REGIONAL FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCILS: "A FAIR AND BALANCED APPORTIONMENT"

 

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act states that

“it is therefore declared to be the purposes of the Congress in this Act…to establish Regional Fishery Management Councils to exercise sound judgment in the stewardship of fishery resources through the stewardship of fishery resources through the preparation, monitoring, and revision of [fishery management] plans under circumstances (A) which will enable the States, the fishing industry, consumer and environmental organizations, and other interested persons to participate in, and advise on, the establishment and administration of such plans, and (B) which take into account the social and economic needs of the States.  [formatting omitted]”

To help achieve that purpose, Magnuson-Stevens further provides,

“The Secretary [of Commerce], in making appointments [to the regional fishery management councils], shall, to the extent practicable, ensure a fair and balanced apportionment, on a rotating or other basis, of the active participants (or their representatives) in the commercial and recreational fisheries under the jurisdiction of the Council…[T]he Secretary shall submit to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries of the House of Representatives [an annual] report on the actions taken by the Secretary to ensure that such fair and balanced apportionment is achieved.  The report shall (i) list the fisheries under the jurisdiction of each Council, outlining for each fishery the type and quantity of fish harvested, fishing and processing methods employed, the number of participants, the duration and range of the fishery, and other distinguishing characteristics; (ii) assess the membership of each Council in terms of the apportionment of the active participants in each fishery; and (iii) state the Secretary’s plans and schedule for actions to achieve a fair and balanced apportionment on the Council for the active participants in any such fishery.  [emphasis added, formatting omitted]”

It is a requirement that often seems to be honored more in the breach than in practice.  Few regional fishery management councils have a truly “fair and balanced apportionment” of council seats among the various subsectors of the commercial and recreational fisheries, although the nature of the imbalance is different on different councils.

Thus, in the House of Representatives, Congressman Nick Begich (R-AK) recently introduced H.R. 8598, the “North Pacific Fishery Management Council Representation Enhancement Act of 2026.”  He explained,

“The North Pacific Fishery Management Council was established to advance policies in the interest of all user groups across our fisheries.  In Alaska, many different user groups rely on the same resource, and we need to make sure every one of them has a seat at the table.  Ensuring balanced representation is critical to addressing broader challenges facing Alaskan fisheries, including declining abundance.  This bill is about restoring balance, strengthening accountability, and making sure fisheries management works for all Alaskans.”

 A press release announcing the legislation’s introduction stated that

“The bill amends…Magnuson-Stevens…to require that Alaska’s appointments to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) include representation from recreational fishing, small-scale commercial fishing, and subsistence user groups.

“The NPFMC plays a central role in managing fisheries in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska.  However, concerns have grown that current council composition does not adequately reflect the full scale of Alaska’s fishing communities, including subsistence users, small boat fishermen, and recreational stakeholders…

“The bill directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…to develop guidelines to verify representation and implement the changes, with new requirements taking effect for future council appointments.”

The motivation for the new bill was undoubtedly the ongoing debate over the bycatch and resultant dead discards of salmon, halibut, various crabs, and other living marine resources by large factory trawlers that target walleye pollock in a high-volume but low-value (per pound) fishery that is the largest commercial fishery in the nation.  As reported by National Fishermen in a 2023 article,

“Amid widespread consternation about the incidental numbers of halibut, crab, salmon, and other species that trawlers haul up in the Bering Sea, state and federal management regimes have come under increasing fire.

“To some, inaction by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to impose trawl bycatch caps on salmon and crab demands an overhaul of the 11-member panel that votes on management strategies submitted to the Department of Commerce…

“David Bayes, a charter boat operator out of Homer [Alaska] and the Facebook administrator of STOP Trawling Now, says that it wasn’t the original plan of the council’s founders to stack the panel with members whose conflicts of interest could undermine other facets of fisheries management.  But he adds that it evolved quickly as various sectors in the industry scrambled for representation and votes in key fisheries issues.

“’If one looks back at the verbiage and intent when the regional councils were formed through the Magnuson-Stevens Act, once sees that the lawmakers at the time had the forward thinking to realize that in order for dynamic and ever-changing fisheries to be regulated, they would need to be regulated by the fishermen themselves.’

“Bayes adds that conflict of interest was acceptable at the time the councils were founded, ‘because that was the only way to have fishermen regulating fishermen.’

“But competition for representation among Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, and conflicts among gear types quickly changed who was placed in the seats and left the fishermen behind.

“’They’re bringing the heaviest hitters they can find, which are often government officials, CEOs, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-political staff, etcetera,’ says Bayes.”

Similar appointment and representation problems exist on every state, although the precise form that they take can differ.

In New England, for example, the appointed members of the New England Fishery Management Council include seven who are either commercial fishermen or closely allied with the commercial fishing industry, three charter boat operators, and two members of the marine conservation community.  There are no private anglers (that is, anglers who fish solely for recreation and/or personal use, and have no business connection to the fishery) at all.  Commercial fishermen, provided that they have the support of just half of the state and federal government seats, can dictate the outcome of any vote.

Along the Gulf of Mexico, the eleven appointed members of the Gulf Fishery Management Council have a very different look.  There, six members are recreational fishermen or closely tied to the recreational fishing industry (including one legislative affairs specialist who serves as a consultant for the Center for Sportfishing Policy and an academic who sits on the Coastal Conservation Association’s Board of Directors), just two are commercial fishermen, two are academics (one of whom describes himself as a “lifelong recreational fisherman” while the other is “an avid recreational fisherman, licensed captain, and co-owner of a seafood market), and one member is both a recreational for-hire captain and a commercial fishermen.

It’s thus probably not surprising that most votes at the Gulf Council tend to favor the recreational sector.

Here in New York, we have a very active recreational fishery, with four important recreational species—bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass—managed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, acting cooperatively with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.  Over the past five years—2021 through 2025—New York anglers have actively pursued all four species, taking an estimated total of 6,398,348 trips primarily targeting bluefish, 13,495,821 targeting summer flounder, 6,696,384 targeting scup, and 2,108,877 targeting black sea bass.  The fishery has been dominated by private anglers, fishing either from shore or from their own vessels, who were responsible for 99.8% of all bluefish trips, 96.8% of all trips primarily targeting summer flounder, 96.3% of all trips targeting scup, and 92.9% of all trips targeting black sea bass.

