped bass will still have a slightly better than even chance to rebuild by 2029. That scenario depends on fishing mortality remaining low for the rest of 2024, rising by 17 percent in 2025, and then dropping back to 2024 levels for 2026 through 2029.

2024 landings will probably be at least as low as the Technical Committee has predicted. But such low landings were unexpected, and if it turns out that 2024 landings were atypical, and if landings levels increase to more typical levels in future years, the fishing mortality assumptions underlying the proposed new addendum will be overly optimistic. In that case, any management measures included in the proposed addendum will probably not be restrictive enough to rebuild the stock on time.

If that happens, the Management Board will only learn of the problem after the 2027 benchmark stock assessment is released. The Management Board will have little time to implement measures capable of rebuilding the stock by the 2029 deadline, and any such measures will probably be far more restrictive than the nine percent reduction recently rejected by the Management Board.

They might even be restrictive enough that the Management Board decides to ignore the rebuilding deadline, despite the explicit language of the management plan.

Thus, December 16’s decision to delay management action might well determine whether the Management Board will meet its rebuilding deadline. If spawning success remains poor, that decision might also determine the health of the striped bass stock, and the sustainability of the striped bass fishery, in the 2030s, if not beyond.

We can only hope that the cost of delay doesn’t prove disturbingly high.

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

 

MENHDEN LAWSUIT DISMISSED

 

Last May, I wrote about an interesting menhaden lawsuit that had been filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

It was brought by a pair of activists with a long history of opposition to the menhaden reduction fishery and to Omega Protein, the company which has long been responsible for just about all of the menhaden reduction harvest on the East Coast.  In 2010, the same individuals, Chris Manthey and W. Benson Chiles, brought a lawsuit against Omega alleging that fish oil supplements sold by the company for human use contained PCBs in concentrations that exceeded state limits.  While that suit was eventually settled, it is nonetheless evidence that the two people have long had Omega in their crosshairs, and have long sought reasons to bring legal actions against the company.

 The fact that Omega had been purchased by a Canadian conglomerate, Cooke Inc., which focuses on aquaculture, commercial fishing, and related industries, set the stage for the new suit, as United States law requires that fishing vessels operating in U.S waters be at least 75 percent owned by U.S. citizens, and the plaintiffs in the relevant lawsuit claimed that as Omega was now Canadian-owned, it was violating that law.

Normally, those facts wouldn’t provide grounds for citizens to initiate litigation.  However, the complaint in the recent lawsuit alleged that, although Omega had sold its fishing vessels to a new, U.S.-owned company, Alpha VesselCo LLC, in seeming compliance with applicable law, such sale was a sham that left Cooke still in effective control of the new company, because Alpha VesselCo was owned by an employee of Cooke who was also a nephew of Cooke’s CEO.  The complaint argued that such ownership constituted what it called “figurehead fraud,” and gave rise to a claim under the federal False Claims Act, because absent such fraud,

“the United States…would not have determined that the Omega Vessels [now owned by Alpha VesselCo] are eligible to receive fishery endorsements, and would not have issued fishery endorsements to the Omega Vessels in 2018, 2019, 2020, or 2021, meaning that Defendants would not have taken millions of dollars of fish each year from U.S. waters.”

In the event that a person or entity employs fraud or a false claim to obtain “money or property” from the federal government, the False Claims Act allows private citizens to sue such person or entity on the government’s behalf, although the government is given the opportunity to assume responsibility for the lawsuit should it choose to do so.  If the lawsuit is successful, the private party bringing the action may receive as much as 30 percent of the judgment awarded to the United States, depending on such party’s contribution to the suit’s outcome.

Given that the law also allows the court to award damages that are three times the amount of the government’s losses attributable to the false claim, anyone bringing a suit claiming that the defendants had wrongfully taken “millions of dollars of fish each year,” could have been setting themselves up for a pretty big payday, while forcing the defendants to pay a high price for the allegedly fraudulent behavior—if they prevailed.

The only thing that stood in their way was a federal judge, and that judge’s interpretation of federal law.

