ACCIDENTAL REEFS

 

There isn’t much hard bottom in the mid-Atlantic Bight.  According to one study of the habitat requirements of black sea bass,

“The mid-Atlantic Bight stretches from North Carolina to Massachusetts…The nearshore continental shelf is composed primarily of unconsolidated sediments consisting of sand, silt, shells, and small gravels.  Bedforms consist mainly of sand waves, small hills, and gullies created by ancient riverbeds, with rare outcroppings of rock, consolidated sand, and clay.”

That doesn’t leave much to attract and hold structure-oriented fish such as black sea bass, nor to help fishermen find concentrations of such species.  As a result, fishermen tend to focus on various forms of man-made structure.

For decades, many of the states have conducted artificial reef programs, where they sink various items in hopes of creating structure that will hold sessile life forms such as mussels and sea anemones, which in turn create habitat used by crabs, other crustaceans, and bait fish, which then attract and hold recreationally important food and sport fish.

Years ago, many such reefs were created by filling bundles of tires with cement and dropping them in designated areas, or dumping chunks of broken up concrete or unwanted steel from demolished buildings, but that didn’t work all that well, with the former often breaking up and washing ashore during storms and the latter getting covered over with shifting sand and losing its utility.

But after a while, the states began to understand what they needed to do, and started sinking unwanted steel vessels of various sorts (after first scrubbing out any oil, grease, or other potential pollutants), surplus armored military vehicles, train cars, pieces of demolished bridges, and even “reef balls” and other items purpose-built to create artificial reefs.

There is no question that fishermen love artificial reefs, as they attract and concentrate fish and make them easier to find and catch.  Whether the artificial reefs also benefit the fish by creating additional habitat, particularly in regions where hard-bottom habitat is scarce, is a very different question, and one that remains open for debate.  As one scientific paper noted,

“Productivity in real terms in relation to artificial reef deployment relies on the assumption that artificial reefs provide additional critical habitat which increases the environmental carrying capacity and thereby the abundance and biomass of reef biota.  The reef potentially provides substrata for benthic fauna and, thereby, additional food and increased feeding efficiency; shelter from predation or tidal currents; a recruitment habitat for individuals that would otherwise be lost from the population; a reduction of harvesting pressure on natural reefs.  It can also serve to be purely an aggregating device, whereby the behavioral preferences of fish result in aggregation on and around artificial reefs, without any increase in biomass.  [citations omitted]”

The answer to that question may depend on the species of fish involved, the availability of suitable alternative habitat, the design of the reef itself, and other factors.  However, experts believe that, at least in some cases, artificial reefs do provide benefits such as additional spawning habitat.

Then, there are the unintentionally created artificial reefs, which take the form of shipwrecks.  Such wrecks abound off some areas, which were known for treacherous navigation conditions—particularly during the years before electronic navigation aids became commonplace—or were places where heavy shipping traffic created a target-rich environment for German U-boats during the Second, and to a much lesser extent, the First, World War.  The approaches to New York Harbor, ranging from eastern Long Island to southern New Jersey, earned the name “Wreck Valley” from scuba divers, for the hundreds of wrecks lining the bottom.

The fish are attracted to wrecks as much as, or more than, they are attracted to intentionally-created artificial reefs.

And then there are the “accidental” reefs—man-made structures that were intended for other purposes, but ended up attracting a plethora of fish, as well.  The oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are a well-known example, and need no further discussion here.  Instead, I’ll concentrate on a relatively new phenomenon, the attraction that recently-constructed wind farms hold for various species of fish.

Wind farm development off the East Coast of the United States has been controversial, for multiple reasons.  Real estate and resort interests consider them eyesores.  They can block commercial fishermen from using some gear types in traditional fishing grounds.  There have been allegations, so far completely unsupported by any kind of biological evidence, that they lead to cetacean deaths.  And they have become a sort of political litmus test, damned at one end of the political spectrum and praised at the other.

There has been concern that wind farms might harm fishing, with some real-world evidence that they may have negative impacts on fishing efforts during the construction process, although not once the structures have been built.

Otherwise, wind farms seem to have had little to no adverse impact on East Coast fish populations, although they are new enough that not too much post-construction research has been concluded and published.

One study that has been published, “Fish distribution in three dimensions around the Block Island Wind Farm as observed with conventional and volumetric echosounders,” which appeared in the October 31, 2023 issue of Marine and Coastal Fisheries, seemed to suggest that wind farm structures have about the same impact on fish as do intentionally created artificial reefs.  That article concluded,

“We observed enhanced levels of fish abundance within 200m of wind turbined at the [Block Island Wind Farm] during a 4-day survey in August 2023.  However, these higher levels were similar to abundance further away (i.e., hundreds to thousands of meters).  These observations suggest that the turbines are acting as aggregators at scales of tens of meters but that the effect tends to be limited at broader scales.  There was an indication that the turbines influenced (1) vertical distribution, with the acoustic center of mass being deeper within proximity to turbines, and (2) aggregative behavior, with the fish being more loosely distributed within proximity to turbines.  Our survey was conducted five years after completion of the BIWF, and our results may be indicative of established wind areas, where the fauna may have adapted to the presence of the turbines.  However, the BIWF consists of only 5 turbines, so it may not be large enough to affect broadscale distribution or population level changes.  In addition, other features of the habitat, such as wrecks, rocky reefs, or physical and biological oceanographic attributes that we did not measure, could affect distributions independently of the BIWF.”

Another, slightly earlier paper, “Demersal fish and invertebrate catches relative to construction and operation of North America’s first offshore wind farm,” published in the March 29, 2022 issue of the ICES Journal of Marine Science, which reported the findings of a more elaborately structured and longer-term trawl survey, had similar findings.

