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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s what seems to have happened here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

which was introduced with the legend,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But they’re listed on the graphic anyway.

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

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

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

NMFS also tells us that

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

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

And anyway,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Similarly, sandbar sharks are considered

“very vulnerable to overfishing,”

and, as the State of New York noted,

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

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

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

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

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

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

The video ends with more stark black and white text:

“THE US FISHERIES CRISIS IS REAL”

“COLLAPSING OCEAN FOOD SYSTEMS”

“DEVASTATING COASTAL ECONOMIES”

“THIS STOPS NOW”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

2026: A CHILL IN THE AIR

 

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

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

How slow is slow?

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

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

That’s pretty slow.

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

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

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

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

After the fact, he reported that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then there are the bottom fish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wednesday, June 10, 2025

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

“Tuesday, June 9, 2025

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

“Monday, June 8, 2025

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

“Sunday, June 7 2025

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"CORPORATE GREED" IN FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

 

We’ve all heard, or perhaps read, the comments that inevitably arise whenever a fish stock declines or management measures are hotly debated.  The conversation never goes on for long before some apparently outraged angler gets up and starts yelling, “This is all about greed!”

Such claims emerged in recent striped bass debates, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Striped Bass Management Board was deciding whether to reduce striped bass landings, first in January 2024, and then again in December 2024 and October 2025.  A comment that appeared on a New Jersey saltwater fishing forum was typical:

“The incessant focus on economics and political and state greed versus the prudent management of stocks continues to put another nail in the coffin of many of the remaining fisheries.  Nothing is sustainable if the regulations don’t support that outcome and protect stocks from exploitation, commercial and corporate greed and any issues like natural predation (dogfish) and the declining water quality conditions of the Chesapeake Bay which threaten a stock’s survival.”

We’re seeing the same thing in the current uproar over the National Marine Fisheries Service issuing exempted fishing permits for the recreational red snapper fishery in the South Atlantic.  One Facebook post by North Carolina charter boat captain and self-proclaimed “content creator” Jake Hiles took the “greed” narrative to new, conspiracy-theory-fueled heights, declaring that

“2 weeks ago President Trump took the regulatory power away from NOAA and National Marine Fisheries because the red snapper fishery had been regulated by corporate greed.  Basically a few wealthy stakeholders in the fishery control the entire coastwide resource and corruption at NMFS has allowed this to happen for years.  So Trump gives the red snapper resource back to the states because the federal system is corrupt and immediately the few wealthy stakeholders in the fishery sue and get the courts to give corrupt NMFS control of the red snapper fishery.  This is corporate greed and political corruption.”

Over the years, similar comments have been made in various fisheries.  In each case, the underlying assumption is that the commercial fishery is some huge, corporate monolith, that has the money, the political clout, and the public relations talents needed to control the entire fisheries management process, and take the lion’s share of the resource, while leaving the angling public with little more than dregs.

And in some fisheries, that assumption is almost true.  The North Pacific fishery for walleye pollock, the largest single fishery, commercial or recreational, in the United States (3.14 billion pounds landed in 2024), is certainly controlled by a relatively small number of influential corporations.

The same thing can probably be said about the menhaden reduction fishery, various mid-water trawl fisheries targeting high-volume, relatively low-value species such as herring and mackerel, and distant-waters boats such as Pacific tuna seiners and some pelagic longliners.

But all those fisheries tend to be defined by a few characteristics:  They are all big boat fisheries.  Many of them target fish that are either not recreational species or, at the least, are not highly valued by most recreational fishermen.  When they do target recreational species—generally tuna, swordfish, and sometimes certain species of sharks—they do so on distant grounds, in places or at times where anglers don’t commonly venture.

But when it comes to “mixed use” fisheries—those that are pursued by both commercial and recreational fishermen—the commercial fishermen tend to be far less imposing.  Although there are commercial fishing associations in most if not every coastal state, and some fishermen and, more often, fish buyers can be locally important, the commercial fishery for species such as striped bass, red snapper, or summer flounder is hardly the kind of economic and political colossus that most anglers imagine.  The typical commercial fisherman, working alone or with one or two crewmen to tend a gillnet, pinhook striped bass, or employ bandit rigs to pull some snapper off a southern reef only wishes that they had the kind of social, political, and economic clout that so many recreational fishermen believe that they do.