Yet, since I stepped down from my at-large seat on the Mid-Atlantic Council in 2005, New York has not had a single private angler hold a Council seat.  In over two decades, the recreational seats have been held either by for-hire operators or by individuals closely allied with the for-hire industry or, in one instance, by a former state fisheries manager.

While I can’t say that New York’s private anglers—who unquestionably dominate its recreational fishery—have been completely unrepresented on the Mid-Atlantic Council, as the state’s fisheries managers have always done a reasonably good job of representing everyone’s interests, the lack of private anglers on the Mid-Atlantic Council representing New York, or any other Mid-Atlantic state, hardly represents the kind of “fair and balanced apportionment” of seats, either from New York or on the Mid-Atlantic Council as a whole, contemplated by Magnuson-Stevens.

When the people holding the recreational seats from any given state, or on the Council as a whole, only represent those making—to be very generous—5% of the recreational trips for Council-managed species, something is definitely very, very wrong.

And we should never pretend that the interests and the objectives of the private anglers and the for-hire fleet is the same. 

In the Mid-Atlantic, we only need to look at the current efforts to draft a “Recreational Sector Separation Amendment, that

“may consider managing for-hire recreational fisheries separately from other recreational fishing modes.”

That’s carefully worded language that doesn’t assume any particular outcome should the proposed amendment be adopted, but anyone following the process knows that the for-hire operators are looking for special privileges for their customers, that will allow them to take more and/or smaller fish, perhaps during a longer season, than those allowed to the private anglers that make up most of the fishery.

Since there is only a single recreational allocation, and both private and for-hire anglers take their fish out of the same allotted pool—at various meetings, the for-hire members sitting on the Council have made it abundantly clear that they don’t want a fixed quota for their sector alone— if the for-hire fleet is gifted with regulations that allow their customers to take more fish home, everyone else in the fishery are going to have to get a little less, for fishery management is, in the end, a zero-sum game; when someone wins, by getting more fish, someone else must lose and give up some part of their share.

But when private anglers have no effective representation on the Council, there’s nobody to object when they end up on the losing end.

In the Gulf of Mexico, we see something happening that is the mirror image of what’s going on in the Mid-Atlantic.

Sector separation already exists in the Gulf red snapper fishery.  It was adopted a number of years ago in response to chronic overfishing by private red snapper anglers, who exerted enough political pressure on their states to extend state-waters red snapper seasons, and so reduce the federal waters season to just three days—remember, it is a zero-sum game—which would be the kiss of death for the federally permitted for-hire fleet.  In order to protect the for-hires from the excesses of the private boats, the Gulf Fisheries Management Council (then called the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council, although that name has since been changed for political reasons) established a separate sub-quota for the for-hire industry.

Since then, the Council adopted Amendment 50 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico, which allows states limited flexibility to set regulations for their private boat recreational red snapper fishery, so long as those regulations constrain each state to its federally-established recreational quota.  But the for-hire red snapper fishery remained the exclusive domain of federal fisheries managers.

Now, the private angler-dominated Gulf Council is considering a new Amendment 64:  Delegation of the Federal For-Hire Management Authority for Red Snapper to the Gulf States, which would allocate the for-hire red snapper quota among the states, and allow states the same sort of limited regulatory flexibility that they currently have in the private boat fishery.

While that might seem benign on its face, for-hire operators are concerned that it will both allow some states to take advantage of others, stealing a portion of their for-hire quota, and possibly even provide a means for states to give some of what are now for-hire fish to private boat anglers.  As explained by long-time for-hire operator Gary Jarvis, of Destin, Florida,

“It became abundantly clear that this was about a fish grab.  The draft document provided alternatives for how the allocation would disseminate to each state’s for-hire fleet, and was determined on EACH STATE’S OWN REPORTED LANDINGS.

“The state of Louisiana was not satisfied with this breakdown, so they proposed a new methodology.  The new methodology would move fish from the eastern gulf into the western gulf.  It would reduce Florida’s fleet percentage from over 48% of the federal for-hire allocation to over 38%.  This literally shows they want to control the federal for-hire fleet but it would not be enough fish for what they want out of the document or…they did not report the correct amount of fish in the first place.  That is the reality of this document…

“When it came to public testimony, to call it anything less than ass whipping would be an understatement.  Federally permitted for-hire fishermen and women from Florida (Ft. Myers, Tampa, Big Bend, Panama City, and Destin), Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas all gave public comment stating they wanted nothing to do with state management of the Gulf federally permitted fleet.  The only person who gave testimony in favor of it was the executive director of the Louisiana Charter Boat Association.

“This association is funded by the State of Louisiana, through a percentage of every fishing license sale in the state, via a department which is tremendously influenced by CCA.  The executive director could not get a single one of their members to give testimony in favor of this, despite never having fished professionally or in control of any federal permits…”

Given the antipathy the for-hire fleet seems to have for the proposed amendment, it’s pretty clear that the amendment is being shoved down their throats by representatives of the private boat fishery.

So, while the precise details differ from council to council, the underlying theme remains the same—Magnuson-Stevens’ requirement for “fair and balanced apportionment” of council seats is being ignored just about everywhere when appointments to the regional fishery management councils.

Although there might be a handful of exceptions, council seats are typically awarded to those who are supported by organizations that have the right political connections and make the right contributions to the right parties and elected officials at the right time.  Experience in and knowledge of the fishery means far less than experience in and knowledge of how to bend the political process to a sector’s or subsector’s advantage.  Depending on the council involved, small-boat commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, for-hire operators, subsistence fishermen, conservation interests, and others who lack the needed political clout in a particular region might all find themselves marginalized and their concerns ignored by representatives of more powerful special interests.

Whether one is dealing with the North Pacific, New England, Mid-Atlantic, Gulf, or any other regional fisheries management council, the situation remains the same..

Thus, Congressmen Begich’s bill makes a lot of sense.  But assuring fair and balanced apportionment shouldn’t be limited to Alaska and the North Pacific Council.