“Demersal fish and invertebrate [catch per unit effort] varied spatially between the [area of potential effect of the wind farm] and two reference areas and temporally between baseline [prior to wind farm operation] and operation time periods; however interactions indicating reduced CPUE at the [area of potential effect] were not apparent.  The CPUE of several fish species were higher near the wind farm during the operation time period relative to the reference areas, providing evidence for an artificial reef effect.  For example, black sea bass CPUEs were statistically higher during the operation period near the wind farm relative to a reference area, reflecting the structure-oriented behavior of this species.  Black sea bass were observed near the BIWF turbine foundations in diver-based photographic transects, are targeted near the turbine foundations by recreational fishermen, and increased nearly ten-fold in CPUE in trawls conducted at the [area of potential effect] over the reference areas in the first two years of wind farm operation…Atlantic cod CPUE also were higher near the wind farm after turbine installation.  Cod are targeted by recreational fishermen at BIWF, as they use underwater structure as refuge and foraging habitat…  [references omitted]”

The same study found that the wind farm seemed to have no impact, positive or negative, on Atlantic herring, scup, or butterfish, might have had a negative impact on two species of skate, little skate and winter skate, although that was far from certain, and might have had a positive impact on the abundance of spiny dogfish, although that, too, was not completely clear.

Anecdotal evidence regarding the impact of wind farms on fish has been generally positive.  One study, “Anglers’ support for an offshore wind farm:  Fishing effects or clean energy symbolism,” published in the May 2023 issue of Marine Policy, found that

“a quantitative survey of 199 anglers from Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts moderate support for the [Block Island] wind farm.  Experience fishing at the wind farm is associated with more positive beliefs regarding the development’s effects on catch-related aspects of fishing…”

While I’ve never fished the Block Island wind farm, Rhode Island anglers that I’ve spoken with have only good things to say about fishing around the site, and at least one well-regarded Montauk party boat regularly makes the long trip to the wind farm, rather than stay in local waters, when seeking black sea bass and big fluke, so I have to believe that the wind farm has a positive impact on fishing.

But what I find truly remarkable is how quickly fish will respond to the turbine installation.  Last year, construction began on a big wind farm located roughly south of Long Island’s Jones Inlet.  It only took about two weeks for black sea bass to move onto the structures, and maybe a month or so before local party boats began fishing within the wind farm, finding the area more productive than the scattered wrecks and artificial reefs that they had been fishing on before.

So it’s pretty clear that the wind farms really have turned into extensive, accidental artificial reefs that can hold real benefits for anglers.

Unfortunately, it appears that the current administration is doing all it can to discourage further wind farm development, and given how the United States has now tried to weasel out of signed agreements to develop new projects and reneged on licenses previously issued, it’s not at all clear that any corporation will trust the U.S. enough to enter into new agreements, even when this administration is gone.

But those anglers who live in areas with access to existing projects will still be able to enjoy what promise to be productive new fishing grounds well into the foreseeable future.

 

 

 

 

SENSIBLE TALK ABOUT SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER

 

There are a lot of words that one might used to describe the current debate over South Atlantic red snapper, but “moderate” wouldn’t be the first that comes to mind.

Jeff Angers, the president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, a umbrella group representing the fishing tackle and boating industries, wrote that

“red snapper has been managed by federal overlord bureaucrats.”

A feature article in the online publication Water World Wire said that

“For recreational anglers in the South Atlantic, red snapper management has long felt disconnected from reality.”

And another article, this one in the online publication Wired2Fish, told readers that

“offshore anglers in the South Atlantic have been completely handcuffed from targeting and keeping red snapper for years.”

That’s somewhat provocative language, and all three articles, while critical of federal red snapper management, were somewhat shy on all the details, particularly those that don’t necessarily support their underlying premise.

Of course, it’s hard to blame writers from using somewhat inflammatory language when public officials are even worse.  For example, the executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission wrote to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to support a scheme to do an end run around the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, so that Florida—and other South Atlantic—anglers could exceed the red snapper annual catch limit with complete impunity.  In his letter, he used language like

“we want to reinforce our appreciation for your unswerving commitment to rein in bureaucracy and return the power of fisheries managers to the states where it belongs…based on precedent, career NOAA staff will inevitably create a bureaucratic blockade at the behest of status-quo defending adversarial interests to prevent Florida’s EFP from going into effect in May 2026…

“Based on Florida’s experience in seeking assignment of state management authority in the Gulf of America, much of NOAA’s response appears to potentially delay action under the guise of ‘data’ collection—the same tactics that led Congress to force NOAA to accept and approve state EFPs in the Gulf of America given the weaponization of NOAA under President Obama…  [emphasis in original]”

It was a style that combined unhinged MAGA phrasing with the bold print and underlines of a schoolgirl writing her bestie a note about her latest crush.  Yet it was used in what was supposed to be professional correspondence.

And like an adolescent schoolgirl throwing a hissy fit when she didn’t get her own way, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission responded to a federal judge issuing a temporary injunction prohibiting anglers in Florida and the other South Atlantic states from fishing for red snapper pursuant to the exempted fishing permits by issuing a petulant statement saying that

“a rogue federal judge sided with activists”

by doing his job and interpreting the law to the best of his ability.

Of course, that language might be more understandable when one considers the language used by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with respect to the court’s order:

“How disrespectful is it to rule when people have already made plans to come down and to do this?...I just think that it’s really disrespectful to pull the rug out from under them, especially when there’s so many fish in the sea…

“You know who brought the charge were the commercial fishermen.  They don’t want recreational anglers to be able to go out and fish.  They want it all for themselves.”