But that doesn’t mean that real corporate money, real corporate lobbyists, and real corporate greed aren’t distorting fisheries management process.  It’s just that anglers are looking in the wrong place to find it.

They ought to stop scrutinizing the commercial fishery, and start looking for evidence of corporate influence and corporate greed far, far closer to home.

Last fall, many striped bass anglers, concerned over record-low recruitment in the Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere, were closely following the progress of the Draft Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Public Comment, which among other things proposed cutting striped bass fishing mortality by 12%, and instituting the first-ever coastwide recreational striped bass season.

In previous years, recreational fishermen overwhelmingly supported such harvest reductions, even though they would sharply reduce anglers’ landings.  We saw that in 2021, when 2,746 public comments supported maintaining the biological reference points used to gauge the health of the stock, and only 18 supported a change that might increase landings at the expense of abundance.  At the same time, 529 comments supported the existing 10-year rebuilding deadline, while 45 wanted rebuilding to occur faster, even if it meant lower landings; no one argued for higher landings at the cost of slower rebuilding.

We saw it again in 2022, when over 4,000 comments supported the current management triggers that require fishing mortality to be reduced to target within one year when overfishing occurs, and requires a rebuilding plan—with a rebuilding period of 10 years or less—to be put in place when the stock becomes overfished, with barely 100 supporting a less vigorous response.  About the same proportion supported the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee using a more conservative “low recruitment assumption” and corresponding lowered fishing mortality rate if striped bass recruitment in the major spawning areas fell below a fixed benchmark for three consecutive years, and also supported allowing the Management Board to adopt more restrictive fishing measures without first sending a proposed plan addendum out for public comment, should an upcoming stock assessment update suggest the need for fast action.

And we saw it for a third time in 2024, when 2,289 comments supported reducing the coastal recreational slot size limit to just 28 to 31 inches, compared to only 199 who preferred more liberal options; 2,249 supported a commercial quota reduction of up to 14.5%, with only 159 opposed; and 2,150 again supported giving the Management  Board the freedom to adopt more restrictive measures for the 2025 fishery, if the stock assessment update suggested they were needed, while only 90 disagreed.

But last fall, for the first time, something different happened.  Anglers didn’t overwhelmingly support the proposed 12% reduction.  Part of that was probably due to the fact that, on the coast (as opposed to the Chesapeake Bay), that reduction was going to have to be achieved through a closed season, and some people were talking quite loudly about a closure when even catch-and-release would not be allowed.

Part of it was probably also due to uncertainty in the recreational landings data; there was little more than a year of data to show the impacts of the last regulatory change, and what data there was suggested that the stock might rebuild by the 2029 deadline even if no action was taken.

Yet there was also something else going on.  Among the comment letters sent in was one signed by six organizations, the American Sportfishing Association, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas, the Center for Sportfishing Policy, the Boat Owners Association of the United States, and the Coastal Conservation Association.  For the first time, the recreational fishing and boating industry was making an industry-wide effort to involve itself in striped bass conservation issues.

And in its debut, the industry opposed the proposed striped bass conservation measures, writing, in part,

“…Imposing new restrictions under these circumstances risks unnecessary economic harm and sows division within the recreational community, without offering measurable or scientifically meaningful biological results…

“Instead of acknowledging that status quo and a 12% reduction are scientifically equivalent, Draft Addendum III shifts the burden of [Marine Recreational Information Program] uncertainty onto anglers by forcing a choice between two unpalatable season closures: no-targeting closures, which ban fishing altogether and impacts both harvest and catch-and-release anglers, or no-harvest closures, which fall solely on anglers who keep fish.  We believe forcing anglers into this divisive choice, when science does not justify action, will cause significant economic and social impacts while not meaningfully improving striped bass conservation.

“We have serious concerns with no targeting closures because they prohibit fishing entirely.  At the same time, we must recognize that the burden of rebuilding has already fallen disproportionately on harvest anglers, even though fishing mortality is roughly evenly split between catch-and-release and harvest activities.  Draft Addendum III offers no option that addresses this inequity, other than prohibiting fishing altogether.  Given that the proposed 12% reduction is scientifically indistinguishable from status quo, we reject the premise that anglers must pick winners and losers and instead support maintaining current seasons as the best and most equitable alternative…

“The economic value of the striped bass fishery cannot be overstated…

“The proposed season closures—whether prohibiting harvest or targeting—will undoubtedly erode those substantial economic benefits and disproportionately impact coastal small businesses, bait and tackle shops, marinas, boat manufacturers, charter operators, and the entire recreational fishing and boating supply chain.