Those turned out to be pretty big obstacles, for to prevail, the two persons bringing the suit had to establish, among other things, that the defendants fraudulently or falsely obtained “money” or “property” that belonged to the federal government.  Unless they could do that, all of the other allegations contained in their 57-page complaint had no meaning under the False Claims Act.

And part of establishing the fact that “property” was wrongfully taken was figuring out just what the word “property” meant, as it is not defined in the relevant statute.

A long, long time ago, in the age before cell phones, when the first personal computers were still on the drawing boards and not generally available for sale, I sat down in my first law school class.  It happened to be a class on property law, and although the year was 1976, the first case we considered was decided far earlier, in 1805.  No lawyer would be surprised to learn that the case was Pierson v. Post, which a 1989 court decision described as

“one of the first cases encountered by the neophyte law student and stands for a basic proposition of property law that no right to a wild animal is created until it is reduced to possession by so circumscribing its movement that escape is impossible.”

The judge in the False Claims Act case didn't mention Pierson v. Post, although he certainly read it in law school.  Instead, he cited a United States Court of Appeals (2^nd Circuit) decision in a case from 1978, which adopted the same basic principle, saying

“[a]s a general rule, wild fish, birds and animals are owned by no one.  Property rights in them are obtained by reducing them to possession.”

He also cited a United States Supreme Court decision from 1977, which quoted from the dissent in an earlier matter to make the point that

“Neither the States nor the Federal Government, any more than a hopeful fisherman or hunter, has title to these creatures until they are reduced to possession by skilled capture.”

Thus, the judge made it clear that the “millions of dollars of fish” allegedly caught by the defendants did not belong to anyone, and most particularly did not belong to the United States government, when they were caught, so the False Claims Act allegations necessarily failed.

He also rejected the argument that the commercial fishing endorsements obtained for the Alpha  VesselCo fishing fleet constituted United States property, citing a Supreme Court decision which noted the difference between “property interests and regulatory interests,” and found that various licenses, including fishing licenses that were analogous to the commercial fishing endorsements being considered in the menhaden/False Claims Act case were “purely regulatory.”

As a result of such findings, Judge Jesse S. Furman granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint in its entirety, writing

“When reviewing a motion to dismiss…the Court must ‘accept all factual allegations in the complaint and draw all reasonable inferences in the plaintiff’s favor.’  The Court will not dismiss any claims…unless the plaintiff fails to plead sufficient facts to state a claim to relief that is factually plausible, that is, one that contains ‘factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.’  More specifically, a plaintiff must allege facts showing ‘more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.’  A complaint that offers only ‘labels and conclusions’ or ‘a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.’  Further, if a plaintiff has not ‘nudged [its] claims across the line from conceivable to plausible, [those claims] must be dismissed.  [citations omitted]”

Given such language, which accurately reflects the state of the law but also seems to be specifically aimed at the inadequacy of the complaint in this particular action, it probably isn’t surprising that the judge also chose to direct the Clerk of the Court

“to enter judgment in Defendants’ favor consistent with this Opinion and Order, and to close the case,”

while denying plaintiffs’ request to further amend the complaint (which had been amended before) in an effort to prevent dismissal, and observing that

“it is well established that a district court may deny leave to amend where amendment would be futile,”

a formal way of saying that the lawsuit is dead as the dodo and that, given the facts of the case, no amendment might realistically breathe new life into its corpse.

Plaintiffs’ counsel tried to put the dismissal in the best possible light, saying

“The judge did not approve or endorse Cooke’s conduct as being legal.  He did not clear them of the allegations of fraud, did not clear them of the allegations that they violated the American Fisheries Act.

“Instead the judge focused on a different issue on whether what was at stake is property under some U.S. law.”

And that is arguably true, although it is indisputably true that it was not the judge’s job to “clear” the defendants of the allegations made in plaintiffs’ lawsuit.  Instead, it is the plaintiffs’ job to prove that their allegations are true.

In that, they failed.