Apparently, DeSantis never considered that what was really disrespectful was pressuring NOAA Fisheries to issue the exempted fisheries permits quickly, so the season could open for Memorial Day weekend, knowing that there was a very good chance that issuing such permits was very probably illegal and that various organizations were almost certain to sue. 

That what was really disrespectful was leading Florida anglers and charter boats to believe that the season was going to open on Memorial Day weekend, knowing that the season would certainly be challenged, and then calling the judge “disrespectful” for doing his job.

But that’s the sort of language that has characterized the South Atlantic red snapper debate, and there is little reason to believe that is going to change.

Thus, it was refreshing to have a post on the subject come across my Facebook feed, that actually try to explain both sides of the issue in a rational manner.  It was written by someone named Justin Hawkins who, like me, regularly comments on fisheries issues.  In his initial post on the topic, Hawkins observed,

“…For years, recreational fishermen have argued that federal regulations dramatically underestimate the number of red snapper swimming offshore.  Many charter captains report seeing more fish than ever, describing reefs covered in red snapper so thick that targeting other species can be difficult…

“…NOAA Fisheries approved experimental, state-managed recreational seasons through a series of exempted fishing permits (EFPs).  The permits would have allowed Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina to manage longer recreational seasons while gathering new harvest data…

“For anglers, it felt like a long-overdue victory…

“Commercial fishing organizations challenged the permits in federal court, arguing that the expanded seasons could lead to unsustainable harvests.  Conservation organizations, including Ocean Conservancy and Earthjustice, joined the fight, warning that the expanded seasons could violate federal fisheries law and jeopardize decades of rebuilding efforts.

“The legal challenge centered on a fundamental question:

“How many red snapper can anglers catch before the stock begins declining again?

“Conservation groups argue that the answer is far fewer than many fishermen believe.”

And that is the South Atlantic red snapper fight in a nutshell, stripped of the hyperbole, stripped of the animus, stripped of the political posturing.  Anglers are seeing a lot of red snapper, and think that current management measures are too strict.  Conservation groups, along with the commercial fishermen who brought the action, think that liberalizing the regulations, without supporting data, could do real harm to the red snapper stock.

The commercial fishermen, the conservation groups, and the anglers (but not necessarily the industry-connected organizations that purport to represent them) are all acting in good faith, based on what they believe the situation to be.  The fact that they disagree is no justification for the sort of language and name calling that is coming—one might notice—largely from politicians and folks with a pecuniary iron in the fire.

As Hawkins correctly notes,

“The result is a fishery now trapped between competing visions of conservation, economics, and access.

“And neither side appears willing to back down.”

If that was all Hawkins wrote, it would have been a worthwhile piece that could allow people, who weren’t familiar with all the details of the issue, to understand what is going on.  But he wrote one more, follow-up comment, in which he did a pretty good job of setting out the need for effective fisheries management, and the obstacles that stand in its way. 

He notes that

“Everyone agrees on one thing.

“Healthy fish populations require responsible management.

“Yet one of the most common complaints heard from recreational anglers and charter captains today has little to do with conservation goals themselves.  Instead, it centers on how those goals are implemented.

“When state and federal regulators fail to align, fishermen often find themselves dealing with confusion, uncertainty, and economic hardship.”

He then raises six issues that he feels should be considered as managers try to remedy the problem.  I agree with some, and disagree with others.  But one point he makes is unquestionably true:

“The debate is often portrayed as a conflict between conservation and fishing opportunity.

“In reality, most fishermen support sustainable fisheries management.

“What they want is consistency.

“They want regulations that are scientifically justified, clearly communicated, and implemented in a way that allows businesses and anglers to plan ahead.

“Conservation objectives and public access are not mutually exclusive.”

Applying those thoughts to the South Atlantic red snapper debate, it becomes obvious that much of the problem, much of the controversy, and much of the hardship that occurred in the last two months could have been avoided had state politicians and fisheries managers not pressured NOAA Fisheries to issue the EFPs quickly, and had NOAA Fisheries not acted so hastily in issuing the EFPs.

If NOAA Fisheries had taken the time to observe its own regulations—for example, if it had .required the states to estimate the number of red snapper that would be landed under the EFPs and had not allowed the states to refuse to provide such information—and if NOAA Fisheries had responded in good faith to stakeholder concerns about overfishing, it is likely that the EFPs would not have been issued as soon as they were.  There is a very good chance tht they wouldn’t have been issued at all, since the states’ estimates of red snapper landings, and NOAA Fisheries response to the stakeholder concerns, would almost certainly have indicated that overfishing would occur, and that issuing the EFPs would thus be illegal.

Instead, NOAA Fisheries’ actions created false expectations among anglers, charter boat captains, and the rest of the recreational fishing community, which expectations were shattered when the judge decided that the EFPs were not validly issued.

The situation was made worse by the bombastic language used by both industry advocates and state politicians, which might have played on anglers’ emotions, but conveyed few of the critical facts that led to the temporary injunction.

Thus, it was good to know that Justin Hawkins, at least, could describe the conflict in moderate language, and argue for a solution that would benefit all concerned. 

I doubt that the people who make the decisions will listen, but it was good to read, even so.

FISHERIES ADVOCACY: IF YOU HAVE TO DISTORT THE TRUTH...

 

Forage fish—the small, low trophic level fish and, in some cases, crustaceans and cephalopods—that serve as food for larger predators, are a critical part of marine ecosystems.  Unfortunately, many important forage fish, including Atlantic and Gulf menhaden, Atlantic herring, and Atlantic mackerel, have become the targets of high-volume, low-value fisheries that remove too many fish from the water, depleting forage fish populations and having potentially negative impacts on marine predators and recreational and commercial fisheries.

Other forage fish, such as alewives and blueback herring (collectively, “river herring”), American shad, and hickory shad, are killed as bycatch in other fisheries, collateral damage in mid-water trawls and other fisheries directed at other forage fish species.