What we really need is legislation that will make it a reality on every coast of the United States.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAGNUSON-STEVENS AT 50: CAN IT STILL DO ITS JOB?

 

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act turned 50 years old on April 13.  At the time, when foreign factory trawlers could still fish just 12 miles of the United States’ shores, putting multiple fish stocks in peril, the law, as it was amended from time to time over the intervening years, represented a revolutionary step forward in the annals of fisheries management. 

Since its passage, and particularly since it was amended by the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006, the law has resulted in science-based, legally-enforceable fishery management plans for over 450 separate fish stocks.  Since 2000, thanks to Magnuson-Stevens, 52 once overfished stocks have been completely rebuilt.

Still, no law is perfect.  Problems remain.  As someone who has participated in the recreational New England groundfish fishery for virtually all of my life, I am all too sadly aware of the collapse of the southern New England stocks of winter flounder and Atlantic cod, collapses that the various provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, no matter how well conceived, were unable to prevent.  I remember the vast spring runs of Atlantic mackerel that no longer occur off my local shores; remember January days spent on a pier, enjoying runs of Atlantic herring that have since disappeared, and lament the loss of the inshore fishery for whiting (more properly, silver hake) that used to fill the New York Bight with life every winter.

Magnuson-Stevens faces challenges that were never contemplated back in 1976, a warming ocean, and resultant shifting stocks, probably first among them.

Thus, it may be time to consider how Magnuson-Stevens, and the regulations promulgated thereunder, must adapt, if the statute is to remain the most expansive and effective fisheries management law in place anywhere in the world.

Recently, the Ocean Conservancy has done just that, issuing a report titled “Drifting Off Course:  Challenges in U.S. Fisheries Management and Charting a Path Forward.”  The report’s introduction notes

“In many ways, the [Magnuson-Stevens Act] has been a success story, having rebuilt over 50 fish stocks and driven overfishing down to historic lows.

“However, a lot has changed for the ocean in the last 50 years, and new challenges are developing that will push our fisheries to their limits.  From marine heatwaves to degraded habitats, the fish and ecosystems that millions of Americans rely on are under stress.  At the same time, management shortcomings, economic vulnerabilities, food insecurity, lower investment in research, and technology advancements are colliding with long-standing conservation and management challenges like bycatch and continued overfishing.

“It’s clear that business as usual is not enough to guarantee abundant fish populations that can support coastal communities and fisheries.  The future of fisheries—and the health of our ocean—for the next five decades will depend on tackling the challenges we face today.”

The Ocean Conservancy report is 28 pages long, far too long to analyze in a single blog post.  I couldn’t even do it justice if I tried to provide a summary; you ought to just click on the link that I provided above and read the whole thing for yourself. 

Right now, I’ll just hit some of the high points.

The first section of the report is

“Failure to Rebuild Many Overfished Stocks,”

although the section’s scope is broader than that; it makes the important point that managers shouldn’t just be focusing on recovering stocks that have already become overfished.  Instead, they ought to

“Act early before rebuilding is necessary.”

Or course, that’s easier said than done, because as soon as managers suggest any cuts in commercial or recreational landings to head off a stock decline, all of the industry spokesmen turn out, as well as the commercial fishermen, for-hire operators, and tackle shop owners, to declare that the stock isn’t overfished yet, and that managers shouldn’t reduce their incomes and put them out of business (“You’re going to put me out of business” is one of the most-repeated claims at fisheries hearings; I’ve attended such events for many decades now, and have heard the same individuals repeatedly make that very claim, sometimes over the course of twenty years or more), to the point that it’s often easier, and far more politically expedient, for fisheries managers to wait until a stock really does become overfished before taking meaningful action, and then blame the resulting harvest reductions on the provisions of Magnuson-Stevens.

As the Ocean Conservancy observes,

“Managers are required to manage stocks to avoid the need to rebuild in the first place but rarely take such actions.  When a stock begins to decline, taking action to halt that trend is important to avoid the complex management that rebuilding requires.”

That’s all true and sensible, but when the debates over “my right to earn a living” and “angler access” to fish begin, truth and common sense quickly vacate the room.  And that leads to another issue:  Even when action is taken, whether to rebuild an overfished stock or to prevent further stock decline, such action is often incremental, with only the minimum 50% probability of success, in an effort to minimize the economic and social harm to the fishing community.

Unfortunately, such minimal efforts often fail, and end up causing more harm in the end, as one reduction in landings doesn’t get the job done, so fishermen are forced to reduce repeated cuts to catch and income that are never quite enough to get rebuilding underway, but erode faith in and support for the management system.

The New England cod fishery may be the best example of that sort of ineffective management.

For, as the report notes,

“…42 stocks remain overfished.  Many of those stocks that need to rebuild are still experiencing overfishing despite legal requirements that management should end overfishing immediately.  In a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) analysis, 65% of stocks in rebuilding plans had flat or decreasing population estimates.  When rebuilding plans fail, stocks remain at reduced abundance, increasing the economic strain on communities.”

The answer to that is very simple in principle although, in practice, hard to implement due to commercial and recreational industry resistance:

“To get rebuilding back on track, managers must act more decisively, while accounting for climate change and human-caused impacts to stocks, to end overfishing through improved rebuilding plans.  Ultimately, rebuilt fish stocks must remain a central goal of fisheries management in order to maintain fishing opportunities for coastal communities.”

In that context, one big threat to rebuilding tends to fly under the radar, at least in the minds of the public at large, and is the subject of the report’s second section:

“High Demand from Recreational Fisheries.”

It’s not something that the public—or most recreational fishermen—spend much time thinking about. 

They picture a recreational fisherman as someone who ventures out on his or her local waters, often with family in tow, hoping to catch a few fish for dinner, while often catching nothing at all.  That image is in sharp contrast to their idea of commercial fishing, in which industrial-scale trawlers spend weeks out at sea, sweeping the ocean bottom with nets that engulf and kill anything that they encounter.  In their minds, recreational fisherman can never do the same harm to fish stocks that is caused by the commercial fleet.

And the funny thing about that is that those mental constructs are both completely accurate and very wrong, all at the same time.

