A NEW, LOOMING THREAT TO MID-ATLANTIC FISHERIES

 

Mid-Atlantic fisheries have long faced the same sort of threats that faced fisheries elsewhere on the coast.

The possibility of overfishing is always there.  A warming ocean forces fish stocks farther north.  Forage fish might become less available.  Dams deny diadromous fish populations access to critical upstream habitat.  Managers fail to rebuild depleted stocks.

But while all of those threats are real, scientists already understand their impacts, and all are, at least in theory, subject to remediation by properly focused regulations or, at worst, accommodation, by recognizing the reality of things like shifting stocks, and adapting fisheries to best suit the new normal.

Yet there is a potential new threat looming off the Virginia coast that could cause large-scale disruption to the ocean floor, with yet-unknown impacts on the wide variety of fish species that inhabit the bottom, and perhaps the entire water column, between the state-federal border and the edge of the continental shelf.

On November 7, 2025, a company called Odyssey Marine Exploration filed a Lease Sale Request with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.  According to the company’s website,

“The proposed [lease] area, located within the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) off the Mid-Atlantic coast, is prospective for heavy mineral sands containing titanium, zirconium, and rare earth elements, with beneficial sand co-products that can support beach replenishment and coastal resilience projects…

“If future environmental reviews, regulatory approvals, and project evaluations support commercial recovery, operations could utilize shallow-water dredging techniques that are already widely used for navigation, beach nourishment, and coastal resilience projects.”

What the company website didn’t point out is that the potential scale of the proposed mining project would dwarf a mere channel dredging or beach replenishment operation.

The Request for Information and Interest published by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management describes the potential lease area as

“located between three and 63.5 miles offshore of the Delmarva Peninsula seaward of Accomack and Northampton counties in the Commonwealth of Virginia and lies entirely on the [Outer Continental Shelf] of the United States.  This area is comprised of approximately 1,769,196 acres (2,764 square miles) with an approximate water depth of 30-410 feet (8-125 meters).”

That’s a lot of fish habitat that could be impacted, and while the company tries to assure the public that

“The design of project work plans will prioritize environmental responsibility and, if a lease is granted, would align with BOEM’s review framework, which is conducted in accordance with applicable federal laws—including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act—and places environmental stewardship and cultural preservation at the forefront of the process,”

one must remember that, just about a year ago, the Trump administration began taking action to gut key provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, and earlier this month changed a key interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, so that damaging critical habitat for an endangered species is no longer considered doing “harm” to the species in question.

Thus, Odyssey’s assurances in that regard offer little real comfort.

And one of the big problems with the proposed operation is that no one is quite sure what sort of harm might ensue.

Becca Loomis, a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, observed that

“It’s essentially a brand new industry globally, so it’s unproven.  We don’t entirely understand what the risks are, and that makes it more concerning.”

She added,

“Heavy mineral sand mining involves dredging huge amounts of sand from the seafloor, and then processing that sand to extract the minerals.  Essentially, you’re pulling up huge, huge amounts of seafloor sediments.”

Megan Huynh, who leads the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Wetlands and Coast Program, stated that shallow seabed mining

“directly destroys all the physical habitat on the seafloor,”

and will also stir up huge clouds of sediment that could also lead to ecosystem disruptions.

And that can be problematic, because there is a lot of life living in, on, and above the proposed leasing site.

The National Marine Fisheries Service tells us that

“Summer flounder spawn in the fall and early winter when they migrate offshore,”

a migration that would take them right through the proposed lease area.  In addition,

“Spawning peaks in October and November when water temperatures change and autumn plankton is most productive.  The combination of these elements improve the chance of survival for larval summer flounder.”

How will vast sediment clouds impact the spawn, larval survival, and the presence of plankton that the larvae need to survive?

NMFS also tells us that

“Black sea bass…migrate offshore and south in the fall, returning inshore to coastal areas and bays in the spring,”

presumably crossing through, and wintering in, the proposed lease area off Virginia.  And those sea bass

“eat whatever prey is available, but they especially like crabs, shrimp, worms, small fish, and clams,”

prey that might become hard to find when a dredge “destroys all the physical habitat on the seafloor.”