And while it’s not impossible that the plaintiffs will appeal, and if they do, it is not completely outside the realm of possibility that they will win on appeal and then go on to win a favorable judgment on the merits, right now it looks very much like Cooke and Omega have won this particular fight.

Cooke certainly seems to believe so, and has issued a statement which says that it is

“pleased that the court has dismissed this baseless lawsuit, which we have always maintained was without merit.  For over a decade, the individuals behind this lawsuit have repeatedly targeted menhaden harvesters and processors to undermine a sustainable and essential sector of the fishing industry.”

Alpha VesselCo, which operates under the name “Ocean Harvesters,” also issued a statement that said

“We are pleased that the court has dismissed this baseless lawsuit.  The decision underscores our commitment to full compliance with federal laws and regulations, and vindicates the integrity of our operations.  From the outset, we have been transparent with regulators.”

It all sounds good, but…

It’s hard to forget that these are the same people who, back in 2019, defied the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, and flatly announced that they were going to exceed the cap on reduction landings in the Chesapeake Bay, essentially daring the Management Board to do anything about it.

And it’s hard to forget that Cooke is the same company that mismanaged salmon pens in the State of Washington, to the point where a pen collapse allowed over a quarter-million non-native salmon to escape into that state’s waters, then tried to deny the magnitude of the problem.

So while I’ve frequently criticized activists’ attacks on what appears to be a sustainable menhaden fishery, largely because such attacks divert attention from real fisheries problems and generally undercut the credibility of those advocating for fisheries conservation, I also have little use for Cooke’s arrogance and seeming indifference to the need to properly manage and conserve coastal fisheries, as well as to maintain coastal ecosystems.

This may be one of those times when the phrase “A plague on both their houses” is the suitable response.

 

NEW ENGLAND GROUNDFISH SURVIVE CHALLENGE TO COUNCILS' CONSTITUTIONALITY

 

Last Thursday, I provided a fewpredictions on what the big fisheries issues of 2025 might be.  Just one day later, I was already behind the times, as one issue that I failed to consider cropped up as the first big fisheries news of the year:  A legal challenge to the constitutionality of the regional fishery management councils.

We’ve seen such challenges before, one originating in Mississippi and one in New Jersey, with both resulting in findings that some aspects of the regional fishery management councils and the process used to appoint council members was unconstitutional, but neither having a material impact on the councils or the federal fisheries management process. 

Despite the constitutional defects cited by the courts, neither lawsuit provided the plaintiffs the relief they were seeking, which involved invalidating one or more aspects of federal fishery management plans.

The latest court decision, handed down by the United States District Court for the District of Maine, followed the same now-established pattern.

The plaintiff in New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association v. Raimondo, like those in the earlier cases, alleged that members of regional fishery management councils were “principal officers” of the United States, which the Constitution requires be appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate.  Plaintiff argued that, because appointees to the New England Fishery Management Council did not follow such appointment process, their appointments were unconstitutional, and thus their actions, most particularly Framework Adjustment 65 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan, which substantially reduced the annual catch limits for haddock and some other stocks, were invalid.

The plaintiff also made the novel argument that Framework 65 was invalid because Samuel Rauch, the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs at the National Marine Fisheries Service, signed the Final Rule implementing such framework, as well as the memorandum that certified that such rule was consistent with all applicable laws.  In plaintiff’s view, because Mr. Rauch belonged to a category of “Senior Executive Service” employees who could not be removed from their jobs in the absence of good and statutorily-specified cause, his ability to approve such framework and other regulations was unconstitutional because it “impede[s] the President’s prerogative to remove ‘those who disobey his commands’ or to remove such persons for other reasons.

The trial court’s logic in deciding the case closely parallelled that of the Court of Appeals’ decision in Lofstad v. Raimondo, which saw plaintiffs make similar constitutional challenges to the regional fishery management councils’ appointments process.  Like the 3^rd Circuit in Lofstad, the trial court in the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association case found that regional fishery management council members were principal officers of the United States, because their three-year terms constitute a “continuing” position and because they exercise “significant authority” since, acting in concert, they have the ability to block certain federal actions, as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act gives such councils the power to block the Secretary of Commerce from repealing an existing fishery management plan, and to prevent the Secretary from adopting

“a provision establishing a limited access system, including any limited access privilege program, unless such system is first approved by a majority of the voting members, present and voting, of each appropriate Council,”

with the Secretary having no way to appeal or override a council’s decision to do so.