Because it’s true that there are big commercial vessels out there, like the factory trawlers working off Alaska, that collectively catch not only three billion pounds of their target species, walleye pollock, each year, but also about of 140,000,000 pounds of unwanted bycatch, including valuable species such as halibut and salmon, which are discarded dead and wasted.  But much commercial fishing is conducted at a far smaller scale.  It’s also true that individual recreational fishermen don’t kill very many fish on any one trip, and often don’t kill any at all; however, those individual anglers took nearly 195,000,000 fishing trips last year, and even if they only took home, on average, two or three or four fish on every trip, the total number of fish that they killed can add up pretty fast.

Plus, recreational fishermen tend to focus on a relatively small number of species, which are often at relatively high trophic levels and thus naturally low levels of abundance.  While commercial fleets may target things like walleye pollock, witch flounder, yellowtail flounder, menhaden, squid, monkfish, and other species that are not frequently caught by anglers, recreational fishermen target species such as summer flounder, red snapper, Pacific halibut, bluefin tuna, etc., which are also commercially important.  In some fisheries, recreational landings far outweigh commercial removals.

Thus, recreational fishing can be a very substantial source of fishing mortality.  As the report notes,

“managing saltwater recreational fisheries can be uniquely challenging, especially as coastal populations have increased by 40% over the past 50 years.  The number of individual angler trips has increased over time, anglers are geographically distributed rather than consolidated in commercial fishing ports, and anglers’ catch heads home in coolers instead of into a fish house.  Despite the small-scale impact of each individual angler, the cumulative effect of recreational fishing on the health of fish stocks can be very large.  In the Southeast, recreational fisheries are allocated more than half of the catch for many popular stocks, such as greater amberjack (80%) and gag grouper (65%) in the Gulf [of Mexico], as well as red snapper (71.93%), red grouper (56%) and most of the porgy complex in the South Atlantic.

“As a result, managers struggle to sustainably manage recreational fisheries that are largely open access, constrained only by measures such as season length and limits on daily catch.  In some fisheries, the recreational sector routinely exceeds its annual catch limit.  Some anglers are dissatisfied with management and want more opportunities to fish, creating pressure to allow catch above sustainable limits.”

The latter problem has become particularly acute in recent years, as recreational fishing industry-aligned groups such as the Center for Sportfishing Policy, American Sportfishing Association, and Coastal Conservation Association have aggressively attacked the federal fisheries management system in an effort to increase recreational landings.

The Ocean Conservancy report recognizes the need for better recreational data collection, and better cooperation between management bodies.  It also recognizes that

“Managers must ensure that recreational fishing is managed consistently with requirements to prevent catch from exceeding annual sustainable limits, which means that greater consideration of precautionary management tools—such as buffers that account for the uncertainty inherent in managing open access fisheries—is necessary.”

Yet it is rare for managers to do so in the real world.  Even though the recreational fishing industry often complains about recreational fishing data, calling the Marine Recreational Information Program a “suspect data system,” and even though guidelines adopted by the National Marine Fisheries Service call for fisheries managers to account for such management uncertainty either when setting the annual sector catch limit or by adopting a lower annual catch target, the adoption of such buffers for management uncertainty is often eschewed as managers try to placate the recreational industry by setting catch limits as high as is legally permissible.

The result is often landings that exceed the recreational sector’s annual catch limit.

Few would disagree with the premise that the way to reduce both scientific and management uncertainty in fisheries management is to improve the level of fisheries science, and so provide better data relating to both the biology of fish stocks and the sources and magnitude of commercial and recreational fishing mortality.  Unfortunately, the trend has been in the opposite direction, with an administration that is actively crippling the data-gathering process.  Thus, another one of the problems cited in the report was the

“Lack of Investment in Science, Data and Traditional Knowledge.”

For, as the report observes,

“Since early 2025, NOAA Fisheries lost nearly 550 employees of the approximately 3,000 that were at the agency previously, and many of those were career scientists at the NOAA Fisheries Science Centers.”

It explains,

“The [Magnuson-Stevens Act] requires the best scientific information available to be used to set fishing limits, which has helped to reduce overfishing and rebuild stocks.  Conducting scientific research and data collection takes resources—people, time, equipment and facilities—and the science supporting fisheries management is underfunded and under-resourced.  Recent…cuts, along with long-standing gaps in support, mean that it is increasingly difficult to deliver the core information needed to manage fisheries.  This comes at a time when innovative approaches to modeling, data collection and forecasting are all available to be implemented but can’t get off the ground due to lack of investment.  As the marine environment continues to experience more rapid and less predictable changes, the need for investment in science and surveys to quickly identify and respond to ecological shifts is greater now than it has ever been.”

The problem is that the administration, and some members of Congress, prefer ignorance to paying the costs of good science.  Still, about eight weeks ago, I spent a few days on Capitol Hill, visiting various offices and advocating for adequate funding for fisheries management; many of those I spoke with provided a sympathetic hearing.

We can only hope that translates into a good appropriations bill.

But as long as we’re on the subject of political interference with good fisheries management, we probably ought to look at one more section of the report,

“Deregulation and Poor Governance,”

which is separate from, but closely tied to, the funding cuts.  As the report notes,

“instead of tackling the modern-day challenges, there is a concerning trend to turn away from the best practices that we know deliver sustainable fisheries.”

The problems stem from a couple of executive orders signed a little over a year ago.

One, Executive Order 14219, “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Deregulatory Initiative,” was intended to

“commence the deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.”

Needless to say, such executive order was not particularly conservation-friendly, and did not make it any easier to adopt precautionary management measures or rebuild fish stocks.  However, the more direct threat to fisheries was probably posed by a second executive order, signed on April 17 of last year, “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness,” which railed against

“Federal overregulation [that] has restricted fishermen from productively harvesting American seafood, including through restrictive catch limits, selling our fishing grounds to foreign offshore wind companies, inaccurate and outdated fisheries data, and delayed adoption of modern technology,”

and declared as policy to

“unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulation.”

The combination of deregulation and defunding pose an existential threat to good fisheries management and to fisheries that are sustainable in the long term.