And it’s not only bottom fish that could be affected.

Female bluefish realease their eggs in the open ocean; larvae develop into juveniles over the continental shelf—again, in the proposed lease area—before the juveniles move inshore and spend their first spring in coastal bays, estuaries, and sounds.  In the case of one of their preferred prey species, Atlantic menhaden, there are

“major spawning areas from New Jersey to the Carolinas.  The majority of spawning primarily occurs offshore (20-30 miles) during winter.  Buoyant eggs hatch at sea, and are carried into estuarine nursery areas by ocean currents,”

meaning that menhaden spawning will take place in the proposed lease area as well.  How either the bluefish or menhaden spawns might be affected by the dredging activity, and the huge sediment plumes that it would produce, is impossible to know.

And then there are striped bass.  The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission tells us that

“Important wintering grounds for the mixed stocks are located from offshore New Jersey to North Carolina.”

The 2018 benchmark striped bass stock assessment noted that

“Fishery-independent data collected by North Carolina DMF, ASMFC, and USFWS…suggest striped bass distribution on their overwintering grounds during December through February has changed significantly since the mid-2000s.  The migratory portion of the stocks has been well offshore in the EEZ (>3 miles), requiring travel as far as 25 [nautical miles] offshore of Chesapeake Bay to find fish to tag.”

That would place the center of winter striped bass abundance well within the proposed lease area, and raise questions about how those striped bass, as well as the baitfish they depend on to survive the winter and keep them in condition to spawn in the spring, would be affected by dredging activity, the resulting sediment plume, and the destruction of “all the physical habitat on the sea floor.”

Other species, ranging from weakfish to bluefin tuna, might also be affected by the dredging activities, yet the impacts on fish stocks do not seem to be a major administration concern.  Although the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has issued a Request for Information and Interest, which can be found at https://www.regulations.gov/document/BOEM-2026-0100-0001 and is claims to be seeking

“information and comments from Federally Recognized Indian Tribes, Federal agencies, state and local governments, environmental and other public interest organizations, the marine mineral mining and dredging industries, other interested organizations and entities, and the public,”

through the comment deadline of July 23, it is virtually certain that the leasing process will move forward, even if it meets substantial public opposition.  While it is important for those opposed to the proposed leasing activities to build as strong an administrative record as possible in support of their position, the plain truth is that the Trump administration is dedicated to ocean floor mining, and is unlikely to be dissuaded by anything less than a court order.

On April 24, 2025, the president issued Executive Order 14285, “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources,” which declared, among other things, that

“Our Nation must take immediate action to accelerate the responsible development of seabed mineral resources, quantify the Nation’s endowment of seabed minerals, reinvigorate American leadership in associated extraction and processing technologies, and ensure secure supply chains for our defense, infrastructure, and energy sectors.”

The executive order also expresses a policy of

“rapidly developing domestic capabilities for the exploration, characterization, collection, and processing of seabed mineral resources through streamlined permitting without compromising environmental and transparency standards,”

and directs the Secretary of the Interior to

“establish an expedited process for reviewing and approving permits for prospecting and granting leases for exploration, development, and production of seabed mineral resources within the United States Outer Continental Shelf…The expedited process, consistent with applicable law, should ensure efficiency, predictability, and competitiveness for American companies.”

So the fix is definitely in, and the odds stacked impossibly high against those who would advise a go-slow approach to shallow seabed mining, in order to better assess its risks to marine ecosystems.

Unless somehow slowed by the Commonwealth of Virginia, by Congress, or by the courts, it is highly likely that the leasing process will move forward and, assuming that minerals are present and sufficiently abundant to ensure profitable extraction, that the Trump administration will authorize mining operations—not only by Odyssey, but by any other company willing to bid on a lease—before it leaves office in January 2029.

Should seabed mining begin, those companies will reap the benefits.

Our fish, our fisheries, our fishermen, and the marine environment as a whole, will bear the costs.