Given that finding, the District Court in Maine, like the 3^rd Circuit, determined that the appointment process used to fill regional fishery management council seats did not comply with the Constitution’s requirements.

And like the 3^rd Circuit, the District Court decided that the most appropriate remedy was to sever the unconstitutional provisions from the rest of Magnuson-Stevens, and to reject the plaintiff’s request to vacate Framework Adjustment 65 and enjoin its enforcement.

In taking that position, the District Court relied on a standard established by the United States Supreme Court in an earlier matter, whether

“the law’s ‘surviving provisions [are] capable of functioning independently,’ and second, if Congress would have passed it without its ‘invalid components’ in light of the law’s ‘text [and] historical context.’”

The District Court also cited a 1^st Circuit decision which found that

“Under the general rules concerning severability, the otherwise valid portion of a statute can stand if it is fully operative and there is no showing that the legislators would not have enacted the valid provisions independently,”

and stated that

“The Court finds this solution [to sever the offending provisions from the remainder of Magnuson-Stevens] comports with the Supreme Court’s directive to ‘use a scalpel rather than a bulldozer’ to cure constitutional defects.  Removing the ability of the Council to pocket veto the Secretary’s desired adoption of a limited access system or to repeal [a fishery management plan] does not interfere with the primary responsibility of the Councils as policy developers and advisors, nor does it reallocate the truly binding legal authority of the statute, issuing regulations, from the Secretary.  Moreover, in severing these limited provisions, the Court addresses both the Appointments Clause and the constitutional removals claims, as, without these provisions, the Council Members do not exercise any significant authority, and thus, do not constitute officers of the United States. This resolves the constitutional issues presented without invalidating an entire statutory scheme that has effectively governed the United States for decades or a regulation that did not involve either of the constitutional provisions identified in the case at bar.  [citation omitted]”

The claims regarding Samuel Rauch were more quickly dismissed, with the District Court noting that

“The Administrative Record unequivocally demonstrated that Assistant Administrator Coit [who was appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and is Mr. Rauch’s superior] expressly approved both the proposed an final versions of the Framework Adjustment 65 before Defendant Rauch signed either version for publication in the Federal Register.  Without exercising significant federal authority, Defendant Rauch is not subject to the constitutional strictures on appointment and removal, and thus the Plaintiff’s constitutional claim fails.  [citation omitted]”

The plaintiff tried to put the best possible face on the court’s decision, issuing a press release that began,

“A federal court gave hardworking fisherman a partial victory against rogue bureaucrats this week, declaring that a key regulatory body is unconstitutional in critical respects.”

And while that is technically true, as the court did find that the process used to appoint regional fishery management council members is unconstitutional, the press release later admitted that if plaintiffs scored any sort of victory, it was a very small one, saying

“…However, the court then ‘severed’ the override power, protecting the council and its suffocating regulations.

“’NEFSA is pleased that the court agreed there are constitutional problems with the council,’ said NEFSA CEO Jerry Leeman.  ‘But this is only a partial victory.  The court rewrote the statute to salvage the regulations that are driving fishermen from the water and decimating our coastal communities.  NEFSA is carefully considering an appeal.’”

It’s probably notable that plaintiffs admit that they are “carefully considering” the possibility of appeal from the district court’s decision, and that care is justified, for the 3^rd Circuit’s decision in Lofstad was well-reasoned, was heavily cited in the Maine district court’s decision, and is very likely to have a significant influence on the 1^st Circuit tribunal should an appeal be taken.

In the end, the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association won a mere token victory, which saw two seldom-used provisions of Magnuson-Stevens invalidated, but did not change the way council members are appointed and did nothing to prevent the implementation of Framework Adjustment 65.  So far, no other challenge to the appointment process has done any better.