While a few biologists have argued that forage fish fisheries create no threat to predator populations, most notably Dr. Ray Hilborn, et al., whose 2017 paper, “When does fishing forage species affect their predators?” argued that natural variations in forage fish populations have much more impact on forage fish abundance than do directed fisheries, the consensus is that directed forage fish fisheries need to be carefully managed, in order to prevent harm to marine predators.

Thus, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden, adopted in 2017, established the use of “ecosystem” reference points, rather than the traditional single-species reference points, to determine the health of the menhaden stock, acknowledging the importance of the menhaden’s role as a forage species.

In the same vein, also in 2017, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council adopted its Unmanaged Forage Omnibus Amendment, which, according to the Council,

“prohibits the development of new and expansion of existing directed commercial fisheries on unmanaged forage species in mid-Atlantic federal waters until the Council has had an adequate opportunity to assess the scientific information relating to any new or expanded directed fisheries and consider potential impacts to existing fisheries, fishing communities, and the marine ecosystems.”

The Omnibus Amendment was intended to protect important forage fish that don’t have the “celebrity” status of menhaden or river herring, forage fish that most people don’t think about, and many people haven’t even heard of, such as argentines, greeneyes, halfbeaks, lanternfish, pearlsides, sand lances (“sand eels”), cusk-eels, Atlantic saury, krill, etc.

Because forage fish are unquestionably important, it didn’t come as a particular surprise when I learned of the formation of a new organization calling itself “The Forage Fish Campaign.”  According to its web page,

“The Forage Fish Campaign is a united coalition of captains, business owners, recreational anglers, and small-boat commercial fishermen.

“We’re concerned about the health of our coastal communities—and we’re fighting back.

“We’re engaging at the local, state, and federal levels to address the root of the problem:  not our hard-working Americans—but industrial exploitation of our shared resources.”

That all sounds fine.  There is a list of folks who have signed up as members, some of whom I know, many of whom I don’t.  But I tend to get very nervous when I hear the word “campaign,” and here’s why:  I believe that fisheries management ought to be based on the best available data.  Sometimes that data isn’t available, and in such case, it’s entirely appropriate to worst-case the uncertainties, and take a more precautionary approach, but to the extent that the data is there, it ought to drive the decisions.

But that’s not exactly how “campaigns” function, because data and statistics are boring.  Instead, campaigns are all about public relations, about catching the public’s attention, appealing to their emotions in an attempt to gain their support.  And often, when people do that, the truth can be sacrificed for a more appealing story line.

And that’s what seems to have happened here.

I had heard of The Forage Fish Campaign, but wasn’t paying too much attention to it, when one of its videos happened to come across my Facebook feed.  I let it play with the sound off, and noticed some graphics that just didn’t ring true.  Like the proclamation, etched in stark black and white, that

“OVERHARVESTING OF FORAGE SPECIES HAS COLLAPSED COMMERCIAL FISHERIES COAST-WIDE”

Really?  Which fisheries would those be?  And what data did they have to support that claim of collapse?

So, the next time, I watched the video with the sound on, and heard the narrator, a New York charter boat captain and commercial fisherman, say,

“Used to go out in the fall, from deep in the heart of Raritan Bay, OK, towards Keyport, all the ways to Fire Island, there was bunker.  Like 30 miles of bunker.  Where are they today?  I think it’s pretty obvious to say that the lion’s share of the bunker are being harvested by the bunker boats.  The scale of their operation is enormous.  The impact they’ve had is unbelievable.  You could just talk to any fisherman, what’ll they say: “Oh, fishin’s terrible.  Oh, there’s no bait.  No bait!”

That might sound heartfelt, and some might even find it convincing, but it is not exactly the sort of hard science that should be underlying fisheries management decisions, yet when paired with video of a menhaden reduction boat setting nets, it probably is effective “campaign” material. 

(It’s interesting to note that the same fisherman posted, independently and on his own Facebook page, a photo of himself shaking President Trump’s hand, overlaid with the text

“What Happened to the bunker executive order you promised me?”

which was introduced with the legend,

“At your request you asked me to meet you at your golf course.  You assured me come Monday morning you would have in place an Executive Order to remedy the slaughter unchecked.  Well its been quite sometime Sir with all due respect we need your help.  Now I understand you have a lot on your plate…

“Let’s revisit this.  Lunch is on me.”

So it’s clear that, even outside The Forage Fish Campaign, this particular fisherman is really trying to shut down the menhaden reduction fishery.)

But getting back to the Campaign, the rest of the video was a bit more disturbing than the start.

After all, the beginning merely reflected one fisherman’s honest belief that the menhaden reduction fishery had a negative impact on the quality of fishing in his region.  But some of the rest seemed misleading, although whether through intent or mere negligence and sloppy research isn’t clear.

The problems come in the form of another graphic, this one showing a pair of mid-water trawlers pulling a net.  Superimposed over the image of the net are the images of seven species of forage fish, all but menhaden bearing a designation of either “depleted” or “overfished”—which is almost true, although describing Atlantic mackerel as “overfished” is incorrect; the stock is still rebuilding, but the population has already risen above the threshold that denotes an overfished stock.

The biggest problems arise on the right side of the screen, where the images of 16 fish species, all now or formerly important to the commercial and/or recreational fishery, are shown, also overprinted with “depleted” and “overfished” designations, below the image of the two pair trawlers.  The narrator says,

“A net is indiscriminate, so if they eliminate the baitfish from either entering the bay or on our fishing grounds, the fish aren’t going to come in.  They have nothing to eat.”

The implication of the graphic and narration, when heard/seen in concert, is that a lack of baitfish caused the various targeted food and recreational species to become overfished, even though that was never explicitly stated. 