VALUING MARINE RESOURCES: JUST WHAT IS AN ANIMAL WORTH?

 

Last Tuesday, I attended a meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council.

The meeting wasn’t particularly notable.  A number of significant matters were discussed, but most fell outside of my primary areas of interest and expertise, and I think that the only time I might have spoken all afternoon was to make a minor correction to the minutes of the previous meeting.

But as the meeting began to wind down, and reached that part of the agenda where folks talk about things like upcoming meetings and pending regulations, an interesting exchange took place that deserves a little thought.

About a year and a half ago, after a couple of urban legislators tried to force New York to shut down its horseshoe crab fishery, and Governor Hochul vetoed the resulting legislation, the Department of Environmental Conservation lost its authority to manage not only horseshoe crabs (which aren’t really crabs, despite their name), but true crabs as well.  In response, the agency promulgated new regulations based on a theory of general authority, rather than a clear legislative grant, a somewhat iffy approach that might or might not have survived a court challenge.

The legislature and governor later reached a compromise, which would see the horseshoe crab fishery phased out over a few years, and again gave the DEC explicit management authority over anything that might be called a crab.  So, at the meeting, the DEC announced that new regulations were adopted, at which point one of the commercial fishermen on the MRAC panel asked whether the agency would continue to conduct horseshoe crab surveys and do other research because,

“It seems like a waste of money,”

given that the fishermen wouldn’t be allowed to harvest them in a few years.

The biologist’s response was that yes, the surveys would continue, in part because the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s horseshoe crab management plan requires the states to provide certain data to the Commission each year, but the fisherman still remained dubious.

That view of fisheries management—that management efforts should be expended on fish and other lifeforms that yield an economic return—is something that I’ve run across from time to time, and seems to suggest that economic value is the only value that matters.

But there are other views.

At last Tuesday’s meeting, Martin Gary, the Director of the DEC’s Marine Division, also addressed the room, and provided a very different perspective on the issue.

He described a night earlier that summer, when he, a team of DEC biologists, plus folks from academic institutions and environmental organizations, along with some people just interested in helping out, joined together under a full moon to survey and tag horseshoe crabs.

He described how the volunteers all helped to ease the DEC’s burden, and most of all, how some of the children that were there were completely enraptured by the activity, and asked good questions as they tried to learn more.  Some of the children, he noted, seemed so fascinated by the process that he wouldn’t be surprised if they became marine scientists somewhere down the road.

And that’s a value that we don’t think about often enough.

For while there’s no denying that some fish, crustacean, and mollusk stocks are economically important, and generate many millions of dollars—billions in some cases—through the commercial and recreational fisheries that they support, it’s also important to note that those “valuable” species aren’t in the ocean alone.

Close to three-quarters of a century ago, pioneer ecologist Aldo Leopold observed that

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, ‘What good is it?’  If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.  If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts?  To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

While Leopold was describing a land ethic, it applies to the ocean just as well.

While New York may shut down its commercial horseshoe crab fishery in a few years, that doesn’t mean that the animals won’t play the same role in the ecosystem that they played before—roles that they and their ancestors have been playing in parts of the world’s oceans for at least the last quarter of a billion years.

Whan an animal sticks around that long, there’s a good chance that at least some of those ecosystem roles might be fairly important, and that we might be well-advised to keep the stock healthy, just in case that it’s demise might cause harm to a resource we value more.

So continuing horseshoe crab research might not be the “waste of money” that some have suggested.

But the deeper value may well be the one that Mr. Gary alluded to:  Its ability to draw people, particularly children, closer to the sea.

There is little question that children are spending far less time outdoors than they once did, as the allure of electronic devices, coupled with increasing pressure to participate in extracurricular activities at school, on sports teams, and in other activities that steal their free time, alienate them from the environment, and that alienation has some fairly dire implications for the future.  The University of Michigan has noted that

“What is less often studied is what impact the trend of children staying indoors might have on the environmental consciousness of future generations.  Environmentalists often point to youth as future stewards of the natural world.  What will happen to their sense of stewardship as our children become increasingly disconnected from nature?