Although we will probably see more such challenges in the future, we can hope and can probably expect that none will attain greater success, and that the fishery management structure envisioned when the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 will continue to weather such attacks.  Although in light of the anti-regulatory agency sentiment that seems so popular these days, we might want to start asking ourselves what will have to be done should any of the attacks be improbably successful.

 

FISHERIES 2025--IT'S NOT LOOKING GOOD

 

This is going to be a very hard post to write.

Each year, I try to provide an overview of what the major fisheries debates of the upcoming year will look like.  Prediction is always a difficult business; usually I get more right than wrong, but inevitably I either focus on an issue that ends up falling off the radar, miss an issue that ends up turning hot, or do a little of both. 

My 2024 predictions probably turned out better than most.  In the case of striped bass, I noted the possibility that the Management Board wouldn’t initiate action to reduce landings in the 2025 season if the probability of rebuilding wasn’t too much below 50 percent, although if that happened, I didn’t think that they’d initiate an addendum, either.  I also correctly called the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s decision to move forward with a scoping document that would consider special regulations for the for-hire industry, anglers’ rights groups using the recently-discovered errors in the Marine Recreational Information Program to justify undercutting the federal fisheries management system,  greater focus on bycatch in at least some fisheries, and the controversies caused by new stock assessments for black sea bass and Gulf of Mexico red snapper.

To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t miss any of the big issues, nor did I predict any upcoming disputes that never materialized.

In retrospect, predicting 2024 events was fairly easy, while predicting what will happen in 2025 is extremely difficult, and in some respects, nearly borders on the impossible.  That’s not because 2025 won’t see its share of fisheries fights—if anything, I think we’ll see more than we typically do—but because I don’t think that I have seen a year with so much potential for things to go wrong in the past quarter-century.

A lot of those things can’t even be readily identified at this point, but result from a changing political environment in Washington and what seems to be a changing, more conservation-averse attitude that is emerging in some fisheries management bodies.  So most of my 2025 predictions will be focused on broader political and management trends, although one species-specific issue must be addressed.

Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass

At least, that’s how I expect the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will title the addendum initiated at the December 16, 2024 meeting of the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board. 

It’s too early to know what the draft Addendum III will look like, and we may not know until the August Management Board meeting, although we should have a pretty good idea before then.  The original motion to initiate the addendum read

to initiate an addendum to support striped bass rebuilding by 2029 in consideration of 2024 recreational and commercial mortality while balancing socioeconomic impacts.  Options should include, if needed, a range of overall reductions, consideration of rec vs comm contributions to the reductions, rec season and size changes taking into account regional variability of availability, and no harvest vs no target closures.  Final action shall be taken by the Summer 2025 meeting to be in place for the 2026 rec and comm fisheries,

although it was later amended to push the final action back to October.

At best, the addendum may contain some modest measures intended to make it more likely that the spawning stock biomass will be fully rebuilt by 2029.  Based on the votes at the December 16 meeting, any such measures will probably be focused on the recreational fishery, while leaving the commercial fishery largely untouched, although in all honesty, I’d be surprised if Addendum III any landings reductions at all.

That’s why it’s not the “at best,” but the at worst that we need to worry about.

At the December 16 meeting, Michael Luisi, a Maryland fisheries manager, complained that since the early 2000s, efforts to reduce fishing mortality “added complexity” to the recreational regulations, and that the addendum process would provide an opportunity to use “things learned” to draft management measures, and suggested that such measures might be more “creative.”

Those comments suggest an intent to go beyond the simple “range of overall reductions, consideration of rec vs comm contributions to the reductions, rec season and size changes taking into account regional variability of availability, and no harvest vs no target closures” specified in the motion passed by the Management Board.  

He might will be considering efforts to undo provisions of Addendum II to the management plan, adopted last January, which placed additional restrictions on Maryland fishermen and were vigorously opposed by Luisi.  

