UNINFORMED FISHERIES ADVOCACY--THERE IS A (FAIRLY) NEW CURE

 

If you spend any time at fisheries meetings, hearings, and such, it won’t take long before you start hearing things that make you question everything that you thought that you knew.

You’ll hear people sway that we don’t have too many bluefish off the U.S. East Coast because they all swam off to Africa.

You’ll hear people (very possibly the same ones who said the above) say that striped bass experience something similar to human menopause, and stop producing eggs when they get old,.

And you’ll hear people say a lot of other things that seem to contradict anything you’ve ever learned about fish and fisheries science, usually things intended to convince regulators and fisheries managers that stock assessments are wrong, and that there are a lot more of [fill in your favorite species] around than scientists seem to believe.

For the most part, such comments are made by people who, in one way or another, make their livings catching fish, and so have a strong financial motivation to tell their tall tales.

But there is also another group of people out there, who aren’t in the fishing business, and who come out to fisheries hearings hoping to convince managers to properly conserve fish stocks; although their hearts are in the right place they, too, often get the facts wrong, even as they try to convince biologists that they understand the fishery better than the scientists do.

And that doesn’t help the fish that they hope to conserve.

I recently came across a post in the Southern Fried Science blog that examined just that theme.  Titled “The locksmith and the conservation scientist,” it draws the following analogy:

“Picture this scene: you’re walking down the street, and you see your neighbor pacing back and forth nervously near the door to his house.  He’s locked himself out of his house, accidentally leaving his keys inside.  A locksmith is there trying to help, a tension wrench in his hand.  You think you know a little something about locks, and decide to help.  You shout to them from the sidewalk, ‘I had a locker in high school, and the second number in my combination was 11!  Now that I’ve helped, you should be able to get into your house.’  You continue on your way, a big smile on your face, knowing that you’ve done a good deed today.

“No one would do this, right?  Doing something like this obviously cannot do anything to help open your neighbor’s locked door.  The locksmith, a trained professional with experience and tools that you don’t have access to, is clearly using a tool for a totally different kind of lock than the lock you have any experience with.  And even if the lock that the locksmith was trying to open was the exact same type of combination lock that you used to use, knowing one of three numbers from a totally different combination lock would obviously not help to open the door.  No one would shout, ‘my old locker combination included an 11’ and think they were being helpful in opening a locked door.

“And yet, people do exactly that for complex environmental problems every day.  People see trained, experienced conservation professionals working on complex issues, and without bothering to consider the complexity of those issues, they shout the first thought that comes into their head at us as if it’s a brilliant solution.  And then they get annoyed (or worse) if we either ignore them or politely explain why that’s not how we solve complex problems.

“We see this happening all the time in different branches of conservation science, from bees to sharks, from birds to plastic pollution cleanup.  Well-intentioned people understand a little bit about the problem and want to help, but don’t understand enough of the problem to know that they’re essentially saying nonsense.”

I’ve seen this scenario play out time and again at fisheries hearings.  Perhaps the most common manifestation comes when anglers call for “gamefish status”—the abolition of commercial fishing—for striped bass and other popular recreational species, without ever considering that the greatest source of fishing mortality for such species is the recreational, rather than the commercial, fishery, and that merely converting commercial landings into more recreational landings won’t do anything for the resource at all.

We’re seeing something very similar in the Atlantic menhaden fishery today, when much of the focus is on greatly restricting, if not completely shutting down, the so-called reduction fishery, mostly because it’s easy to dislike the big boats that kill many thousands of pounds of menhaden at one time, rather than focusing on the need to substantially reduce menhaden landings generated by all participants in the fishery.

In fact, it’s hard to think of another fishery where well-meaning people are trying so hard to influence fisheries policy, but have so little understanding of what the data and science does and does not reveal, than Atlantic menhaden.

While there are some exceptions, most of the advocacy groups supposedly promoting menhaden conservation are focused not on the stock assessments, and what they reveal, but on attacking what is known as the “reduction” fishery, a fleet of about half a dozen large purse seine vessels, that account for nearly three-quarters of all menhaden landings, which are then “reduced” into fish meal and various other industrial products, used for everything from cosmetics to fish food, while supporting smaller-scale fisheries that harvest menhaden for bait and other, related uses.

Such groups spend a lot of time trying to whip up people’s emotions, using language such as

“Multi-ton schools of this saltwater fish are tracked by a squadron of spotter aircraft, then pursued by fleets of industrial fishing ships working in teams to deploy 1,500-foot-long purse-seine nets.  Once caught, the net compresses the Menhaden into a massive ball until they all suffocate.  They are vacuumed onto the ships and their entrails, feces and urine are squeezed out.  Brought back to shore their remains are piped into one of the four remaining reduction plants remaining in America…They are then ground up, cooked and processed into fish meal or fish oil.”

But whjle that’s all wonderfully dramatic, it’s not clear what it has to do with menhaden conservation and management, so long as overall landings are kept at or below a level that is sustainable in the long term.

It would be hard to disagree with anyone who might suggest that such comments about the reduction fleet are about as relevant to menhaden management as one digit from your junior high school locker combination is to the locksmith working on your neighbor’s front door.

Still, we see one of the anti-reduction fleet advocates try to limit all reduction fishing to federal waters at least three miles offshore, arguing that

“The regulatory agencies, the fishery certification organizations and the reduction companies themselves all say there are billions of menhaden to be found in the ocean, we are just asking them to do their fishing there…If the industry will not agree to fish only in Federal waters then a full ban on reduction fishing will be the only solution left to offer them.”

But what would limiting fishing to the ocean accomplish?

If we look at the best available scientific information, which should always be the primary guide to fisheries management, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission informs us that

“Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tyranus) occupy estuaries and coastal waters from Nova Scotia to northern Florida and are believed to consist of a single population.”

Thus, limiting harvest to federal waters would have no significant impact on menhaden conservation, as whether the reduction boats fish in state or federal waters, they are fishing on the same population of fish, governed by the same annual quotas.  Pushing the reduction fleet offshore would only make it more difficult and more expensive for that fleet to operate, with no clear benefit to the menhaden at all.

And, of course, the advocates never explain why it would be beneficial to push the reduction fleet offshore, but it does no harm to allow the steadily growing bait fishery, which already accounts for at least one-quarter of the entire menhaden harvest, to continue to operate well within state waters.

While such meaningless suggestions arise out of anti-reduction industry bias, we also see arguments born from pure ignorance.  For example, many advocates claim that menhaden are

“filter feeders and clean vast amounts of water…averaging 4 gallons per minute.  That is how they eat filtering tiny phytoplankton, algae, and zooplankton from the water.”