The report states that

“NOAA Fisheries and some of the [regional fishery management] councils are now acting to remove stocks from federal management, citing time and resource constraints.  Stocks removed from management could be handed over to the states, removed from management protections altogether, or retained within the federal system as ‘ecosystem component species’ that have few or no management safeguards in place.

“Moving stocks to state management comes with risk.  Fish stocks that are solely managed by states have lower management intensity, more uncertainty as to the status of stock heath and weaker management requirements…And most [states] do not have best-practice requirements to end overfishing and rebuild stocks.”

The report goes on to note that

“Negative perceptions of regulation, combined with the inherent challenges of managing so many different types of fishing, have led to efforts to add ‘more flexibility’ to fishery management or to ‘deregulate’ fisheries…Rolling back important regulations risks the long-term health of economically important stocks.  Flexibility and deregulation also carry a high risk of unintended consequences…”

It also offers solutions for the deregulation problem, but we have to ask whether, in the current political climate, any such solutions would be given due consideration; it is very possible that the essential prerequisites for any meaningful solutions being adopted will come from the ballot box, first in the 2026 midterm elections, and then in the general election in ’28.

The Ocean Conservancy report also addresses other issues, including “Persistent Bycatch,” Habitat Loss and Ecosystem Degradation,” “Changing Ocean Conditions and More Frequent Disasters,” and “Economic Vulnerability of Fishing Communities,” which I chose not to address in this essay, primarily because, except for bycatch, they are symptoms of problems that extend far beyond the fisheries management arena; they are problems that Magnuson-Stevens alone cannot solve.

And bycatch, although within Magnuson-Stevens’ ambit, has proven to be a pernicious problem that can only be solved with the right combination of science, technology, and the political will to stand up to the people doing the harm, a political will that has been notably absent on most occasions.

I remember when Magnuson-Stevens, then merely called the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, was signed into law.  I was in my senior year of college, heading on to law school, and already developing an interest in fisheries management issues.  At the time, Magnuson-Stevens held substantial promise.

It has fulfilled that promise, and perhaps done a bit better than that, as later amendments strengthened its conservation measures.  Over the past 50 years, the law has served us well, and continues to form a firm framework to ensure healthy fisheries for a half-century more.

But Magnuson-Stevens can’t do it all by itself.  Provided that it isn’t further weakened by more special-interest amendments like the so-called Modern Fish Act, which serve to undercut the law’s clear requirements for science-driven fisheries management, the next challenges to the statute are more likely to be found not in the legislature, but in administrative agencies that make permissive interpretations of the statute, and issue regulations that fail to protect and restore the nation’s living marine resources.

As is happening now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WESTERN ATLANTIC REGULATIONS MAY THE THE KEY TO HEALTHY BLUEFIN TUNA STOCKS

 

We’ve known for a long time that Atlantic bluefin tuna migrations are complex, with fish spawned into the Mediterranean Sea traveling into North American waters, while fish spawned off North America were thought to cross the ocean to swim off European shores.  Now, thanks to a recent paper published by a team of scientists led by Dr. Barbara A. Block of Stanford University’s Department of Biology and Department of Oceans, we also know that the bluefins’ sojourns to the western Atlantic may be particularly important to tuna stocks’ health.

“Ensuring the future of Atlantic bluefin tuna,” which appeared in the April 20, 2026 volume of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reviews three decades of archival, satellite, and acoustic tagging data, and advises

“that exploitation of Med-spawning fish, particularly on the spawning grounds, may impact all fisheries in the North Atlantic basin through their extensive distributional range,”

and also that

“Shifting selectivity to older year classes releases juvenile bluefin from the Med to the higher productivity of the North Atlantic, where they experience multiple years of growth and lower fishing mortality before returning to their spawning grounds.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued a press release heralding the research, in which Eugenio Pineiro Soler, NOAA’s Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, was quoted as saying,

“Management of this internationally shared resource requires high quality scientific information—and this work provides one example of that.  This research addresses one of the primary sources of uncertainty surrounding the amount of mixing and movement occurring between these two stocks.  This is a critical piece of information needed to inform sustainable yield advice.”

The cross-ocean movements of Atlantic bluefin have long been an issue for not only scientists and fisheries managers, but anglers and commercial fishermen as well; there has always been the questions of whether restrictive regulations constraining harvest of the western stock might be frustrated when tuna cross into the eastern Atlantic, where more permissive management measures prevail, and whether the relatively small United States quota makes sense in the face of the far higher quotas awarded to nations that fish in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic.

The new paper answers those questions, noting that

“electronic tagging results for adolescent and mature fish indicate that the Med stock subsidizes the North American fisheries and, importantly, exploitation of Med spawning fish, particularly on the Med spawning grounds, impacts all [Atlantic bluefin tuna] fisheries in the North Atlantic.”

As NMFS explains,

“The results show that many bluefin tuna move from eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean waters to the western Atlantic to forage and grow.  These fish often remain in the west for several years before returning to the Mediterranean Sea or spawning in the Slope Sea.  Tagging also demonstrated that adult fish tagged in the U.S. and Canadian waters move back to the Mediterranean to spawn and often return the following year to the western Atlantic to forage along the U.S. eastern seaboard.  Importantly, bluefin tuna that originated in the western Atlantic, however, tend to stay west of the 45^oW management line.”

The reason that eastern stock bluefin often migrate into western Atlantic waters appears to be food, with NMFS suggesting that

“Tuna are likely heading west to find and feed on vital prey such as Atlantic mackerel, Atlantic herring, and menhaden, which are abundant in U.S. and Canadian waters.”

But regardless of why many of the eastern stock bluefin move west, the movements of the eastern and western stocks make it clear that management measures intended to protect the western stock bluefin are not compromised by significant numbers of those fish traveling to eastern Atlantic water.  However, the many eastern stock bluefin that enter the western Atlantic also receive such measures’ protection, to the benefit of both North American fishermen and the bluefin themselves.