In fact, there is no documented, statistical connection between a shortage of forage fish and the decline of any of the species listed on the graphic.  Most of the listed species, in fact, are themselves victims of overharvest.

Some of them don’t even eat fish on a regular basis, making them pretty immune to a forage fish shortage, even if one occurred.

But they’re listed on the graphic anyway.

Consider the two sturgeons.  The National Marine Fisheries Service tells us that

“Atlantic sturgeon were once found in great abundance, but their populations have declined greatly due to overharvesting and habitat loss.  Atlantic sturgeon were prized for their eggs, which were valued as high-quality caviar.  During the late 1800s, people flocked to the eastern United States in search of caviar riches from the sturgeon fishery, known as the ‘Black Gold Rush.’  By the beginning of the 1900s, sturgeon populations had declined drastically…  [emphasis added]”

There is no reason to believe that a decline in forage fish abundance contributed to the Atlantic sturgeon’s decline at all—not to mention that pair trawlers and menhaden reduction boats didn’t even exist at the start of the 20^th century, when the Atlantic sturgeon population had already crashed. 

NMFS also tells us that

“historical landings records differentiate between Atlantic sturgeon and the smaller shortnose sturgeon,”

making it likely that the reasons behind the shortnose sturgeon’s demise were similar to those leading to the Atlantic sturgeon’s decline. 

And anyway,

“Atlantic sturgeon are bottom feeders.  They typically consume invertebrates such as crustaceans, worms, and mollusks, and bottom-dwelling fish, such as sand lance,”

none of which are targeted by mid-water trawls.  Shortnose sturgeon feed almost entirely on in vertebrates.

So it’s pretty misleading to include either species in a video talking about mid-water trawls and forage fish depletion.

And then there’s the “white flounder,” which seems to be a case of a public relations typo, because despite doing a bit of research, I couldn’t come up with any creature bearing that name; what the graphic depicts appears to be a winter flounder, which is not overfished, although it does have severe recruitment issues.  Winter flounder also have little association with forage fish, as they are small fish themselves, and their mouths are so tiny, optimized for feeding on worms, tiny shrimp, and the like, that it would be difficult to fit the tip of an adult’s pinky finger between a fish’s forced-open lips.

Summer flounder, of “fluke,” aren’t overfished either.  The last stock assessment found spawning stock biomass at 83% of target, well above the threshold denoting an overfished stock.  Summer flounder are aggressive fish-eaters, but their lower abundance is largely attributable to more than a decade of below-average recruitment, although slightly above-average recruitment in 2023 and 2024 may bode well for the future.  There is no indication that a shortage of forage is impacting the population.

Thus, including either flounder in the video is also misleading.

So is including white marlin, blue marlin, dusky, and shortfin mako sharks.  All of them are badly overfished, but a shortage of forage fish have nothing to do with that.  Atlantic blue marlin are victims of pelagic longlines, as well as small-scale recreational and commercial fisheries.  White marlin are also victims of pelagic longline bycatch, as are dusky sharks and shortfin makos.  All are direct victims of fishing activities, not indirect victims of forage depletion.

Similarly, sandbar sharks are considered

“very vulnerable to overfishing,”

and, as the State of New York noted,

“The sandbar shark was historically taken in commercial and recreational fisheries along the Southern Atlantic Coast of the U.S. and in the Gulf of Mexico, which expanded rapidly in the last 20 years and led to significant population declines.”

Once again, there is no suggestion that the population decline of two decades ago was due to depleted forage fish populations, so there was no reason for them to be mentioned in a video talking about forage fish management.

It seems that a trend is emerging here.  Atlantic bluefin tuna are not only not considered overfished, contrary to the  video’s assertions, but the population is doing well enough that the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas increased the western Atlantic quota when it met last November.  Far from suffering from a lack of forage fish, weakfish are depleted because they have become a forage fish, with natural mortality levels extremely high, very possibly because of increased predation by bottlenose dolphin.  Striped bass are overfished for the simple reason that people have been killing too many, with the fishing mortality rate exceeding the overfishing threshold in 1996, 2004-2006, and 2010-2017; add that level of fishing mortality to the worst seven years of recruitment ever recorded in 2019-2025, and there’s no need to try to blame forage fish shortages for the striped bass’ overfished state—they’re overfished because of overfishing.  Finally, there’s the Atlantic halibut; it’s been overfished since the early 1900s, well before the “industrial” fisheries cited in The Forage Fish Campaign’s video began to target forage fish.

I could go on, but I think my point is made.

The Forage Fish Campaign has implied that pair trawling and other high-volume fisheries have driven down forage fish populations, and so led to the depletion/overfishing of 16 named fish stocks.  But with even a modicum of research, it’s simple to disprove that implication.  Some of the fish named aren’t overfished.  Some don’t regularly feed on fish at all.  And of the ones which do feed on various forage fish species, their depletion is almost universally due to overfishing, either in directed fisheries or as bycatch; there is no strong statistical connection between forage fish depletion and any of those fisheries declines.

Yet The Forage Fish Campaign’s video suggests that there is.   

The video ends with more stark black and white text:

“THE US FISHERIES CRISIS IS REAL”

“COLLAPSING OCEAN FOOD SYSTEMS”

“DEVASTATING COASTAL ECONOMIES”

“THIS STOPS NOW”

“PROTECTING US FISHING JOBS IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN & GULF OF AMERICA”

As a “campaign,” it’s reasonably good stuff.  It’s designed to generate an emotional, rather than an intellectual, response, that will goad people into donating to the cause, writing letters to politicians, etc.

But as a factual discussion of the problem, it falls pretty short.  And that’s a problem, from multiple perspectives.