“Researchers at Cornell University attempted to address this question by examining the relationship between the time spent in nature as a child and pro-environment attitudes and behaviors.  They found that those individuals who participated in activities such as camping, hunting, fishing, hiking, and playing in natural areas before the age of 11 were more likely to demonstrate pro-environment attitudes and behaviors as adults.”

So it may very well be that those humble, soon-to-be economically worthless horseshoe crabs, or perhaps some other, seemingly valueless member of the marine ecosystem, could inspire someone to take up a career in fisheries conservation and management, and help to ensure that the “important” fish stocks, and the fisheries that they support, will remain healthy and viable throughout the foreseeable future.

And there is a value in that that far outweighs the costs of a little research and monitoring.

Yet, so many times, I still come across people calling certain fish “worthless.”

When I sat on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council a couple of decades ago, there was always debate about why it should manage spiny dogfish, instead of paying more attention to species that “were good for something.”

Even here in New York, which is generally considered an environmentally aware state, we have Section 13-0337 of the Environmental Conservation Law, which among other things states that

“Starfish, drills (Urosalpinx cineria), periwinkle (Litorina) and drum fish (Pogonias chromis) when taken shall not be returned alive to the waters of the state.”

That might make sense in the case of periwinkles, which are an invasive shellfish from Europe, but otherwise relegates components of the state’s marine ecosystem—starfish, oyster drills, and black drum—to being not only worthless, but things of negative worth, to be wantonly destroyed, merely because they feed on the same “valuable” shellfish that we do, and that bring dollars into the pockets of shellfishermen and aquaculturists alike.

It seems more than disgraceful, kind of like the old practice of killing off hawks because they killed the king’s grouse.  Yet in this place and time, such thinking persists, with no thought to whether such creatures may be critical cogs and wheels, essential parts of the overall mechanism that is the sea.

 

ADMINISTRATION SEEKS TO WEAKEN PROTECTIONS FOR FISH, SEA TURTLES, AND MARINE MAMMALS

On July 2, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a press release which said, in part,

“The United States is a global leader in sustainable fisheries management.  Our participatory, science-based system under 50 years of the Magnuson-Stevens Act has shown that we know how to rebuild stocks and keep them healthy.”

The problem is, that science-based fisheries management, rebuilding stocks, and keeping stocks healthy tends to hold down short-term profits, even if it might maximize long-term economic returns.  Thus, the press release continued.

“But despite this foundation, our seafood sector has faced growing pressure from global competition and evolving market demands.  Americans want American seafood, but our landings have decreased since 2019.  We need to put U.S. seafood first.

“In fisheries, as in life, results are what matter.  That is why I am eager to share the regulatory actions we have prioritized in response to the President’s Executive Order on Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.  We received input from 787 individuals and organizations, as well as detailed action plans from each of the regional fishery management councils.  I believe this volume of input underscores the urgency of our shared mission and I am grateful to everyone who contributed.

“After considering all input from councils, fishing industry, and the public, we have prioritized actions—many of which align with Council identified priorities—we believe will reduce burdens on domestic fishing, increase production, stabilize markets, improve access, and enhance economic profitability.”

In other words, all that science stuff—and the regulations that the science supported—was good for the fish, but now we’re going to set it aside, at least in part, so that we can do things that will be good for the fishermen (at least until 2028, after that, we don’t really care).

Appended to the press release was a list of 28 regulatory priorities, arranged by the relevant regional fishery management councils.  The priorities fell into basic groups: 

·       Allow fishing in currently closed areas (3)

·       Make it easier for fishermen to kill more and/or smaller fish (8)

·       Reduce industry monitoring requirements (2)

·       Reduce protections for endangered and/or protected species (5)

·       Increase commercial fishing efficiency (3)

·       Address shark and dolphin depredation (1)

·       Shift stocks to state management (3)

·       Better reflect multiple councils’ interest in fisheries (1)

·       Adjust individual fishing quotas requirements (1)

·       Minimize dead discards (1)

While the proposals aren’t all bad—it’s hard to quibble with an effort to extend the use of descending devices to combat barotrauma in the Gulf of Mexico recreational reef fish fishery, and arguments could probably be made to support moving management authority for queen conch and spiny lobster, two species generally encountered inshore, from federal to territorial authority—the general tenor of the proposals is to increase the risk to both targeted fish species and to species protected under laws such as the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammals Protection Act—so that commercial fishermen can land more fish more efficiently, and thus more profitably, although there are a few priorities that would enrich the recreational fishing industry, too.