But that claim was debunked a long time ago.  The October 2011 issue of Chesapeake Quarterly, a magazine published by Maryland Sea Grant, reported that

“Also taking a hit from recent research is a second, perhaps more popular claim: that menhaden are helping to clean up water quality in the Chesapeake.  It was an idea based on biology and hope.  Menhaden are filter feeders.  They catch phytoplankton as they pass through their gills.  That was the biology.  Perhaps, like oysters, they could help cut down the overabundance of phytoplankton, reduce nitrogen levels, and shrink the size and frequency of [hypoxic] dead zones during summer months.  That was the hope.  Menhaden swimming in the water, oysters sitting on the bottom—rebuilding stocks of these natural filters could deliver a one-two punch against nitrogen pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.

“What if all the menhaden now fished out of the Bay were left in the water?  What effect would that have on water quality?  The question was interesting enough to draw research funding from three environmental organizations: the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, and the Keith Cambell Foundation for the Environment.  When they funded studies by Patrick Lynch, Mark Brush, and Rob Latour, however, the scientists came up with answers last year that the sponsors never expected.

“Working at [the Virginia Institute of Marine Science], the researchers collected menhaden from cast nets and pound nets and released the fish into six large, circular tanks filled with water from the York River.  Then they watched what happened.  With plenty of plankton in the river water, the scientists were able to monitor any changes in phytoplankton and nitrogen resulting from menhaden feeding.  They also estimated the feeding rates of menhaden at different ages and sizes and then calculated the impact that leaving 100,000 tons of menhaden (the maximum allowable catch [at that time; it has since been reduced to 51,000 metric tons]) would have on water quality in the Bay.  That led to a lot of math and a lot of modeling based on different assumptions.

“The result:  The menhaden in their tanks did not have a meaningful impact on the phytoplankton concentrations and nitrogen levels.  Under certain conditions, menhaden could add nitrogen through their own fecal waste.  If all the menhaden taken out of the Bay by fishermen were left in the Bay, the effect on water quality would probably be ‘more or less negligible…’”

Yet we still hear advocates who don’t know any better making the filter feeder argument today.

Others argue that the reduction fishery, particularly in the Chesapeake Bay, led to a decline in menhaden abundance, and that

“The decline of menhaden…leads to bycatch and mass fish kills.”

Presumably, the “mass fish kills” reference is to the kills of menhaden that occasionally occur when damage to or loss of a purse seine results in a mass kill of the menhaden themselves, but the bycatch claim needs some clarification.  For yes, some bycatch does occur.  But to quote the same Chesapeake Quarterly article referenced above,

“It’s an assumption that doesn’t die easily or quietly.  When three scientists from the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences (VIMS) mounted a major study in 1992, however, they found little evidence of large bycatch.  The number of other fish in menhaden nets averaged less than 0.21 percent—or 1 fish in 500.  That meant that more than 99.7 percent of the fish in commercial nets were menhaden. 

“It was a finding based on 43 net sets observed and sampled by scientists by a science team led by Herb Austin, Jim Kirkley, and Jon Lucy.  They rode the big menhaden ships and the smaller net boats and worked the unloading docks of Zapata Haynie, the company that later became Omega Protein.  While all those net hauls on Zapata boats brought in over 2.5 million menhaden, they trapped only 5,337 non-menhaden fish.  Spanish mackerel was the most numerous bycatch, followed by bluefish, croaker, hogchoker, and sea trout.”

But not, it appears, striped bass, even though, in 1997, striped bass from the big 1989 year class should have been widely available.  So people who claim that a lot of bass are being killed don’t seem to have much of a leg to stand on.  Notably, according to the Chesapeake Quarterly,

“the results by the VIMS team nearly matched a finding from 100 years earlier.  In 1894, the U.S. Fish Commission organized a similar, though much larger, study of menhaden bycatch, placing federal agents aboard menhaden boats for two to three months.  They collected samples from 1,078 net hauls that totaled more than 28 million fish.  Their finding was the same as the 1992 study: 99.7 percent of the fish in the nets were menhaden.”

Of course, that concordance did nothing to mollify the menhaden advocates, who weren’t willing to accept any results that didn’t accord with their pre-existing opinions.

“’They said we were hoodwinked,’ said Jon Lucy, a retired Virginia Sea Grant extension agent with a long history of working with recreational fishermen.  The criticism quickly got personal, says Lucy.  ‘It was like I had slapped a hornet’s nest.’  According to Kirkley, complaints flooded his email and his phone line, many of them cursing him out.  ‘They said we were on the take.  They accused us of being on the [Zapata] payroll, of forging the results,’ said Kirkley.  ‘That went on for a good long time.’”

Telling a menhaden advocate, particularly an anti-reduction fleet advocate, that their chosen beliefs might not accord with reality still draws that sort of reaction today; I have been accused of similar things—being paid off, or being on Omega’s payroll—after challenging the anti-reduction narrative in this very blog.

But the funny thing is that the same people who complain about bycatch in the reduction fishery don’t seem to give much thought to bycatch in the bait fisheries that they support, even though a study performed by a graduate student at the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, seeking to find ways to reduce pound net bycatch, noted that

“Though the small mesh of the head is necessary to maintain the gear’s efficiency, it unavoidably maintains large numbers of sub-legal, commercially, and recreationally important fishes.  Pound-nets have been cited for this flaw historically.  Some authors have gone so far as to single out the gear and blame it solely for the declines in weakfish (Cynosion regalis) stocks.  Although today blaming a single gear type for the decline of an inshore species is considered myopic, pound-nets do catch a large number of undersized weakfish and other species that are often too small to be marketable…

“Normally, the whole pocket of the net is emptied before any release or sorting of the catch takes place.  The larger the catch size, the greater the time required to harvest.  Sorting time is also amplified and bycatch mortality is increased.  Currently most pound-netters apply this one-step-at-a-time method in order to maximize their catch-per-unit-effort, and this results in a bycatch mortality of 100%.  [references omitted]” 

Photos of striped bass, Spanish mackerel, and other bycatch mixed in with menhaden in a pound net haul are readily available online.

But the anti-reduction fishery crowd still advocates eliminating the reduction fleet and giving all the fish to the bycatch-prone pound net (and other gear) bait fishery, which is what happens when people who don’t have a handle on all the facts get involved in the management process.

And then there are the many more rational, well-meaning folks who elevate mere possibilities to the status of fact before they have enough evidence to do so.  That brings us to Addendum II to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden, which the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board will debate, and probably adopt in some form, when they meet in November.