The paper notes that the eastern stock is thought to be about 10 times as large as the western stock, although there is substantial uncertainty surrounding that number, and that the total allowable catch for the eastern stock is 40,570 metric tons, compared to just 2,726 metric tons for the western stock.  Fishing activity in the eastern Atlantic was and is also much more intense, with the paper stating that

“From 1990 to the mid-2000s, estimated fishing mortality F was, adjusting for underreporting, typically 0.15 to 0.20 [or, very approximately, 15% of the population removed each year] for eastern juveniles (ages 2 to 5) and 0.3 to 0.4 [roughly 25 to 35 percent annual removals] for large individuals 9age 10+), concentrated primarily in the Med.  This period of heightened catch did not occur in the west…or north…, meaning that migrating to the West or North Atlantic provided eastern [Atlantic bluefin tuna] with relative safety from fishing mortality for almost 20 [years].  [citations omitted]”

It thus advised that

“In the Med, shifting selectivity of fishing to older ages in recent years and reducing [total allowable catch] not only controlled overfishing but created, in effect, an escapement management regime…that allowed migrating eastern [Atlantic bluefin tuna] juveniles and subadults to enjoy a longer, safer, and more productive juvenile growth period than those remaining in the Med.  Effectively, an unknown number of Med juveniles were able to ‘escape’ selection at an early age, forage, and reach maturity in the North Atlantic.  We hypothesize that this led to higher spawning contribution per recruit, higher overall abundance, and greater fishery yields, with the lower exploitation rates of North American fisheries providing a release from fishing mortality…  [citations omitted]”

But it wasn’t only the eastern stock that benefited.

“[F]or the western stock, as the supply of eastern [Atlantic bluefin tuna] increased the relatively static western area [total allowable catch] exerted decreasing mortality upon the western stock.  After years of relative stasis, the western-only larval and [longline fishery] catch indices in the Gulf [of Mexico] now show substantial increases indicating that growth of the western stock may have only responded due to managing fishing mortality of the eastern stock…  [citations omitted]”

The management measures adopted for the western stock three decades ago proved to be a conservation success story for the entire Atlantic bluefin tuna population.  As NMFS observed,

“The major conservation and management measures taken by ICCAT, combined with shifting catches to larger fish, resulted in a dramatic turnaround of the stock.  Reducing fishing mortality to sustainable levels allowed several year classes of fish to survive, grow, and leave the Mediterranean to seek the productive feeding grounds of the North Atlantic.  This escapement from Mediterranean spawning areas to wider Atlantic waters with stricter harvest measures allows bluefin tuna to live longer, grow larger, and contribute more offspring to the population.  This emphasizes the importance of managing fishing mortality in areas of high vulnerability such as spawning aggregations…

“Whether the current Atlantic bluefin fishery total allowable catch remains sustainable in the face of a rapidly changing ocean and increasing human demand remains uncertain.  What is certain is the return on investment for state-of-the-art science.

“U.S. anglers have been frustrated in recent years by strict harvest measures for bluefin, but the science confirms that these measures are effective.  Our conservation efforts are having huge impacts—not just for the United States, but across the Atlantic.  Anecdotal evidence supports this, with anglers along the U.S. East Coast catching more and larger bluefin than in the past 30 years.  The stock recovery is such that ICCAT adopted higher total allowable catch for the western stock…”

Yet, among all of those positive comments and unqualified support for good fisheries science lurks a substantial amount of irony. 

For more than a year, the current administration has repeatedly sought to cut the funding and the personnel needed to perform fisheries science at NMFS, whether that science be “state-of-the-art” or the sort of routine surveys and data collection needed to perform basic management tasks for a wide array of species.

And, specific to Atlantic bluefin tuna, it has made the groundless claim that the United States need not count recreationally-caught bluefin tuna against its annual quota, although there appears nothing in any ICCAT recommendation that would support that position.

Nor is it completely clear where the notion came from, although a recent article that appeared in The Fisherman magazine might make one suspect that it arose somewhere within the recreational fishing industry.  That article read, in part,

“There is no doubt that there is a booming recreational and for-hire fishery in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic waters with little catch data being submitted for too many years now.  Earlier this year the [European Union] implemented new mandatory, daily electronic data reporting requirements for marine recreational fisheries targeting certain species, including bluefin.  However, other nations that are not part of the EU but are part of European and African continents are reporting little if any recreational catch, despite landings occurring.  There is still a glaring disconnect.”

The article fails to mention that the only two non-EU countries in the Eastern Atlantic are Norway, which has a national recreational quota of a whopping 10 metric tons—fewer bluefin than anglers killed off the southeastern United States during the first two weeks of 2026—and the United Kingdom, where the recreational quota is a still-tiny 20 mt.  There are more non-EU nations bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, but they include states such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro, none of which are known as recreational fishing powerhouses, and none of which have any recreational quota at all.

So, the argument that the United States is justified in not counting its recreational landings against its quota because some non-EU nations might be doing the same thing falls pretty flat.

Yet the article goes on.

“The ICCAT Eastern Atlantic/Mediterranean management requires that recreational catch be reported and assigned to one’s quota.  The U.S. has argued that a parallel requirement does not exist for the Western Atlantic contracting parties in Western bluefin management Recommendation 22-10.  As a result—and because of the lack of recreational catch recreational catch reporting for many years now by the Eastern Atlantic/Mediterranean contracting parties—the U.S. notified ICCAT in January 2026 that it is exploring continuing to meet its requirement to report our recreational catch but not count it against the US quota…

“Not surprisingly, this proposal has been heavily criticized by our friends across the pond.  It should be noted that our recreational quota is negligible in comparison to the Western and Eastern Atlantic/Mediterranean bluefin quotas that are dominated by commercial quota allocations.”

Once again, we see arguments of dubious merit.

Recommendation 25-05—which superseded Recommendation 22-10 at last November’s ICCAT meeting—clearly states,

“An annual [total allowable catch], inclusive of dead discards, of 3,081.6 [metric tons] is established for 2026, 2027, and 2028…If the total catch in the western area exceeds 3,081.6 t in any year, it shall constitute an exceptional circumstance…  [emphasis added]”

To argue that “total catch” included dead discards, but excluded recreational landings, would be ludicrous.

In addition, Recommendation 25-05 is generally sector neutral; while it mentions recreational fisheries twice, it only mentions commercial fisheries once.  The natural counter to the argument that the Recommendation doesn’t explicitly require including recreational landings in the quota is that it doesn’t explicitly require including commercial landings, either.  The only explicit references are to “total catch” and “dead discards.”  Yet the mandatory counting of commercial landings against the quota is assumed.