First, if someone is going to ask me to donate as much as $1,000—plus a little extra to cover administrative expenses—I need to know that they are knowledgeable and capable advocates.  When The Forage Fish Campaign calls stocks overfished when they’re not, and suggest that forage fish are the cause of depletion that can be easily traced to other causes, they seem woefully ignorant of basic facts relevant to their campaign, and certainly aren’t anyone I’d want to pay to represent my interests.

Beyond that, the failure to master basic facts will leave them with little or no credibility with regulators and other fisheries managers, who by and large are very conversant with the facts governing the fisheries that they oversee.  Making such blatant false assertions makes it appear that The Forage Fish Campaign is either ignorant of the truth about coastal fisheries, or that they are trying to distort that truth in order to mislead the very people who they are trying to influence.

Which leads to the final point, and that is the facts really do speak for themselves.  If we were truly looking at a “crisis” in our fisheries, there would be no need to make spurious claims or false implications; the data would easily show that a lack of forage fish was causing a decline in predator species.  One only needs to distort the facts if the unvarnished truth alone is not enough to support one’s arguments, and embellishment was necessary to make a convincing case.

And that’s a bad place to be, because forage fish conservation is a real and pressing need.  Not because a decline in forage fish has “collapsed ” fisheries, but because forage fish are a critically important part of marine ecosystems, and such ecosystems couldn’t function without them.

Distorted truths and fatuous claims, although perhaps made with the best of intentions, can undercut the work of legitimate forage fish advocates who work with the science to seek better regulation and management of forage fish fisheries, and plays into the hands of those who would overexploit the resource, who can point out the less than forthright claims in efforts to discredit the entire conservation community.

Thus, in my opinion, The Forage Fish Campaign’s video does forage fish no service and, by distorting the facts, only plays into the hands of those who oppose forage fish conservation.

 

 

 

2026: A CHILL IN THE AIR

 

As I write this, we’re more than two months into the 2026 fishing season—dating from the opening of winter flounder on April 1—and things aren’t looking too good.

To be fair, it was a cold—or, as those of us who lived through the last half of the 20^th Century might say, “normal”—winter, with below-freezing temperatures and a few rounds of snow, which pushed down water temperatures and delayed the start of the season.  But even so, there’s a cold wind blowing off the water that has nothing to do with the winter, for saltwater fishing here on Long Island has gotten off to a very slow start, a start slow enough to cause a bit of worry for anglers and for angler-dependent businesses.

How slow is slow?

Let’s put it this way:  I belong to the South Shore Marlin and Tuna Club, an organization made up of a little under 100 members, along with their wives and kids under 18.  The members tend to be very active, capable fishermen, and despite the club’s name, do a lot of fishing inshore.  Like many clubs, they hold annual and monthly contests, where members weigh in their fish in hopes of winning a modest prize.  As of last Tuesday night’s meeting, precisely two fish were weighed in so far—one very nice blackfish (more properly, “tautog”) of more than 9 pounds, and a very surprising 12-pound dolphin that one of the members caught on an exploratory trip to Hudson Canyon last April.

Not a single fish—not a bluefish, nor a flounder, nor a fluke, nor a striped bass, nor a weakfish, nor a black sea bass—was weighed in during the entire month of May, and the first nine days of June didn’t produce any better.

That’s pretty slow.

The absence of winter flounder was completely predictable, as the population crashed a couple of decades ago, and no one—not the National Marine Fisheries Service/New England Fisheries Management Council, not the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and not the State of New York—made any serious effort to keep that from happening.  So recreational landings fell from about 14.5 million in 1984 to somewhere between zero and 2,131 last year; so few were actually taken in 2025 that it was impossible to calculate a more precise number.

At one time, winter flounder were an important economic driver of New York’s recreational fishing industry.  In 1984, the state’s anglers took nearly 3.5 million fishing trips primarily targeting the species, with about 284,000 of those trips taken aboard party and charter boats, which started their flounder season in early March and finished up in December.  Last year, so few trips were taken that the estimate of angling effort was meaningless.

This April, an enterprising party boat operator in the former flounder mecca of Moriches Bay decided to offer what he called an “exploratory” flounder trip

“this Saturday 4/18 from 12-3:30pm.  Haven’t tried in many years but we’re gonna give it a shot!”

After the fact, he reported that

“No luck on the flounder today.  We fished a few old school spots and at least gave it a shot.  Water temps in the low 50’s still.  We might try one more time before the fluke opener when the water warms up a bit.”

To the best of my knowledge, he never made the second try, and it’s probably just as well, as New York’s winter flounder population is barely hanging on, leaving a big hole in the business models of party boats and tackle shops from New York City to Montauk. 

The spring tautog fishery was typically slow, with just a few fish being caught.  Although the health of the Long Island Sound population is steadily improving, the New Jersey/New York Bight population, which extends from Orient Point to southern New Jersey, is still experiencing overfishing.  Thus, at the August ASMFC meeting, the Tautog Management Board is expected to approve a draft addendum for public comment, which will propose ways to reduce fishing mortality of New Jersey/New York Bight tautog by 40%, in order to reduce fishing mortality to the target level by 2030.  While we don’t yet know what sort of management measures will be needed to achieve that goal, we can guess that the reductions in the bag limit and/or seasons will be substantial (the Management Board decided that the minimum size will remain unchanged).

As far as other early season fisheries go, the Atlantic mackerel that once swarmed along the South Shore of Long Island, and invaded Long Island Sound from the mid-1960s to, perhaps, 1990 or so were just taken off the “overfished” list less than three months ago, but the stock is still rebuilding; the runs that used to fill Long Island Sound and the nearshore ocean with fish a few decades ago are still just a memory, although anglers are again beginning to run into some big mackerel schools in the Sound.  Unfortunately, the Southern New England stock of Atlantic cod remains badly overfished, mostly by anglers, which has resulted in the recreational season being completely closed.