Addendum II deals solely with the so-called Bay Cap, which currently limits reduction fleet harvest within the Bay to 51,000 metric tons, and contains various proposals which, if adopted, would reduce the Bay Cap by as much as 50%, and/or divide the 51,000 mt Cap into three smaller, seasonal quotas.

Arguments could be made that the Bay might be an important nursery area for menhaden, and that taking too many menhaden out of the Bay at one time could lead to localized depletion, which could negatively impact Bay ecosystems, and the initial draft of Addendum II was intended to address such contingencies.  But there is actually very little hard data to support such allegations.  As Addendum II itself admits,

“The availability of menhaden in Chesapeake Bay may be affected by changes in total abundance, size distribution of the population, and timing of spatial distribution in the Bay, which can be caused by fishing pressure, environmental conditions, habitat suitability, and/or changing predation pressures on a limited spatial and temporal scale.  Such changes in menhaden availability may affect the species ability to fulfill its ecological and/or economic functions.  Recent observations of below average commercial fisheries landings and concerning population trends in several species that use menhaden as prey within Chesapeake Bay suggest availability of menhaden in Chesapeake Bay may be changing due to one or more of the above drivers…  [emphasis added]”

That is very tentative language; any definitive conclusions, or demonstrated connections between current removals by the reduction fleet, or any other cause, or notable only by their complete absence. 

But the lack of any clear conclusions should not be surprising, for as the draft Addendum II also notes,

“there are currently not sufficient scientific data available to comprehensively characterize the abundance and distribution of menhaden throughout the Chesapeake Bay and the influence of fishing pressure on menhaden.”

The entirety of Addendum II amounts to precautionary measures that restrict the reduction fishery just in case their actions in the Bay might be causing some level of harm.  While I’m generally in favor of a precautionary approach to fisheries management (including the current Bay Cap, which is also completely unsupported by any hard data), and while I believe that some reduction in the Bay Cap is probably justified, I also note that Addendum II’s approach to menhaden management, which is largely a response to conservation advocates’ unsubstantiated claims, carries a not insignificant level of risk, because it provides the menhaden industry an opportunity to discredit the entire menhaden conservation effort, including the clearly demonstrated need to substantially reduce landings in order to reduce fishing mortality to some level that is hopefully at or below the target level.

Compared to the need to reduce fishing mortality to a more sustainable and ecosystem-appropriate level, Addendum II is just a sideshow, and the efforts to attack the reduction fishery barely relevant at all, but such issues can and are being used by the menhaden industry to discredit the entire conservation effort.

Probably the best example of that was the response of a group calling itself the American Small Pelagics Network—a commercial fishing industry group focused on the harvest of menhaden and other forage species—to comments made by Whit Fosburgh, the executive director of the Forage Fish Campaign, a group that I singled out, in a blog post last June, for making misleading and inaccurate comments in their campaign materials.

Apparently, Forsburgh was recently the guest on a podcast, and was making misleading and/or inaccurate comments once again, and got called out by the commercial fishing group for doing so.  The American Small Pelagics Network engaged in a thorough debunking of Forsburgh’s comments which, when the Network was done, left the impression that the entire menhaden conservation effort might be built on a foundation of inaccurate beliefs and false information.

And if too many members of the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board get that impression, it could bias them against supporting the 39% reduction in menhaden landings that, according to recent stock assessments, is needed to have at least a 50% probability of reducing fishing mortality to the target level set by the fishery management plan, and increase menhaden abundance, which was only 5% above the threshold that defines an overfished stock as of last year’s stock assessment update, to a level that will allow the species to fulfill its role as an important forage fish in coastal ecosystems.

Fortunately, there is a readily accessible way for concerned stakeholders to learn about the basics of fisheries management, and use that knowledge to make more informed comments at fisheries hearings and ahead of important meetings, such as the upcoming meeting of the menhaden management board.

Last summer, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission released its new Guide to Fisheries Science & Stock Assessments, a long but extremely informative crash course on the management process, which includes explanations, in easy-to-understand language, of topics including Data Sources, Life History & Biology, Population Dynamics, Stock Assessment Models, Reference Points, and Use of Stock Assessments.

Reading and understanding that guide will make it far easier for stakeholders without a science background—and that’s certainly the great majority of us—to read and understand stock assessments, understand the rationale behind proposed management actions and, combined with some research on pending fisheries issues, make more informed and more valuable comments on amendments to fishery management plans and other proposed management measures.

It won’t turn stakeholders fisheries scientists—only four to eight, or more, years of concentrated, formal study, and a lifetime of practical experience, can do that—but it will allow them to have a far more informed understanding of fisheries management, and help them become valued contributors to the management process, who managers will turn to and rely on when stakeholder comment is needed.

And that is exactly what any stakeholder, who is truly concerned for our fisheries, ought to want to be.,

 

 

FINFISH AQUACULTURE AGAIN UNDER SCRUTINY

 

Sometimes, in the course of writing this blog, I’ll come across a number of related issues that all come together at once, and demand a closer look. 

That happened last week, after the New York Times published an expose of the finfish aquaculture industry, including a look at the very closely related international reduction fisheries that provide feed for the aquacultured fish, debate over the menhaden reduction industry continued, and the Conservation Law Foundation received a favorable ruling from a federal District Court judge, who allowed it to continue its lawsuit against Cooke Aquaculture USA Inc.,  which the Conservation Law Foundation alleges committed multiple violations of the federal Clean Water Act while operating its Maine salmon farms.

All three of those events, at least with respect to net pen finfish aquaculture in the United States, must be understood in the context of Executive Order 14276, “Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness,” which, in part, directed

“The Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and with input from the United States fishing industry, [to] immediately consider suspending, revising, or rescinding regulations that overly burden America’s…aquaculture and fish-processing industries,”

and also directed

“The Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture, [to] develop an America First Seafood Strategy to promote production, marketing, sale, and export of United States…aquaculture products.”

The New York Times article looks at net pen aquaculture at an international level, examining the product and the industry from the initial capture and reduction of the forage fish used to feed the aquacultured animals to the final product delivered to consumers.  Its findings raise real questions about whether the Executive Order’s support of domestic aquaculture, while at the same time reducing the web of regulations that govern the industry, is in the best interests of the United States.

The New York Times’ article, titled “The Dirty Secret Behind the Farmed Fish You Eat,” is an intentionally provocative piece that relies on a much larger investigation by an advocacy group that calls itself the “Outlaw Ocean Project.”  The research underlying the article 

“involved dozens of journalists from as many countries, mapped more than 1,400 fishmeal plants and identified more than 2,400 ships connected to fishmeal production.  [The reporters] visited factories and farms; [they] boarded ships at sea.  A team of a half-dozen researchers searched company websites; social media; trade, regulatory, and court records; product catalogs; and foreign press reports for visible evidence of the industry’s dangers, which [they] then corroborated with other independent sources.