“We represent the entire recreational fishing and boating community, including businesses that serve all anglers regardless of economic background or preferred fishing technique.  Maintaining consistent seasons is the most equitable solution: It preserves both regional economic stability and angler access across preference lines, without inflicting unnecessary economic hardship…”

A similar letter, containing some nearly identical language, was submitted by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.  In addition, the American Sportfishing Association circulated a form letter containing much of the language included in the six-signatory letter quoted above, which was signed in its original form by 660 individuals, and in a modified form by 269 others, although it is not clear how many of those signatories reside on the Atlantic coast or fish for striped bass.

It’s important to note some themes that appear in the quoted letter, including the emphasis on economic issues, the emphasis on anglers’ ability to “access” and kill striped bass, the non-specific and non-supported attacks on the scientific data underlying the draft addendum, the non-specific attacks on the recreational fishing data produced by the Marine Recreational Information Program, and the allegations of significant harm to the entire coastal economy—the “entire recreational fishing and boating supply chain”—from restrictions involving a single species, because we’ll see the same claims resurface in other contexts.

It’s also important to understand who is standing behind the comments, for all of the organizations mentioned, both those who signed the six-signatory letter and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, are active members of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, an aggressive trade organization which freely admits that

“Our mission is to maximize the opportunity for saltwater anglers by engaging stakeholders to speak with one voice to shape federal fisheries policy.”

In addition,

“[The Center for Sportfishing Policy] is organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code; accordingly, donations are not tax-deductible.  Additionally, CSP has established the Center for Sportfishing Policy Political Action Committee (Center PAC), so that its members can fully participate in elective politics.  CSP and Center PAC work to elect candidates to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives who share our concern for America’s marine resources and support recreational fishing and boating.”

So what we’re dealing with is a trade organization created to influence federal fisheries policy, with a fully-funded political action committee intended to influence the actions of federal legislators.  Things get even more interesting when one takes a look at who is running the organization—that is, its Board of Directors.

It turns out that the Board includes representatives from the following corporations: Gemlux, which calls itself

“The world’s largest stainless steel marine hardware supplier,”

Mercury Marine, Butler Marine (a large South Carolina boat dealer), Garmin International (manufacturer of electronics for marine and other applications), Dometic Marine Americas (manufacturer of a variety of high-dollar marine products ranging from air conditioners to hydraulic control systems to gyroscopic stabilizers), Maverick Boats, Sportsman Boats, Viking Yachts, Release Marine (manufacturer of fighting chairs, rocket launchers, and other high-end marine furniture), Vectorply Corporation (manufacturer of “composite reinforcement fabrics,” the stuff that we usually think of as “fiberglass cloth,” but which is in reality far more varied and far more technically advanced), OneWater Marine (a publicly-traded company with a diverse portfolio of brands and products), Regulator Marine, Bass Pro Shops, Contender Boats, Shimano North America Fishing, Inc., Pure Fishing, Inc., AFTCO Fishing Apparel and Tackle, Yamaha Marine (including both Yamaha Engines and Yamaha Boats), Scout Boats, and Everglades Boats, along with representatives of two trade associations American Sportfishing Association and National Marine Manufacturers Association and a handful of angling groups.   

That’s a whole lot of corporate self-interest (it’s not polite to call it “greed”) and political clout all bunched up in one place, and it’s fair to say that all of those folks, along with the other members of the Center that are not on the Board, are going to support fisheries policies that will maintain and preferably increase their cash flow, even if that policy might not do the same thing for the nation’s fish stocks.

Anybody who thinks that some guy out in the bay on a garvey, tending a pound net or fishing hook-and-line—or even an entire fleet of such small-scale commercials—has as much political influence as the folks on the Center for Sportfishing Policy’s board is living in a fantasy world.

It really isn’t the commercial fishery’s money that is warping the fishery management process.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that the Center’s opposition was the reason that the 12% landings reductions wasn’t approved by the striped bass management board.  There were many factors that contributed to the management board’s decision and, in fact, the ASMFC is probably the most difficult structure for an entity such as the Center to influence. 