But the ultimate argument for counting recreational landings against the U.S. quota is that it would be in the long-term interests of United States fishermen to do so.  As the new research indicates, the restrictive management measures in place in the western Atlantic benefited both the eastern and western bluefin stocks.  Placing greater fishing pressure on fish in the western Atlantic now, by omitting recreational landings from the United State’ quota and so increasing the western kill, could only risk reversing three decades of progress.

In the end, “Ensuring the future of Atlantic bluefin tuna” is a very valuable bit of research.  NMFS was completely justified in calling it “state-of-the-art science.”

But the thing about state-of-the-art science is that, while it is a good thing in and of itself, it is far more valuable if it is actually put to use.  NMFS shouldn’t just issue press releases hailing the paper.  It should put the paper’s findings to practical use, and continue to cooperate with the ICCAT management scheme that made the western Atlantic a valuable sanctuary for bluefin tuna for the past 30 or more years.

 

STRIPED BASS DEJA VU: MANAGERS CONSIDER REVISED REFERENCE POINTS

 

About a quarter-century ago, after striped bass had recovered from their stock collapse, and both fishery managers and stakeholders were debating what that stock ought to look like in the future, some individuals, mostly representing the commercial fleet and the recreational fishing industry, supported a management approach that would truncate the age and size structure of the stock, in order to maximize harvest.

There were others, mostly recreational fishermen who spent most of their spare time on the water targeting striped bass, who argued that the best thing for both the fish and the fishermen was to keep fishing mortality low enough to allow a well-stratified age and size structure to develop, which featured a substantial number of older, larger, and more fecund females, in order to better insulate the stock against periods of low recruitment and to create what the anglers called a “quality” striped bass fishery.  They came together under the mantra of

“The job’s not done until we bring back the big bass.”

Things got heated, particularly as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission began holding hearings on what would eventually become Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.

Here in New York, there was a weekly saltwater angling publication that was handed out free at tackle shops, marinas, and similar places, which also maintained a popular website.  As New York’s Amendment 6 hearing drew near, the publication’s owner posted a poll on the website, asking whether readers would prefer to see striped bass managed primarily for harvest, with a population consisting mainly of small fish, and very few large ones, or whether they would prefer to see a population managed for larger fish, and a quality fishery, which necessarily meant lower landings.

His readers, by far, preferred managing for larger fish rather than for larger harvest, and he dutifully reported that preference at the hearing.

Immediately, New York’s recreational fishing industry retaliated, with tackle shops, for-hire boats, and at least some marinas cancelling their advertisements and threatening the publication’s survival, thus forcing the owner to recant and print editorials supporting industry positions.

Amendment 6 emerged somewhat better, adopting as its goal

“To perpetuate, through cooperative interstate fisheries management, migratory stocks of striped bass; to allow commercial and recreational fisheries consistent with the long-term maintenance of a broad age structure, a self-sustaining spawning stock; and also to provide for the restoration and maintenance of their essential habitat.  [emphasis added]”

Amendment 6 also included seven objectives intended to help achieve its stated goal, including

“Manage fishing mortality to maintain an age structure that provides adequate spawning potential to sustain long-term abundance of striped bass populations,”

and

“Establish a fishing mortality target that will result in a net increase in the abundance (pounds) of age 15 and older striped bass in the population, relative to the 2000 estimate.”

Unfortunately, the fishing mortality target finally adopted in the amendment represented a compromise between the harvest-oriented stakeholders and those more concerned with the age and size structure of the stock.  Amendment 6’s combination of generous commercial quotas and coastal recreational regulations that included a 2-fish bag limit, 28-inch minimum size and no closed season proved inadequate to constrain landings to anything close to the fishing mortality target.

The 2018 benchmark stock assessment found that, under the harvest regime established in the amendment, by 2017 the striped bass stock had already become overfished and was experiencing overfishing, while a presentation made at the February 2019 meeting of the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board revealed that overfishing had clearly taken place in 11 of the 15 years between 2003, when Amendment 6 was adopted, and 2017, while in two more years, the fishing mortality rate was just about equal to the threshold that defined an overfished stock.  Only two years out of the 15—2007 and 2009—saw a fishing mortality rate clearly below threshold, although even in those years, it appeared to be above Amendment 6’s fishing mortality target.

Yet even before the benchmark assessment was released, there were those on the Management Board who argued that, instead of reducing overfishing, the reference points that guided management actions—the target and threshold levels of female spawning stock biomass and fishing mortality—should instead be changed to accommodate what had long been deemed excessive harvest.

At the May 2018 Management Board meeting, in preparation for the next benchmark assessment, there was a long discussion of whether the reference points ought to be coastwide, or whether each spawning stock should have their own set of reference points.  There was also the question of whether the reference points should be “biological” reference points, derived from the stock assessment model, or whether the Management Board should continue to use “empirical” reference points based on observations and not the model itself.

In the end, biologists decided that the biological reference points derived from the model were “unrealistic,” and that empirical reference points based on the size of the female spawning stock biomass in 1995, the year that the formerly collapsed stock was declared fully rebuilt, would continue to be used.

But that didn’t end the reference point discussion.  At the May 2019 Management Board meeting, which focused on the then-anticipated Amendment 7 to the management plan, Maryland fisheries manager Michael Luisi again raised the question of moving the goalposts—that is, changing the reference points—in a way that reduced the spawning stock biomass target and made larger annual harvests possible, saying that

“We’ve had concerns over the reference points for quite some time.  In our mind they’re a bit too high.  I think they provide for an unrealistic expectation to the public that we’re going to achieve that level.

“You know, currently the threshold reference point is 91,000 metric tons and 125 percent of that puts us at a target value, and when you look at the estimates of spawning stock biomass that came out of the benchmark.  We have never achieved the target in all of that time as we’re evaluating that.”