Not surprisingly, considering Friday’s announcement that destroying an endangered species nest or habitat would no longer be considered “harm” to such species, which will now allow farmers, ranchers, real estate developers, extractive industries, and other similar environmentally-damaging industries to damage, or even totally remove, the habitat an endangered species needs to survive, the proposed changes would fall most heavily on what NMFS deems “protected species” that is, species that are either listed under the Endangered Species Act or Marine Mammals Protection Act.

Of those, the proposed changes that will draw the most immediate attention are the suggestions that the New England and Mid-Atlantic fishery management councils

“Deprioritize advancing requirements for ropeless gear”

intended to prevent fatal gear entanglements with endangered northern right whales.

It’s a proposal that the councils are likely to quickly accept, as the fishermen sitting on those management bodies aren’t particularly eager to adopt regulations that will be costly to the industry.  Yet, a few years ago, the United States Marine Mammal Commission reported that

“To date, there is no evidence that…regulations have been effective…right whale deaths attributed to fishing gear have increased substantially since rulemaking efforts began in 1997.  Whereas there were two confirmed deaths linked to entanglements from 1990 through 1999, there were eight from 2000 through 2009, and eleven from 2010 through 2016.  How many additional deaths go unrecorded is unknown, but it could be half to two-thirds of all deaths.”   

Most of the deaths are associated with lobster trap and gill net buoy lines, so rules requiring ropeless gear, that would eliminate the buoy lines, would have a substantial and positive impact on right whale mortality.

And, while the Marine Mammal Commission report was nearly a decade old, it does not appear that the threat of buoy lines has abated.  A young right whale that washed ashore on Martha’s Vineyard in January 2024 was found to be a victim of entanglement with a Maine lobsterman’s gear.

Sean Hayen, Protected Species Branch Chief for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, reportedly said, in 2023, that

“We have not documented a natural mortality in North American right whales in decades.”

Instead, all recorded mortality was due to either ship strikes or gear entanglement.  And with the National Marine Fisheries Service flatly stating that

“The North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered large whale species,”

with a total population of about 380 animals, which includes only 70 reproductively active females, one would think that NMFS, and the regional fishery management councils, should be doing as much as they can to keep entanglement numbers down.

However, fishermen complain that the ropeless gear needed to reduce entanglements is

“too time consuming and expensive.”

One argued that

“if I spend a third of my day rigging these acoustic releases [on ropeless gear] that takes even more off the bottom line…Rigging 800 traps could cost more than half-a-million dollars.”

So it is hardly surprising that this administration, which seems to value natural resources only for the profits that they might generate, would seek to resolve the conflict by reducing the burden on fishermen selling their catch, rather than by protecting the right whale, which can neither be harvested nor sold, from a very real risk of extinction.

The administration seems to be expressing similar sentiments in the Pacific, where it seeks to lift protections from non-marketable leatherback turtles, proposing that the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council

“Remove shallow-set longline leatherback hard cap and strike two turtle trip limit.”

Currently, the shallow-set longline fishery off Hawaii is only allowed to kill 16 leatherback turtles each year; should the fleet reach that limit, it may not fish for the rest of the year.  Similarly, if a vessel catches two leatherback in a single trip, it must stop fishing, return to port, and may not return to fishing until it has met requirements making additional turtle bycatch less likely.

But turtles, like right whales, have no price on their heads, so the administration couldn’t care less whether they live or die, and wants to see the bycatch limits abolished.