So, outside of some ling (more properly, “red hake”). it doesn’t appear that spring fishing opportunities are going to get better any time soon, which is news that the shops and the for-hire boats probably don’t want to hear.

For a while, it looked like weakfish might provide a little more early-season action.  Although the fishing hasn’t been what anyone might call “hot,” for the past five years or so, we’ve seen a steady improvement on the South Shore of Long Island, even though the stock is still considered “depleted,” with spawning stock biomass less than one-third of its target level; much of the problem is attributed to high levels of natural mortality.

But this year, the trajectory of the weakfish stock seemed to head back down, with far fewer being caught.  At first, we blamed it on the cold water slowing down the migration and making the fish reluctant to bite, even though the water wasn’t really any colder than it was thirty years ago, when the weakfish started biting around the first week of May.  For the past few years, my fishing club has held a week-long weakfish contest sometime in May.  This year, it was scheduled to run from the 11^th through the 17^th, and when the weakfish didn’t show, it was rescheduled for the 25^th through the 31^st, to give the water a chance to warm.  When everyone got skunked anyway, they just held the afterparty, drank the beer and ate the burgers, and hoped they’ll do better next year.

That doesn’t mean that there were no weakfish around at all, but the catches have been disappointing, and while it’s far too early to know whether the stock has begun to decline, based on what we’re seeing so far, things are not looking good.  One South Shore party boat fleet—two boats in all—that’s usually pretty successful at catching whatever’s around, reports catching just two weakfish this season, fish that they blundered into while targeting fluke. 

Neither the boats nor the shops are making much money on weakfish this year.

On the other hand, the folks at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center are telling us that the once-overfished bluefish are recovering nicely, and should be fully rebuild ahead of schedule; they might have already rebuilt last season, but we won’t know for certain until the next stock assessment update comes out in 2027.  That seems like good news.

The only minor problem is that, if the bluefish stock has rebuilt, no one is particularly sure where they’re hiding.  Scattered pods are passing through, but the days when schools of small blues rampaged through the bays for most of May, terrorizing the bait and the ripping up soft plastic lures intended for weakfish, have not yet returned.  The same party boat fleet mentioned before has only reported catching 75 bluefish so far this season, a total that pales when compared to previous years.

Montauk usually sees some pretty good bluefishing around the Memorial Day weekend, and for a few weeks after, but this year seems an exception to the rule.  Long Island Sound is also unusually quiet, and while I haven’t been offshore yet, so can’t say for certain what’s happening there, with the exception of a few 12-inch fish during the first week of July 2023, I haven’t had a bluefish in my shark slicks since 2017, even in places where they used to make it impossible to put a bait in the water, so I doubt that our offshore waters are filled with the things.

Which all makes me wonder whether the 2027 stock assessment update will be as optimistic as the last one was.

And then there are the bottom fish.

Cold ocean water definitely slowed down the start of the season, with fluke, scup, and black sea bass all having less than stellar opening days. 

Scup are probably doing the best of the three major species, with the last stock assessment finding spawning stock biomass at 322% of the biomass target; the only cause for any concern is that recruitment seems to have declined sharply over the past couple of years; the most recent assessment estimated the median annual number of recruits to be 135,400,000, but data for 2023 and 2024 showed recruitment at only 39,724,000 and 15,706,000 fish, respectively.  If the 2027 assessment update shows a continuation of that trend, and fishing mortality remains unchanged, spawning stock biomass could start heading downhill pretty quickly.

So far this year, along most of Long Island, scup haven’t lived up to their seeming potential.  The South Shore has been pretty quiet; the party boat fleet that I mentioned before has caught only eight since the season opened on the 1^st of May, although another fleet, docked at the same port, which does a lot of deeper-water wreck fishing has caught 35 since June 1 (I tend to use party boats as a gauge of fish abundance because they fish multiple times per week, sometimes every day, and their captains and mates tend to be good fishermen, putting the party boat customers in a very good position to catch anything that might be around).

The western Long Island Sound hasn’t been setting the scup world on fire, but the central Sound—the area off Pt. Jefferson—has recently been hot, so good that it is drawing eastern Connecticut boats from as much as 45 miles away, and at least one Montauk boat, too—although the fact that boats are traveling that far to catch porgies suggests that the eastern Sound and East End might not be holding as many fish as they typically do.

Along with scup, anglers are catching black sea bass.  Again, we’re dealing with a fish at a very high level of abundance—spawning stock biomass is 284% of the biomass target.  The problem is that almost all of those fish are small.  The Recreational Demand Model run last year, used to predict the sizes of fish that will be available to anglers this season, revealed that less than 10% of the population is five or more years old, and a five-year-old sea bass is only about 15 inches long, still an inch below New York’s minimum size.  A truncated age structure, that sees few fish grow to larger sizes and older ages, is often a sign that too many fish are being removed from the stock. 

And, beyond that, fishing all day trying to catch three legal black sea bass is not a particularly exciting thing to do.  So far, I haven’t been able to convince myself that it’s worth burning $125 in diesel to do it, and I suspect that other anglers feel about the same.

The triad of bottom fish ends with fluke (summer flounder), which is going through almost a mirror image of what scup and black sea bass are experiencing; the last stock assessment update estimated spawning stock biomass to be just 83% of the biomass target, largely because of sub-par recruitment since around 2010.  But median annual recruitment for summer flounder is estimated to be 46,626,000 fish, and recruitment for 2022, 2023, and 2024 was estimated at 42,112,000, 52,873,000, and 49,649,000 fish, respectively—one just-below average and two mildly above average years in a row.  Since it usually takes four years for a fluke to grow into New York’s 19-inch minimum size, fishing ought to be a little better this year than it was in the recent past—despite this year’s slow start—and continue to improve through 2027 and 2028.