Of course, Luisi was wrong about never achieving the biomass target, although he couldn’t know it at the time.  The 2022 stock assessment update made it quite clear that female spawning stock biomass was above the target level between 2002 and 2005, and just below the target in 2008, 2009, and 2010, a not unlikely result when fishing mortality remained below threshold for all but one of the years between 1982 and 2002.  The stock only began to decline after fishing mortality exceeded the threshold and the stock began to experience chronic overfishing.

And during those years when the stock exceeded the biomass target, the recreational fishery, which is responsible for most striped bass removals, was still allowed to harvest two fish per angler, with a 28-inch minimum size.

We can only speculate whether, had anglers already been constrained by the sort of regulations adopted in Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, with its one-fish bag and 28- to 35-inch slot size limit (without Addendum VI’s provision for conservation equivalency, which allowed states like New Jersey to legally skirt the rules), the spawning stock biomass might have climbed even higher, and might not have become overfished by 2013—or whether it ever would have become overfished at all.

As it happened, going into the debate over the Public Information Document for Amendment 7, options to change the reference points and the goals and objectives of the management plan were presented for public comment.  The public overwhelmingly rejected both suggestions, with 1,719 out of 1,747 comments addressing the issue—98.4%--opposing any change to the goals and objectives of the management plan, while 2,746 out of 2,764 comments—fully 99.4%--opposed changing the reference points to something that would, presumably, sacrifice the size and structure of the stock for a larger harvest.

Faced with that level of opposition, the Management Board wisely chose to remove any options to change the reference point or the goals and objectives from the draft of Amendment 7 that was finally sent out for public comment.

Yet, here we go again.

The ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will hold its next meeting at 1:15 in the afternoon of May 4.  One of the topics on its agenda is

“Discuss 2027 Benchmark Stock Assessment…

“Provide Guidance to Stock Assessment Subcommittee on Biological Reference Points and Spatial Management.”

The discussion will probably address two items that were highlighted in a January 26 memo from the Atlantic Striped Bass Stock Assessment Subcommittee to the Management Board, which was included with the meeting agenda.  The relevant item for this discussion is

“How does the Board want to balance preserving SSB and allowing fishing?”

As the memo explains,

“There is a trade-off between preserving SSB and allowing fishing, and determining the best balance between these two parameters requires management input.  If the Board wanted to establish a lower SSB target and threshold—for example, setting the target to the 1995 estimate of SSB and the threshold to some lower percentage of that value—then the F target and F threshold values could increase, depending on the assumptions about future recruitment.  Or the Board could set higher F target and threshold values based on a stable period in the fishery and calculate the SSB target and threshold values associated with those F rates in the long term, which would be lower than current values.”

In either case, striped bass abundance would decline.  As the memo noted,

“A lower SSB would mean lower availability of larger fish.  Even if the F target is increased, that may not translate into a higher harvest or yield, since that F rate is applied to a smaller population.  In addition, lower availability of larger fish means lower encounter rates overall, particularly in the ocean region.”

So, it would seem that a higher fishing mortality rate would be bad for the recreational fishery all around, as it would not only result in a smaller striped bass population made up largely of smaller fish, but it wouldn’t necessarily put ,pore fish in anglers’ coolers while lowering the encounter rate, and thus the overall quality of the fishery.

Nor would it seem to do the commercial fishery much good, since removing a greater proportion of fish from a smaller population probably wouldn’t result in significantly higher commercial landings.

And when the scientists on the Stock Assessment Subcommittee start saying things like

“If the Board is interested in considering options for a set of [biological reference points] with a higher F and lower SSB targets and thresholds, it would be helpful to receive inputs on things like…acceptable level of risk when it comes to preventing stock collapse…”

it might be past time to accept that making such changes to the reference points is a bad idea, given that we’re already worried that current levels of harvest and recruitment might be creating a risk of stock collapse that is higher than we’re comfortable with.

Yet it’s likely that there are some members of the Management Board—probably including most, if not all, of the delegations from Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware, very possibly jointed by New York’s Governor’s Appointee—who will nonetheless want to include such possible changes in the 2027 benchmark assessment. 

That is not a good thing, but it is probably inevitable.  We will just have to deal with such proposed changes once the assessment is completed, just as they were dealt with in the runup to Amendment 7.

However, there are also changes to the reference points that might—and in some cases almost certainly will—emerge from the benchmark assessment itself.

At this point, I don’t know whether anyone is certain what model will be used to perform the benchmark assessment.  The biologists doing the work might utilize the same model that they used the last time around, but it is more likely that they will consider making some changes—examining the appropriateness of the model is, after all, one of the things that a benchmark assessment is for—in an effort to find a more accurate model, or at least one that is a better fit for the available data.

In the course of selecting the model, it is possible that they will select one that will generate biological reference points that aren’t deemed “unrealistic,” but instead provide useful guidance for the spawning stock biomass target, based on the productivity of the stock.  If that is the case, and managers can replace the current empirical reference points with a new set rooted firmly in striped bass biology, it will be a step forward, regardless of what the SSB target turns out to be.

We can only speculate about whether that might happen, but one thing is virtually certain:  If the benchmark assessment sticks with empirical reference points, and some version of the current model, the spawning stock biomass target and threshold will be reduced.  That’s not because of conniving, or any effort to increase striped bass landings, but rather because the current model uses recreational landings as one of its inputs and—perhaps counterintuitively—higher recreational landings generally lead to a higher estimate of SSB.

We saw that in the last benchmark, when the use of Marine Recreational Information Program landings estimates, which were significantly higher than those provided by the obsolete Marine Recreational Fishing Statistical Survey, led to a substantially higher estimate of spawning stock biomass.  But now, the National Marine Fisheries Service has determined that MRIP overestimated the number of recreational fishing trips, and thus recreational catch, releases, and landings.  Since 2023, NMFS has been working to correct flaws in the survey and revise the data accordingly, a process that is expected to be completed later this year.  The revised data, which will include lower estimates of recreational landings, will be available in time for the benchmark assessment and, unless a new model dictates otherwise, will result in the estimate of spawning stock biomass being revised downward as well.

The spawning stock target will be revised accordingly, as will the fishing mortality reference points.

And that will be good, as it will bring the reference points into alignment with the best available science.

As to any other proposed change to the reference points?  We’ll just have to wait and see.