Another troubling trend in the proposals would reduce monitoring of fishermen, whether at sea or shoreside, providing more opportunities to dump protected species offshore, fail to report bycatch of regulated species, and otherwise evade current conservation measures.

For example, in the administration directed the New England Fishery Management Council to

“Rescind Industry Funding Monitoring requirements.”

NMFS’ ability to require industry-funded monitoring became a hot issue, particularly for conservative “anti-administrative state” campaigners, a few years ago, when monitoring requirements imposed on the herring fleet led to the case of Loper-Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo making it all the way to the Supreme Court, where the Court overruled the so-called Chevron Doctrine, that had allowed agencies to interpret the law applicable to their area of expertise when its language was ambiguous.  

While that ruling, which left all statutory interpretation to the courts, was a big win for the anti-regulatory crowd, it was a pyrrhic victory for the plaintiffs, as the lower court looked at the law and came to the same conclusion that NMFS had:  The agency had the right to require industry-funded monitoring of the herring vessels.  That decision is currently being appealed.

The court’s decision made the administration very unhappy.  So on May 1, Eugenio Pineiro Solar, the NMFS chief, wrote a letter to Cate O’Keefe, the Executive Director of the New England Council, which said, in part,

“we note that the Council considered, but did not recommend, revisiting the industry-funded monitoring (IFM) program developed for the Atlantic herring fishery.  For the reasons provided below, we respectfully request that the Council reconsider this decision and agree to proceed with a Council action to revise and potentially withdraw the IFM provisions for the herring fishery.”

The letter then claimed that NMFS didn’t have the resources to support the herring monitors, and were unlikely to have the resources to support the monitoring in the future (because the administration and Congress failed to adequately fund NMFS science and survey programs, although the letter, very predictably, never mentioned that).  Thus, the program couldn’t achieve its goals, including obtaining

“accurate catch estimates for incidental species with catch caps (haddock and river herring/shad,”

which raises the old question of whether, if a herring trawler accidentally catches a bunch of regulated fish and then dumps them at sea, with no observer watching, did anything really die?

The administration apparently believes that the answer to that question is “No,” and they’re really unhappy about the New England Council’s stance, because

“herring fishery participants have expressed concerns about the potentially high level of costs of IFM in relation to the recent low level of biomass and the low productivity rate of Atlantic herring.”

Now, some might believe that observers become more important when a stock is overfished, both because of a more pressing need to accurately monitor herring landings, and because the extended hunt for herring might lead to the fleet generating more bycatch along the way, but the administration seemingly has no such fears.  Thus, it threatened the New England Council to take the matter out of its hands.

“If the Council is unable to initiate an action within a reasonable time, the Secretary is authorized to prepare an amendment to rescind these measures.”

Whether NMFS can actually carry out that threat depends on the interpretation of one provision of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which allows the Secretary to prepare an amendment if

“the appropriate Council fails to develop and submit to the Secretary, after a reasonable period of time, a fishery management plan for such fishery, or any necessary amendment to such a plan, if such fishery requires conservation and management.  [emphasis added]”

There is supreme irony here.  The crux of the Loper-Bright case was the agency’s, and eventually the court’s, interpretation of another provision of Magnuson-Stevens, which allowed NMFS, through its fishery management plans, to adopt any non-specified provision that was “necessary” for the conservation and management of a fishery.

In that case, NMFS found that the industry funded monitoring in the Atlantic herring management plan was, in fact, “necessary” to manage the fishery, and has, so far, has successfully defended that decision in court.  But now, using a different provision of Magnuson-Stevens, the same agency is claiming that it is “necessary” to withdraw the same provision that it had previously deemed “necessary” to manage the fishery.

And at one time, maybe it could get away with doing that, interpreting the relevant provision in a way that favored its position.  But now that Loper-Bright took away the agency’s power of interpretation, it would be up to the courts to decide whether it is now “necessary” to repeal a “necessary” provision of the Atlantic herring management plan.  So, if the agency goes forward with the Secretarial amendment, and some environmental groups sues, who knows what a court might decide.