“What [they] found is that more than 250 seafood companies have had crimes or concerns documented within their supply chains.”

The article begins with the words,

“Those of us who have recently eaten farm-raised seafood are participating in a developing environmental crisis,”

then goes on to say,

“That would be bad enough, but the so-called reduction industry driving the crisis also flouts the law and puts people in danger.  The production of fishmeal often involves forced labor and has led to worker deaths and the polluting of communities around the world.  It has provoked political unrest in places like India and prompted countries to accuse others of violating their territorial waters.  Dangerous chemicals, including antimicrobials, fire retardants and anaesthetics, are often added to fish ponds and make their way into the seafood...”

The article had to start somewhere, so it began with the international reduction fleet that catches the fish that are ultimately processed into the fish meal used to feed the farmed animals.  The

“reporters boarded fishmeal ships from the South China Sea to the far reaches of the North Atlantic.  [They] reviewed logbooks, interviewed workers and documented illegal practices.  Hundreds of fishmeal vessels were found to be fishing in closed or protected seas, violating quotas on certain species, or fishing without licenses.”

Such findings would seem to justify the rhetoric used by groups such as The Forage Fish Campaign, which alleges that

“Industrial fishing vessels are stripping billions of pounds of menhaden, herring, mackerel, shad, and river herring from American coastal waters every year—collapsing ecosystems, destroying livelihoods, and shipping the profits overseas.”

But when you actually read the New York Times’ article, you begin noting something a little different.  The article does list multiple incidents of “industrial fishing vessels…collapsing ecosystems, destroying livelihoods, and shipping the profits overseas.”  It reports that

“Mauritania has been especially attractive because its waters are unusually rich in marine life, fed by a robust nutrient upwelling that the Canary Current generates along the coast.  There, Chinese and Turkish ships sweep up bonga shad, sardines, and round and flat sardinella—species known as forage fish, which are toward the bottom of the food chain and are eaten by other marine life or seabirds.

“They’re also eaten by humans.  Such fish are critical to the food security of millions of people in West Africa; sardinella, a small fish that provides an outsize dose of vital nutrients, is among the region’s cheapest and most important sources of animal protein.  Since the fishmeal industry expanded into West Africa, round sardinella stocks have fallen to their lowest level ever recorded.  Today, three out of those four species are classified by the United Nations as overexploited.”

The article also reported that

“Thousands of Senegalese fishermen have lost their jobs, prompting many of them to use their boats to flee the country.  Typically, they try to make the nearly 1,000 mile journey from Senegal to Europe’s nearest touch point, Spain’s Canary Islands.

“One [of the fishermen who fled Senegal] explained to…reporters how the fishmeal industry played a role in his decision to migrate.  ‘We’re fishermen,’ he told them, ‘but there’s no fish left here.’”

And it notes that

“Policing the fishmeal industry has proved difficult because the countries in which the feed is produced are typically poor and therefore eager for foreign investment.  In Peru, foreign companies control the industry through direct plant ownership and dominant product purchasing power.  Some of the biggest players driving global expansion are Cooke in Canada, which acquired Peru’s top fishing company inn 2024; Austevoll Seafood in Norway, which owns the major Peruvian producer Austral Group; and several Chinese companies, which claim the bulk of Peru’s catch quota for anchoveta, a species of anchovy.  As a result, these outside companies wield undue political leverage when it comes to ignoring rules.”

But one country that is notably absent from the New York Times’ discussion of the fishmeal industey—either as a malefactor or as a victim of the reduction fishery—is the United States, and one fish that never appears anywhere in that article is menhaden, either the Atlantic or the Gulf species, even though menhaden are the only species in United States waters typically harvested by the reduction fleet.

And it is that lack of mention that puts both The Forage Fish Campaign’s comments, and the current debate at the Atlantic Marine Fisheries Commission over the menhaden reduction fleet, in its proper context.

Yes, in much of the world, and particularly in the southern hemisphere, the reduction industry that supplies the aquaculture industry with fishmeal is underregulated, and often ignores what regulations exist.  It does disrupt marine ecosystems, destroys fishermen’s livelihoods, and sends its profits to companies based far from the places where it does its greatest harm.  And if The Forage Fish Campaign limited its rhetoric to the foreign reduction fishery, it would be completely in the right.

But the United States’ reduction fishery can’t be compared to the largely unregulated reduction fisheries that exist elsewhere in the world.  In the Atlantic, where the hottest debates are currently going on, it is held to strict quotas—which it doesn’t completely fill—while the menhaden themselves are neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing, although landings still ought to be cut by about 40% in order to constrain them to the established fishery mortality target.

The American menhaden reduction fishery, particularly in the Atlantic, is sustainable and generally well-regulated, and sets a sustainability and regulatory standard that the rest of the world’s reduction fisheries should be trying to emulate.

In the United States, the real threat to coastal ecosystems comes not from the reduction fishery, but from the net pen aquaculture operations themselves.

As the New York Times’ article notes,

“At some Norwegian fish farms, a single salmon can eat anywhere from two to more than five times its weight in wild-caught fish.  Altogether, the country’s fish farms produce three times as much waste in a year as the country’s 5.6 million residents flush down their toilets, according to a recent report from the Sunstone Institute, a global data science organization.  The farms’ waste, which consists of salmon feces, rotting carcasses and uneaten feed, mostly cascades to the coastal seafloor, forming a noxious sludge that smothers marine life.”

It’s that sort of pollution of Maine’s coastal waters that led the Conservation Law Foundation to file its lawsuit against Cooke Aquaculture.  In its complaint, the Foundation alleged that

“Cooke Aquaculture USA, Inc. harms the marine environment by growing millions of salmon in hundreds of cages along Maine’s coast.  Waste from the densely packed salmon forms a thick layer of toxic sediment on the ocean floor.  The salmon foster disease and harbor parasites, and they escape and interbreed with endangered wild salmon.  In addition, Cooke discharges trash into Maine’s waters.

“Cooke is continuously violating the Clean Water Act at its 13 active Cage Sites and related operations in Maine by adding pollutants, including but not limited to fish waste, trash, sea lice, diseases, and dead fish, to waters of the United States, and violating permit requirements related to monitoring, reporting, and Best Practicable Treatment Standards.  [formatting omitted]”

Similar problems have emerged in China, with the New York Times reporting that

“Through the 1980s and 1990s local [Chinese] governments converted tidal flats and estuaries into shrimp ponds and marine cages, building hatcheries, feed mills and export infrastructure.  But waste runoff from fish farms became a major source of pollution, degrading critical waterways, including the Yangtze River, which supplies much of the freshwater to Shanghai, and the Pearl River Delta, which supplies Hong Kong.”