He might be contemplating a provision giving special privileges to fishermen aboard for-hire vessels, which would not be enjoyed by the great majority of striped bass fishermen; a similar provision that was shot down during the Addendum II debate.  

He might even be considering revisiting issues that were rejected during the debate over Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which the Management Board adopted in 2022—and which embraced a number of measures that dated back to the early 2000s and so contributed to the “complexity” that Luisi railed against.

We won't find out for a while, but whatever the final product looks like, it’s probably far more likely to harm rather than help the long-term health of the bass population

The National Marine Fisheries Service

I was excited when Janet Coit, who did an exemplary job in her decade as director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, was named the head of the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2021. 

Unfortunately, NMFS’ fisheries management record during the Biden administration was far less notable.  That was particularly true for NMFS' Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, which over the past few years has seemed more interested in making fishermen happy than in properly conserving and managing the region’s fish stocks.  

That trend was particularly notable in efforts to weaken recreational fisheries management, where the so-called “Harvest Control Rule” or “Percent Change Approach” allows anglers to chronically exceed the recreational harvest limit, and has led to the overall annual catch limit and acceptable biological catch being exceeded as well, generally in the case of species temporarily enjoying high levels of spawning stock biomass.

However, regardless of what fishery management approach NMFS might choose to use, it’s not unreasonable to expect the agency to actually abide by rules that it itself adopts, and not ignore the dictates of its preferred management system.  That has not been the case in the Greater Atlantic region, particularly with respect to black sea bass in the mid-Atlantic, where NMFS has maintained the status quo in five of the six years since 2019, even though its own management approaches called for recreational, and occasionally commercial, landings reductions in each of those years.

The most egregious failures to follow its own management policies occurred over the last two years, first in 2023, when the regional office failed to impose the 10 percent reduction in recreational landings called for by the Percent Change Approach, supposedly because managers wanted to wait for an updated stock assessment, which was overdue.  But when the stock assessment that managers were supposedly waiting for was released in 2024, and called for a 20 percent reduction in the recreational and commercial landings, NMFS chose to ignore the assessment's findings and the resultant scientific advice, and came up with what can best be described as “very creative” interpretations of the relevant provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to justify its actions.

It appears that NMFS’ victory in a recent legal action challenging the Percent Change Approach served to make the regional office, and perhaps NMFS as a whole, more willing to see how far it can push the letter and the spirit of Magnuson-Stevens.

And if NMFS has taken such positions under the current administration, we can only fear what it will choose to do under an administration that, its first time around, overturned an ASMFC finding that New Jersey was out of compliance with summer flounder regulations, reopened the Gulf of Mexico’s recreational red snapper fishery even though such action would lead to overfishing, overturned the ban on commercial fishing in the New England Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, abolished time and area closures intended to protect giant bluefin tuna from longline bycatch and discard mortality, and issued an executive order intended to

“identify and remove unnecessary regulatory barriers restricting American fishermen,”

required regional fishery management councils to produce

“a prioritized list of recommended actions to reduce burdens on domestic fishing and increase production,”

and, according to NMFS, was meant to encourage

“regulatory reform to maximize commercial fishing.”

Perhaps nothing underlines the potential threat that the incoming administration poses to healthy fisheries and good fisheries management as the fact that the New Bedford commercial fishing community—the very same folks who spawned the outlaw “Codfather” Carlos Rafael and turned a blind eye to his multi-million dollar criminal enterprise, is eagerly awaiting its return.

A conservation-averse Congress

The United States government is structured in a way intended to maintain a beneficial tension between the three branches of government, so that when one oversteps, the others will bring it back into line.  Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the incoming Congress will be any more protective of marine fish stocks than the incoming administration.  Instead, we can expect to see an activist, conservation-averse Congress shutting down important conservation initiatives, interfering in the work of professional fisheries managers, and perhaps even threatening core provisions of Magnuson-Stevens.

A look at the few conservation victories of 2024 show how that would work.