That’s probably the best news of any that we’ve looked at so far.

But, of course, there’s still the striped bass to consider.

In his 19^th Century novel, A Tale of Two Cities, English author Charles Dickens wrote,

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

The same could be said of the current state of the striped bass.

If an angler looks just at the present, and gauges the quality of the fishing by the number of big fish available, today’s striped bass fishery isn’t far from the best of times, with a relative abundance of 40 and even 50 pound fish, along with quite a few 30s, 20s, and teens.  Those who want to take a fish home can still find enough bass from the 2018 year class—the last above-average year class produced in the critically important Maryland spawning grounds—to put fish in the cooler.

Based on that abundance of bigger fish, too many anglers foolishly hope that all is well and that the good fishing will continue, and fail to heed biologists’ warnings that hard times are on the way.

On the other hand, if someone looks not at the big fish that are available now, but at the dearth of younger fish needed to provide the big fish in the future, it looks very much like the worst of times, with the last seven years providing, on average, the worst spawning success ever recorded.  Those folks see a dark future for the striped bass resource, worry that the stock might never be fully rebuilt again, and wisely believe the scientists who advise reducing bass landings.

The facts are enough to make anglers and angling-related businesses feel a frisson of fear.

Striped bass are one of the most important marine recreational fish species in the State of New York.  Last year, New York anglers took an estimated 11,518,735 saltwater fishing trips.  An estimated 2,311,531 of those trips—about 20%--primarily targeted striped bass.  That compares to 2,912,799 trips (25%) targeting summer flounder, 1,237,768 (11%) targeting scup, 842,814(7%) targeting bluefish, 730,762 (6%) targeting tautog, and 327,428 (3%) targeting black sea bass.

New York’s saltwater anglers may only land striped bass between 28 and 31 inches long, and right now, the average member of the 2018 year class is slightly over 31 inches in length, meaning that a little less than half of that year class remains available to recreational harvest.  Next year, most of the 2018s will have grown out of the slot, and the 2019 year class is far too small to fully replace them.  Some subsequent year classes are even smaller.

That means that, even assuming that the 2026 year class is of average or above-average size—something that, with what we know now about water temperatures and water flows in the Chesapeake Bay, is a very dubious assumption—we won’t have many fish enter the coastal slot limit until 2033.  If the 2026 year class is again well below average, it will be even longer until anglers will again have a reasonable chance of catching a bass that they might take home.

That’s bad news for much of the charter and party boat fleet, who claim that their customers won’t fish if they can’t take a fish home, and have been consistently opposing new management measures that would reduce recreational landings. 

Given the present state of most fish stocks, it’s not clear what their customers—and the rest of New York’s saltwater anglers—are going to fish for if the striped bass disappear.  Fluke ought to become more abundant over the next few years, and even if scup recruitment remains low, the population should remain fairly high for a while. 

But are fluke and scup, along with supporting appearances from tautog, bluefish, black sea bass and the like, be enough to make up the difference if the striped bass stock goes into further decline?

Once again, a South Shore party boat fleet’s website may hint at the answer.  Looking at the reports for the first four days of this week, one finds

“Wednesday, June 10, 2025

“Today’s (Wednesday) 1:01PM trip is cancelled due to lack of interest.  Today’s 7:01AM trip caught 56 Fluke and 6 Cape Shark.  Tonight’s (Wednesday) 6PM trip is cancelled due to lack of interest…  [emphasis added]”

“Tuesday, June 9, 2025

“Today’s 7:01AM trip caught 103 Fluke and 4 Cape Shark.  Today’s 1:01PM trip caught 23 Fluke and 5 Cape Shark.  Tonight’s (Tuesday) 6PM trip is cancelled due to lack of interest.  [emphasis added]”

“Monday, June 8, 2025

“Today’s (Monday) 1:01PM trip is cancelled due to lack of interest.  Today’s 7:01AM trip caught 68 Fluke and 5 Cape Shark.  Today’s 6PM trip caught 12 Bluefish and 1 Weakfish.  [emphasis added]”

“Sunday, June 7 2025

“Today’s (Sunday) 1PM trip is cancelled due to lack of interest.  Today’s 7:01AM trip caught 46 Fluke, 2 Sea Robins and 10 Cape Shark.  Today’s 7:02AM trip caught 321 Sea Bass, 243 Ling, 1 Pollock, 6 Cod, 5 Blackfish and 3 Mackerel.  Today’s 12Noon trip caught 10 Fluke, 2 Sea Robins and 6 Cape Shark.  Today’s 6PM trip caught 6 Bluefish.  [emphasis added]”

For one of the best-known and best-run party boat fleets on the South Shore to cancel five out of 15 trips—exactly one-third—during the heart of the spring inshore season, when the sun was generally out and the wind wasn’t blowing too hard, because there were too few anglers willing to fish to make sailing worthwhile, is a somewhat ominous sign.

It’s not hard to predict that if striped bass become less available to party boat anglers, a substantial majority of black sea bass remain too small to keep, and fishing for weakfish, bluefish, and tautog doesn’t improve, even more trips are going to be “cancelled due to a lack of interest,” and other businesses—the tackle shops, gas docks, and such—are also going to see business decline.

It’s still too early to tell whether this spring’s slow start was due more to cold water than to a decline in fish stocks, or whether fishing will rebound later in the year and draw more anglers out onto the boats.  Maybe all will be well.  Nonetheless, there’s a chill running up some folks’ spines when they think of the future, and that chill has nothing to do with the weather at all.