Such pollution seems endemic to cage/net pen finfish aquaculture wherever it occurs and, when combined with the risk of genetic contamination when farmed fish inevitably escape and breed with native populations, or the risk of non-native fish escaping and establishing populations of invasive species that compete with native fish stocks, makes net pen finfish aquaculture a real threat to the integrity of coastal ecosystems.

However, that doesn’t mean that all aquaculture threatens native species and their habitats.

The farming of mollusks such as clams, oysters, and mussels can, for the most part, be done safely in coastal waters, as such animals can take their food directly from the water itself, filtering out the plankton that they need to survive.  The only real risks come from the farming of non-native species, which might escape and colonize an area at the expense of native species—although that risk is largely discounted by at least some experts—and from the possibility of importing parasites and/or pathogens if seed oysters or other mollusks, although of a native species, are imported from a different region.

Even finfish aquaculture can be done safely, if it is done in land-based facilities. 

China probably provides the best example of such land-based fish farms.  As described in the New York Times’ article,

“China has built its aquaculture industry even in its far northwest Xinjiang region, the most landlocked part of the planet.  Though just a tenth of Xinjiang’s 620,000 square miles are fit for human habitation, the region now hosts roughly 1,000 fish farms.  These operations, which include farms in the Taklamakan Desert, China’s largest, produce almost 200,000 tons of seafood annually: salmon, trout, crayfish, bass, carp, crab, shrimp and tilapia…

“China trumpets its success in this forbidding region—an undeniable feat.  Its state media refers to the desert fish farms as the ‘blue miracle.’  Xinjiang’s aquaculture is not just about producing fish, a column published by the state news outlet CGTN boasted in 2025, but also about the nation’s ‘protein security’ and sustaining harmony between people and nature.  ‘From snow fed rivers to desert oases,’ the column said, ‘Xinjiang has shown that blue dreams can indeed flourish on dry land.’”

While fish from the Xinjiang farms have been viewed with some concern, the worries come not from any environmental damage caused by the farms, but rather because then farms utilize excessive amounts of antimicrobials and anaesthetics, which could, in theory, create health risks for the ultimate consumers.

It is even at least possible that properly-regulated net pen aquaculture can be safely practiced.  As the article observed,

“The United States imports so much seafood in large part because American aquaculture is subject to significant oversight and regulation to protect health, safety and the environment.  Federal and state regulations dictate where fish farms can be built and the allowable levels of water quality, waste discharge, genetic modification and antibiotic use.  These operations end up paying more than their counterparts abroad for higher-quality water treatment systems and testing equipment.  Across commonly farmed seafood varieties, including salmon, shrimp, and tilapia, domestic brands consistently command a steep price premium over foreign ones—in some cases double the cost.”

Unfortunately, it is exactly those stricter regulations, which might make net pens a viable aquaculture strategy, that are targeted by Executive Order 14276, which seeks to bring down the United States’ regulatory standards to something closer to those prevailing elsewhere, and hopefully increase domestic aquaculture’s U.S. market share at the cost of degraded coastal ecosystems.

That the current administration is contemplating such measures, which would clearly constitute a fool’s bargain, somehow comes as no surprise.

 

 

 

 

EXEMPTED FISHING -PERMITS FOR SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER AGAIN FACE JUDICIAL REVIEW

 

Last May, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued exempted fishing permits to the four South Atlantic states, which would have extended the recreational red snapper season fifteen- (in Florida) to thirty-fold (in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia), and likely led to gross overfishing, while ignoring its own regulations regarding EFP issuance.  As a result, after commercial fishing interests challenged NMFS’ action, a federal district court enjoined any fishing under such permits.  The states subsequently withdrew their applications for such permits.

However, three of the states—South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida—quickly revised their permit applications, in an effort to address the issues raised by the court, and resubmitted them to NMFS.  NMFS, to no one’s surprise, issued the new exempted fishing permits in September, which will result in a 14-day red snapper season for anglers in each of the three states.

And once again, members of the commercial fishing sector, who feel their interests in the South Atlantic red snapper fishery is threatened by the issuance of the permits, are challenging NMFS’ action in court.

The new legal challenge is titled Ariel Seafoods of Florida, Inc. v. Howard Lutnick, and like the previous action, has been brought in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.  However, unlike the first action, where NMFS’ failures to comply with the law were obvious, the arguments in Ariel Seafoods are somewhat more nuanced, but nonetheless compelling. 

In both cases, the key questions are essentially the same:  Do the terms of the exempted fishing permits conflict with the explicit language of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and existing NMFS regulations?  And if they do, does that conflict invalidate the permits?

In May, the Court answered both questions in the affirmative.  Whether that will again be the case is difficult to predict.

The complaint in Ariel Seafoods makes three claims for judicial relief. 

The first claim is that

“DEFENDANTS LACK THE AUTHORITY TO ISSUE EXEMPTED FISHING PERMITS FOR SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER THAT VIOLATE STATUTORY REQUIREMENTS AND/OR DOING SO WAS ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS.”

This was a key point in the lawsuit decided last May, Southeast Fisheries Association, Inc. v Howard Lutnick, where the Court declared that

“Traditional tools of statutory analysis show that any EFPs the NMFS issues must comply with the [Magnuson-Stevens Act].  The MSA created a [c]ooperative research and management program…to address needs identified under [Chapter 38 of Title 16 of the United States Code and any other marine resource laws enforced by the Secretary of Commerce].  Chapter 38, titled ‘Fishery Conservation and Management,’ identifies several such needs…Section 1867(d) of the MSA authorizes the Secretary to issue ‘experimental permit[s].’  Under 50 C.F.R. [section] 600.745(b), the Secretary promulgated such a process.  Under that process, the Secretary may issue EFPs ‘for limited testing, public display, data collection, exploratory fishing, compensation fishing, conservation engineering, health and safety surveys, environmental cleanup, and/or hazard removal purposes,’ if a target or incidental harvest of a species managed under a fishery management plan fisheries regulation is prohibited (e.g., South Atlantic red snapper).