Because of the way the ASMFC’s management boards are structured, with each state sending a professional fisheries manager, a governor’s appointee, and a legislative appointee (or proxy), and with each state delegation caucusing to determine how it will vote, trying to influence a management board vote is an exercise in cat-herding, with the politics shifting from issue to issue, inter-state rivalries playing a role, and intra-state frictions sometimes influencing outcomes.

The Center’s input on the striped bass issue wasn’t notable because it made a discernable difference, but merely because, for the first time, it occurred at all.

Things are different at the federal level, where the Center and its member organizations have been interfering for a long time, generally trying to impeach the science and the recreational catch and landings data in order to increase recreational landings and, not coincidentally, to increase the sale of fishing equipment, boats, and boating-related gear.  In the federal arena, its political connections can be far more focused, and used to better effect.

The recreational fishing industry’s first big success arguably occurred in 2017, when it convinced the incoming Trump administration to ignore the conservation requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and reopen the recreational red snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico, even though doing so would, without question, lead to overfishing.  In issuing the rule reopening the fishery, NMFS admitted that

“The stock is still overfished.  While the stock is ahead of its rebuilding target, if employed for a short period of time, this approach may delay the ultimate rebuilding of the stock by as many as 6 years.  This approach likely could not be continued through time without significantly delaying the rebuilding timeline.  Similarly, the approach will necessarily mean that the private recreational sector will substantially exceed its annual catch limit, which was designed to prevent overfishing the stock…”

An email sent by Earl Comstock, Director of the Department of Commerce’s Office of Policy and Strategic Planning, to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross noted that the extended recreational red snapper season

“would result in overfishing of the stock by six million pounds (40%),”

but still recommended going through with the proposed extension.

The Center for Sportfishing Policy, which had no small role in convincing NMFS to reopen the season, hailed the action, with Jeff Angers, its president, declaring that

“Today’s announcement [of the extended season] is a fix—albeit a short-term fix—that will allow millions to enjoy one of America’s greatest pastimes and boost economies far beyond the Gulf of Mexico—including in the manufacturing and retail sectors in non-coastal states.

”The federal fishery management system is failing recreational anglers on many levels, and the red snapper is the ‘poster fish’ of the quagmire.  The temporary rule directly addresses this problem, giving millions of recreational anglers in the Gulf of Mexico an opportunity to enjoy America’s natural resources and giving the Gulf economy a much needed shot in the arm.

“Today would not be possible without the tireless work of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.  Industry leaders met with Secretary Ross in March, and he listened.  We also thank Majority Whip Steve Scalese (R-La), Congressmen Garret Graves (R-La) and Austin Scott (R-Ga) for beginning the conversation with the Trump Administration in March regarding the mistreatment of private recreational anglers.  The status quo in federal fisheries management driven by radical environmentalists is a man-made fishery management disaster…”

By exerting pure political force, the industry had caused NMFS to ignore Magnuson-Stevens’ clear prohibitions on overfishing, thus showcasing two other hallmarks of the recreational fishing and boating industry’s efforts to influence fisheries policy: concerted efforts to get around Magnuson-Stevens’ conservation provisions, and attacks on the federal fisheries management system.

But, while recreational fishermen were able to overfish the Gulf red snapper stock in 2017, litigation brought by conservation groups managed to bring NMFS to heel; it ultimately entered into a settlement agreement in which it stated that the 2017 season extension, and its resultant overfishing, would not be repeated in the future.  The industry victory, though real, was also short-lived.

The recreational fishing and boating industry won a longer-lived victory early in 2020, when the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council adopted Amendment 50 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico.

Once again, the industry had attempted to evade the conservation provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, convincing then-Louisiana Congressman Garret Graves to sponsor something called the Gulf States Red Snapper Management Authority Act, which would have taken responsibility for recreational red snapper management in the Gulf away from NMFS and hand it over to the states, which wouldn’t be bound by federal fisheries low, so that anglers could kill more fish (while they lasted) and, theoretically, the fishing and boating industry could sell more stuff.

That legislative effort also failed, eventually leaving the industry with Amendment 50 as its last, best option.  Amendment 50 allowed the states to set their own red snapper regulations, within certain prescribed limits, and use their own data collection systems to measure recreational landings.  Once Amendment 50 was fully implemented, recreational fishermen enjoyed longer red snapper seasons, thanks to state data collection programs that frequently reported lower catch rates than were reported by the federal system.