In last Sunday’s edition of One Angler’s Voyage, I hailed the removal of the Klamath River dams, and the almost immediate return of the first few chinook salmon, as the premier fisheries conservation victory of the year.  Not long ago, it was hoped that the Klamath River success, which marked the largest dam removal project in the nation’s history, would be followed by an even bigger project—the removal of the four downstream dams on Idaho’s Snake River, which would open up hundreds of miles of spawning grounds for salmon that had already run the length of Washington State to reach the Idaho border.

In September 2023, the effort took a big step forward after the Biden administration declared a policy

“to carry out the requirement of the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act…to operate, manage, and regulate the [Columbia River System] to adequately protect, mitigate, and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the Federal Dams in the Basin in a manner that provides equitable treatment for fish and wildlife with the other purposes for which the Federal dams are managed and operated,”

and then, two months later, announced an agreement settling a lawsuit brought by multiple native Tribes, which would provide $1 billion in funding for wild fish restoration in the Pacific Northwest, which was widely viewed as funding that would, at least in part, be used for dam removal.

But some members of the House of Representatives, closely tied to agricultural, energy, and other business interests in the Pacific Northwest, quickly condemned the administration’s actions, and introduced nine bills to prevent the removal of the Snake River dams.  While such bills never passed either house of Congress, should dam removal move closer to reality in 2025, it is a virtual certainty that such bills would be reintroduced, pass the House, and very possibly make it through the Senate as well.

It is pretty safe to say that, with the possible exception of some small-scale dam removals on the East Coast, where no major industry advocates stand in the way, dam removal efforts are dead for the next two years and, because any bills that make it through Congress still have to avoid a presidential veto, are probably dead until at least 2029.

And as a result of those dam removal efforts dying, untold numbers of diadromous fish, on every coast of the United States, will never have the opportunity to live.

Last Sunday’s post also heralded NMFS’ decision not to contest a lawsuit challenging its failure to address recreational overfishing in the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, and the agency’s agreement to have a final regulation addressing such overfishing in place by June 6.  Such action would better ensure that the stock would rebuild on time, and turn some—perhaps even a substantial proportion—of anglers’ dead discards of red snapper into landings.

However, in the fisheries management world, things rarely work out that smoothly.  Thus, in response to NMFS’ efforts to solve the problem, 23 members of the House of Representatives, undoubtedly spurred on by the recreational fishing industry, are asking the agency to renege on its agreement and take no meaningful action to end anglers’ overfishing.  While it’s not clear what the court would say should NMFS reverse its position and refuse honor its agreement, it is probably likely that, if the agency doesn’t go back on its word, someone will introduce a bill to negate any solution that NMFS may come up with.

And in this Congress, there’s a very good chance that such a bill would pass.

For in many ways, this is the Congress that the recreational fishing industry has been waiting for.  Although the margins between majority and minority parties remain razor-thin, and despite the fact that we’re likely to see a Senate tied up with controversial agency nominations and a House bare-majority taking a while trying to figure out who controls the most clowns in that particular circus, eventually they’ll probably get around to the business of drafting, debating, and probably even passing a few bills.

And when that time comes, the angling industry, as represented by the American Sportfishing Association, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, the Coastal Conservation Association, and others of that ilk, all pulled together under the umbrella of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, has invested enough time and donations in influential, largely southern, Republican legislators that they’re going to be able to call a lot of the shots.

Federal fisheries in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico will probably suffer from the greatest level of Congressional interference, but we should also expect damage on a far wider scale, including efforts to cripple the Marine Recreational Information Program, turn responsibility for some federally-manages species over to more politically-influenced state agencies, and very possibly weaken key provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

That all might be good for business, at least in the short-term, but it certainly doesn’t promote the long-term goal of maintaining healthy and sustainable stocks of fish.

Which is why 2025 is likely to be a very bad year for fisheries conservation.

It won’t be a time for bold new initiatives to conserve and restore depleted fish stocks.  It won’t be a time for making positive changes to the fishery management system, at least not on the regional or federal levels.

It will be a time for hanging on tight to what we have, and fighting as hard as we can against anyone who tries to take it away.

It will be a time of losses.

But while some loss is inevitable, with enough work, loss can be controlled.