“Therefore, at a minimum, each EFP the agency issues—including data collection projects—must ‘address’ (i.e., ‘to give attention to or deal with a matter or problem’) the ‘needs’ (i.e., ‘necessary dut[ies] or obligation[s]’) Congress identified within Chapter 38…This is evident from the plain language of the statutes concerning EFPs, their titles, and their place within the overall statutory scheme…

“…When Congress amended MSA to create a ‘[c]ooperative research and management program,’ and directed the Secretary to create an ‘[e]xperimental fishing permitting process,’ the NMFS explained that ‘[a]ny permit issued by NMFS is a Federal action, and as such must comply with any and all applicable laws…

“…the NMFS has explicitly stated that this permit ‘does not exempt participants from the requirements of the MSA…Therefore, in addition to the relevant statutes, the Government’ [sic] own practices indicate that EFPs must be consistent with the requirements of the MSA…”

The plaintiffs in Ariel Seafoods allege that

“Under the Exempted Fishing Permits challenged in this case, South Atlantic red snapper landings in 2026 will increase substantially.  All of the increase will be recreational landings.

“Due to the increased amount of recreational landings, the commercial sector will receive around 10% of the total red snapper landings in 2026, while the recreational sector will receive around 90% of the total.

“The governing allocation ration for this fishery requires 28.07% of all landings to go to the commercial sector, and 71.93% to go to the recreational sector.  So under the Exempted Fishing Permits, the actual ratio of landings between the recreational sector and the commercial sector will depart significantly from the allocation ratio established in the [fishery management plan].

“The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires Defendants to acknowledge and analyze all allocations and reallocations, ensuring among other things that they are ‘fair and equitable…’”

The latter paragraph refers to National Standard 4, one of the National Standards for Fishery Conservation and Management contained in Magnuson-Stevens, which states, in part, that

“If it becomes necessary to allocate or assign fishing privileges among various United States fishermen, such allocation shall be fair and equitable to all such fishermen…  [formatting omitted]”

It is often difficult to determine what “fair and equitable” might mean—generally, one’s view of “fair and equitable” depends on whether the allocation provides you with more fish or less, regardless of the context—but in the case of the South Atlantic red snapper EFPs, there’s an interesting twist.

Amendment 59 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic starts out by setting an annual catch limit of 509,000 red snapper, then deducts 475,000 fish from that ACL to account for the dead discards generated by both the commercial and recreational fisheries (although the overwhelming majority of those discards are killed by recreational fishermen).  The remaining 34,000 fish are allocated between the commercial and recreational sectors based on the 28.07% commercial/71.93% recreational allocation established in the fishery management plan.

However, the exempted fishing permits abandon that approach.  In explaining its logic for allowing a 14-day recreational season, NMFS notes that it recalculated the number of red snapper attributable to dead recreational discards (after recalibrating NMFS’ Marine Recreational Information Program data to accord with data from Florida’s State Reef Fish Survey) to just 163,073 fish.  Thus, depending on whether the annual catch limit was left at its former level, but converted into State Reef Fish Survey units of 276,600 fish, or set equal to the Overfishing Limit of 299,423 fish, NMFS’ recalculation resulted in about another 68,000 or 91,000 red snapper, respectively, that could be landed by fishermen.  But while the Admendment 59 methodology would have allocated those additional fish to both the commercial and recreational sectors, based on the fishery management plan’s allocation ratio of 28.07% commercial/71.93% recreational, the exempted fishing permits allocate all of the additional landings to the recreational sector.

Whether that allocation to the recreational sector is an impermissible violation of NMFS’ fishery management plan, and/or an “unfair” reallocation of red snapper that is prohibited by National Standard 4, is one of the issues that the Court will have to decide.

Plaintiff’s second claim for relief is that

“DEFENDANTS LACK THE AUTHORITY TO MAKE SUBSTANTIVE MODIFICATIONS TO THE ANNUAL CATCH LIMIT MECHANISM FOR SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER VIA EXEMPTED FISHING PERMITS AND/OR DOING SO WAS ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS.”

Here, Plaintiffs allege one of the points noted above, that

“Defendants have changed the recreational dead discard component of the Amendment 59 annual catch limit mechanism from an off-the-top set-aside to into a pool of available landings for the recreational sector, apparently accompanied by the rule that the pool can be accessed to the extent estimated recreational dead discards from the prior year came out below the projected recreational dead discard component of the Amendment 59 annual catch limit mechanism…

“This change appears to apply for only one year, insofar as it was enacted via the Exempted Fishing Permits.

“The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires annual catch limit mechanisms to be codified in fishery management plans…

“Because Defendants’ Exempted Fishing Permits make major changes to the South Atlantic red snapper annual catch limit mechanism outside the fishery management plan, the permits are ‘in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right…

“Moreover, because Defendants’ temporary revision to the annual catch limit mechanism was invalid, the Exempted Fishing Permits end up allowing far more landings than allowed by the governing Recreational [annual catch limit], as established in Amendment 59—and in turn violate the statutory requirement for annual catch limits…  [citations and formatting omitted]”

Plaintiff’s third and final claim for relief is that

“DEFENDANTS IN ISSUING THE EXEMPTED FISHING PERMITS RELIED ON ASSUMPTIONS AND REASONING THAT DID NOT REPRESENT THE BEST SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION AVAILABLE, FAILED TO ENSURE OVERFISHING IS PREVENTED, AND/OR WERE ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS.”

This claim is based on two more National Standards for Fishery Conservation and Management, National Standard 2, which requires that

“Conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available,”

and National Standard 1, which states, in relevant part, that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing.”

While it’s usually folly to predict what any judge will do, and what arguments might capture a judge’s attention, and while the Plaintiff’s first two claims for relief certainly make valid and viable arguments, it may be that this third claim has the best chance of convincing the Court that the exempted fishing permits were issued in error.

Perhaps the most egregious flaw in the exempted fishing permit process was the fact that, in setting the catch limits for Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, and so also in setting the 14-day season, NMFS never considered the fish that were caught in Florida earlier in the year, and there is reason to believe that the number already caught might be substantial.  As reported in an article on the website floridatrib.org,

“In years past, recreational anglers have hit the annual red snapper catch limit in one weekend of fishing.  This summer’s state season ran from May 22 to July 31, and the fall season will open September 1.

“’They’ve been fishing since Memorial Day weekend, so they’ve probably blown through that limit a couple of times over if they’re fishing as hard as they could be,’ [Andrea] Treece [an attorney for Earthjustice, a non-governmental organization that specializes in environmental litigation] said.

“The legal limit has been frustrating for [Christine] Shaffer, who manages the [party boat] Canaveral Princess.  She said private anglers and other charter boat operators are landing red snapper in federal territory, and pretending they came from state waters [which may remain open for fishing when federal waters are closed].