However, by 2025, for-hire vessel operators in the eastern Gulf were reporting a decline in both the size and abundance of red snapper, and it is very possible that the same state-generated regulations that allowed anglers to enjoy longer red snapper seasons and allowed the recreational fishing industry a longer season to sell tackle to red snapper anglers are also allowing recreational fishermen to remove too many red snapper from the population, causing a decline in both the number of larger fish and the number of fish overall.

Still, so long as sales are up, the industry is likely to continue to call Amendment 50 a win.

2023 saw the industry leave its familiar waters of the southeastern United States, and venture into the fisheries of the Mid-Atlantic region.  It wasn’t the sort of wholesale industry effort that we saw with Gulf of Mexico red snapper, but rather an effort spearheaded by the American Sportfishing Association, which worked with other interested parties to circumvent the clear mandates of Magnuson-Stevens in order to allow recreational fishermen to exceed their sector annual catch limits for bluefish, black sea bass, scup, and summer flounder.

The vehicle to do so was so-called Framework 17 to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan and Framework 6 to the Bluefish Fishery Management Plan, which were collectively known as the Recreational Harvest Control Rule Framework.

Like earlier industry efforts, the Harvest Control Rule Framework attacked the strict conservation provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, and the federal recreational data collection program, in creating a framework where, when fish abundance exceeds the spawning stock biomass target, recreational landings might exceed the recreational harvest limit, recreational annual catch limit, and even the acceptable biological catch and overfishing limit, so long as spawning stock biomass remained high enough to produce maximum sustainable yield.

And like other industry efforts, the Harvest Control Rule Framework allowed anglers to kill more fish than they might have killed under a strict application of federal fisheries law, which is a hallmark of industry advocacy.  What impact that higher kill will have on the stocks is yet to be determined.

Finally, we have the current effort to extend recreational red snapper seasons in the South Atlantic by means of NMFS issuing exempted fishing permits.  Once again, the recreational industry tried to do an end-run around Magnuson-Stevens, using its political clout with state governors—most particularly Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis—and with the Trump Administration to overrule the scientists and subject matter experts at NMFS, and have top leadership issue exempted fishing permits that would have allowed anglers to ignore the annual catch limit for South Atlantic red snapper, and enjoy a recreational season 20 to 30 times as long as it was in 2025, with the resultant, unavoidable overfishing.

After President Trump himself announced, on social media, that the exempted fishing permits would be issued, the Center for Sportfishing Policy’s Angers gushed,

“The Administration’s visionary embrace of cooperative federalism wins the day—and the summer.  Their willing partnership with willing South Atlantic states brings the region hope for calm waters and exciting catches of a plentiful fisheries resource.  The state agencies are willing and anxious to do the hard work.  It’s a win-win for the fish, the anglers and coastal communities.  We thank President Trump for his leadership in advancing a path forward for South Atlantic anglers.”

The only problem was that the industry goal—having NMFS issue exempted fishing permits that would allow anglers to grossly overfish the South Atlantic red snapper resource—was apparently illegal, and any fishing pursuant to the permits was temporarily enjoined by a federal judge.

To hear some anglers tell it, the court’s action was all the commercial fishermen’s fault.  The “greedy” commercial fishermen’s fault, because they filed suit to protect the 11,200 or so red snapper that they may harvest each year, when anglers already—without the aid of exempted fishing permits—kill nearly 500,000 red snapper in the same one-year period, including about 475,000 fish that aren’t taken home or eaten, but merely returned to the water to die.

So, all things considered, are the commercial fishermen really greedy for trying to hang on to the few fish the law allows them to take?

Or is the real greed—and the real political influence—to be found in the recreational fishing and boatbuilding industry, which repeatedly tries to frustrate federal fisheries laws, and the conservation efforts of professional fisheries managers, in order to sell more merchandise to an expanding angling public?

Has that sort of greed blinded the industry to the simple fact that, without healthy fish stocks, their businesses cannot endure?

When we get to the point where killing half a million red snapper—475,000 of which go to waste—isn’t enough, and they want to kill more, even if it means overfishing the stock, the answer to those questions becomes dismayingly clear.