“’They’re not even hiding it,’ she said.  ‘They’re posting it all over social media.’

“Some of her customers are demanding she do the same.  But Shaffer won’t break the rules, even though it’s costing her business.

“’You’ve got the president, the governor, all trying to say, ‘Yeah, go for it,’ but that doesn’t help people like us that are in business here 365 of the year,’ Shaffer said.  ‘We’ve got a federal fishing permit that we have to abide by, and we can’t go out and break the law like everybody else.’”

Given that NMFS, in issuing the exempted fishing permits, predicted a Florida recreational catch rate of 5,960 red snapper per day, it’s not unreasonable to assume that Florida anglers caught as many as 423,000 red snapper between May 22 and July 31, and even more after the season reopened in September, far exceeding even NMFS’ most optimistic annual catch limit for the entire year—before the exempted fishing permits ever went into effect.

Even if that figure was reduced by 75%, on the assumption that most anglers chose not to violate the law and fish in federal waters, it would still just about equal the 112,787-fish recreational catch limit for 2026.  Since that limit was set right at the Overfishing Limit, any additional red snapper caught pursuant to the exempted fishing permit would cause overfishing to occur.

Florida apparently has data that sets out the number of red snapper caught during the state’s open season but, as the Plaintiff’s complaint alleges,

“Upon information and belief, a substantial quantity of red snapper has been landed on Florida’s East Coast since May 22, 2026, whether taken in state waters or taken in federal waters and reported as state waters catch.  The annual catch limits for South Atlantic red snapper are stock-based, and include fish landed from both state and federal waters.

“Florida has acknowledged that catch estimates for this period exist from its [State Reef Fish Survey], but has refused to releuase them.  [citations and formatting omitted]”

That likelihood of overfishing probably should, in itself, be enough to cause the Court to invalidate the exempted fishing permits but, as noted earlier, it’s always difficult to predict what any court might do.

The fact that the exempted fishing permits base the 2026 annual catch limit on the Overfishing Limit, rather than on the Acceptable Biological Catch (the Overfishing Limit reduced to account for scientific uncertainty and, in this case, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s risk policy) is another red flag.

NMFS guidelines provide that

“While the [Acceptable Biological Catch] is allowed to equal [the Overfishing Limit], NMFS expects that in most cases [the Acceptable Biological Catch] will be reduced from [the Overfishing Limit] to reduce the probability that overfishing might occur.”

Moreover, the same guidelines direct that

“If a Council recommends an [Annual Catch Limit] that equals [the Acceptable Biological Catch], and [the Acceptable Biological Catch] is equal to [the Overfishing Limit], the Secretary may presume that the proposal would not prevent overfishing, in the absence of sufficient analysis and justification for the approach.”

While those guidelines don’t precisely address the current situation, where NMFS issues exempted fishing permits that include an annual catch limit equal to the Overfishing Limit, such situation is analogous enough that it is reasonable to assume that the exempted fishing permits—even without considering the Florida “state waters” landings—will also create an unacceptable risk of overfishing.

NMFS tried to justify its decision to base the annual catch limit on the Overfishing Limit, saying

“Setting the harvest level consistent with the [Overfishing Limit] would increase the risk of overfishing.  However, the stock is currently not overfished and not undergoing overfishing and at abundance levels not seen in decades.  If overfishing did occur, the risk to the stock is small because the stock is above the Minimum Stock Size Threshold (albeit not rebuilt) and a pending stock assessment will allow for new catch levels to be set in [State Reef Fish Survey] currency as early as next year,”

which may all be very good, but still fails to meet the National Standard 1 requirement that “Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing.  [emphasis added]”

The complaint also raises other data issues, including

“assuming that recreational dead discards in 2026 will equal the amount of dead disards in 2025; assuming an avoided dead discard can be substituted with a landed fish…and completely ignoring the fact that the Exempted Fishing Permits do nothing to address the central problem with recreational fishing data, which is out-of-season dead discards,”

but given the importance of the exempted fishing permits’ failure to ensure that overfishing does not occur, those other issues won’t be examined in detail here.

Thus, the stage is set for another last-minute intervention by the Court, although one must wonder whether the Court will have time to analyze the issues and intervene before the exempted fishing permits take effect. 

In the matter of Southeast Fisheries Association v. Lutnick, the exempted fishing permits were issued around May 1, the legal challenge was filed on May 5, and the Court issued its injunction on May 21, just hours before Florida’s red snapper season was to begin.

In the case of Ariel Seafood, the exempted fishing permits were issued around September 16, but the lawsuit wasn’t commenced until October 5, and the 14-day fishing season is scheduled to begin tomorrow, on October 9.  So one might reasonably ask whether the Court has enough time to read both sides’ papers and consider their arguments, do the necessary research, and write an opinion before the season begins—which means sometime tonight—or whether the Court will allow the exempted fishing permits to remain in effect, and fishing to begin, before ruling on the issues raised in the complaint.

Given that it took the Court 16 days to rule after the Southeast Fisheries Association action was filed, it might even be reasonable to wonder whether the Court will have time to rule before the 14-day season established by the exempted fishing permits is over.

Hopefully, it will, because it is fairly clear that the exempted fishing permits are less about testing alternative methods of obtaining recreational red snapper catch, landings, and effort data—after all, as the Plaintiffs noted, it doesn’t address the dead discards, the biggest component of recreational catch, at all—and more about creating a longer red snapper season that escapes the bounds set by the science-based provisions of Magnuson-Stevens.

But at this point, we can only wait and see what the Court’s decision will be.

 

NMFS RELEASES REVISED RECREATIONAL CATCH AND EFFORT ESTIMATES

On August 31, 2026, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) released revised recreational catch, landings, and effort data, which resulted from changes made to the Marine Recreational Information Program’s Fishing Effort Survey. The revised data is now available for fisheries managers to use in stock assessments and in crafting new management measures.

NMFS learned of problems with the Fishing Effort Survey in the summer of 2023, after a pilot study determined that some anglers were overstating the number of fishing trips that they took during each two-month “wave” used by the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) to compile recreational catch, landings, and effort data.

Because the MRIP methodology multiplies the estimated number of trips taken by anglers, derived from the Fishing Effort Survey, by the average number of fish of various species caught by anglers on each trip, a figure derived from the separate Access Point Angler Intercept Survey, to estimate the overall number of fish of each species that are caught, landed, or released, anglers overstating the number of fishing trips taken will result in the catch, landings, and release estimates being overstated as well.

NMFS has revised the Fishing Effort Survey’s format, to make overreporting effort far less likely, and has revised the catch, landings, and effort data to adjust for overreporting in the past. The size of the downward revisions differs from species to species, but were often substantial. Total striped bass catch in 2024, for example, fell from an original estimate of 20,822,514 fish to a revised estimate of just 14,323,640, a reduction of 31.2%; live striped bass releases went from the original estimate of 19,093,770 to a revised estimate of 13,111,145, a 31.3% reduction.

Summer flounder, on the other hand, showed a much smaller reduction, with the original catch estimate of 29,993,105 fish revised downward by only 6.88%, to 27,929,969 fish.

The magnitude of the revisions can also vary widely by state. So, while the revised estimate of 2024 summer flounder catch for all of New England and the mid-Atlantic was only 6.88% lower than the original estimate, in New York, the difference was much greater, with an original catch estimate of 11,759,579 fish revised downward to 9,141,822, a reduction of 22.3%, more than three times greater than the coastwide revision.

The big question is what happens next.

In its August 31 release, NMFS advised that “This data revision does not trigger immediate fisheries management changes or adjustments to catch limits. NOAA Fisheries and regional partners will begin integrating the improved data into prioritized stock assessments to help determine the health of stocks and provide new management advice, if warranted, through standard public processes.”

But that measured response doesn’t change the fact that the new data will be used in some of the highest-visibility and most politically charged stock assessments on the East Coast, including the pending assessment of South Atlantic red snapper and the 2027 benchmark stock assessment for Atlantic striped bass. The revised data will also be used in the planned 2027 management track stock assessments for summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass, which will be used to determine 2028 and 2029 recreational management measures. In the case of bluefish, the revised data will be used in a 2027 management track stock assessment that will determine whether that once-overfished stock has been fully rebuilt; if it has, the same assessment will be used to set recreational management measures for the 2028 and 2029 fishing years.

So there will be a lot of eyes focused on those assessments, and on the impact that the revised data will have. Some members of the recreational fishing community are undoubtedly ready to condemn the data if it results in more restrictive regulations, and to reluctantly praise it if it allows higher harvests. Others are just watching to see how things go.

Some recreational fishermen, and some members of the recreational fishing industry, believe that the revised recreational landings data show that past and current regulations were too restrictive, and that the new data will allow managers to adopt more liberal rules. We saw an example of that at the September 15 meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council (MRAC), when two MRAC members, both representing the recreational fishing industry, complained about the supposed harm done to their businesses by the overestimates of recreational landings, with one even talking about the possibility of a lawsuit against NMFS for the economic harm caused by the resulting management measures.

They were missing a very important point. The fact that recreational removals were less than originally estimated doesn’t mean that regulations had been too restrictive, for those estimates of recreational landings and release mortality are fed into the stock assessment models, and the models’ response isn’t necessarily what people expect it to be.

The 2018 benchmark assessment for Atlantic striped bass provides a perfect example.

In 2018, biologists faced a situation that was just the opposite of the one that they’re confronting today. The current Fishing Effort Survey had just been introduced, and the data that it was producing indicated that anglers were making more trips, and catching and keeping more fish, than previously believed.

In the case of striped bass, the new survey revealed that landings were 160% higher than managers had thought, while overall recreational catch was 140% higher. When that information was fed into the stock assessment model, the estimate of spawning stock biomass (SSB) didn’t decrease, as one might intuitively expect if more fish were removed from the population, but rather increased from the 58,200 metric tons estimated in the 2013 benchmark assessment to 68,476 metric tons in 2018. The reference points used to determine the health of the stock, which are based on the estimated SSB in 1995, were also revised, with the SSB target, defined as 125% of 1995 SSB, increasing from 72,032 to 114,295 metric tons. The SSB threshold, which defines an overfished stock and is equal to the estimate of 1995 SSB, was increased from 57,600 metric tons in 2013 to 91,436 metric tons in 2018, as the 1995 data was recalculated to reflect the new understanding of recreational catch and landings in that year.

Thus, just as SSB estimates for striped bass, as well as some other species, increased more-or-less proportionately to the increase in estimated recreational landings, it is possible that, when the lower estimates of recreational catch and landings are used in upcoming stock assessments, they will result in lower estimates of SSB, and lower SSB target and threshold reference points, than exist today. In such cases, if recreational landings and the estimate of SSB both decline by roughly the same percentage, there may well be no need to adjust recreational management measures at all.

However, we shouldn’t assume that the SSB estimate will always decline in proportion to the lower, revised recreational catch and landings estimates. When I asked a biologist employed by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, at the same September 15 MRAC meeting mentioned above, whether SSB estimates would necessarily decline in concert with catch and landings estimates, she properly chose not to answer, noting that recreational catch and landings are only one of many inputs into stock assessment models, and the results of the assessment can’t be predicted by the decline in recreational removals alone.

However, in those cases where estimates of SSB and estimates of recreational catch and landings move together, some interesting questions related to the commercial fishery arise.

Commercial quotas, as calculated for most species (but not for striped bass), allow the commercial fishing sector to remove a fixed percentage of a fish population each year. So, if the estimate of SSB for any species is too high, as a result of overestimates of recreational catch and landings skewing the stock assessment, the commercial quota for that species will probably be too high as well and, through no fault of the commercial fishermen, lead to too many fish being removed from the population.

There is also another way that the revised recreational data could impact the commercial fishery.
After the Fishing Effort Survey was first put in place, and past landings data was recalculated to conform to that survey’s results, NMFS learned that historical recreational landings, which were used to set the commercial/recreational allocation, were higher than previously believed. As a result, some regional fishery management councils adjusted commercial/recreational allocations to reflect the recalculated historical landings.

In 2022, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council took that approach, adopting the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Commercial/Recreational Allocation Amendment, which used the recalculated historical landings to increase the recreational share of summer flounder from 40 to 45 percent, increase the recreational share of scup from 22 to 35 percent, and increase the recreational share of black sea bass from 51 to 55 percent. Other regional fishery management councils took a similar approach with other species.

Now that the new Fishing Effort Survey estimates indicate that recreational landings were not as high as previously believed, it would not be inappropriate for commercial fishing interests to ask that the current recreational allocations to be reduced, to reflect what now appears to be that sector’s true historical share.

It will be a while before fishermen and fisheries managers know exactly how NMFS’ revisions of the Fishing Effort Survey data will impact the management process. There will probably be some surprises along the way, and it’s a safe bet that not everyone will be happy with all of the changes that result. But whatever form that impact takes, stakeholders should view those revisions as an improvement that will provide more precise data to make science-based fisheries management more effective, and better ensure that the nation’s marine fisheries will be sustainable throughout the foreseeable future.

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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/