It’s all a bit of a circus, but again, we’re talking about the current administration’s fisheries policies, so that is no real surprise.  Common sense left the building a long time ago.

A more ambiguous set of proposals would increase the “fishing power” of the commercial fleet.  Right now, many fishery management plans created by the New England and Mid-Atlantic fishery management councils allow permit holders to only upgrade to slightly larger and more powerful vessels, restrictions that are intended to

“[maintain] fleet diversity and limiting capacity”

of the fleet to harvest fish.  Current restrictions limit upgrades to vessels just 10% longer, and with 20% greater horsepower, than the vessel that was originally issued the permit.

The administration proposal to the New England and Mid-Atlantic councils to

“Evaluate vessel baseline restrictions”

would upset the current equilibrium.

It wouldn’t necessarily lead to more fish being caught, so long as quotas and state trip limits remained in place, although it might make it easier for the commercial fleet to catch their entire quota in fisheries where that doesn’t always happen today.  What it would probably do is lead to quotas being filled earlier, and season closed sooner, something that would probably favor the larger boats that are capable of bringing more fish to market at one time than older, smaller vessels, and thus frustrating the original goal of “maintaining fleet diversity.”

But bringing more fish back to the dock on each trip isn’t necessarily a good thing for the commercial fleet, for while it would satisfy the administration goal of increasing commercial landings, as well as increasing efficiency, it probably would also depress fish prices.  As greater volumes of fish hit the market at the same time, the commercial fleet might well find itself in a position where it is catching more, but earning less.

And that’s probably enough talk about proposed commercial changes, although there are certainly more that could be discussed.  The few recreational proposals also need to get some attention.

Not surprisingly, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council was directed to

“Support state agency-led exempted fishing permits for red snapper.”

I’ve already discussed such permits on multiple occasions, explaining why, as currently proposed, they are an incredibly bad idea, a conclusion that has also been reached by a federal judge who has temporarily enjoined NMFS from allowing any fishing subject to the EFPs that it had already issued.  It doesn’t seem to make sense to instruct the South Atlantic Council to support what has already been deemed an illegal act, but I suppose the hope is that the states will reapply to NMFS, which is already happening, and that NMFS will issue new exempted fishing permits that aren’t quite so obviously illegal, and might just stand up to judicial review if the case happens to be assigned to the right judge (which undoubtedly means one of the less capable and less independent jurists among those appointed by the current administration).

The South Atlantic Council was also directed to

“Address shark and dolphin depredation,”

which was kind of a strange proposal.

It’s not that depredation isn’t an issue; it’s one of the hottest issues in recreational fisheries management today, particularly in the South.

It’s just not clear what the South Atlantic Council can do about it, given that it doesn’t have clear management authority over either sharks or dolphin.

What the South Atlantic Council does have is management authority over the fish that are being depredated, but it’s not likely that they’re going to amend its Snapper Grouper Fishery Management Plan with a provision that says something like,

“Recreational fishing vessels engaged in angling for any species managed under this plan may keep a firearm on board, which may be used to shoot and kill any marine mammal that attempts to depredate an angler’s catch,”

or something similar relating to sharks and harpoons.

It’s equally unlikely that the Council would add a provision to the effect that

“Anglers experiencing shark depredation must immediately move their boat to another location at least one mile from the place where the depredation event occurred,”

as the first two suggestions would be patently illegal, while the third would have anglers up in arms.

Thus, directing the depredation proposal to the South Atlantic Council made no sense at all.

But then, I already observed that common sense has left the building.

Unfortunately, sensible or not, the new list of proposals is just one more step toward the current administration’s goal of dismantling a federal fishery management system that has served the nation well for at least the past quarter-decade, and arguably for a full 50 years.

And the sad thing is that, unless a control shift in Congress provides a counterbalance to the administration’s deregulatory ambitions, that federal management system that “has shown that we know how to rebuild stocks and keep them healthy” might not survive until common sense hopefully reenters the building sometime around January 16, 2029.

 

  

THE DEPREDATION DEBATE

 

I was 13 years old and excited, because I was finally allowed to join my father and two of his friends on a party boat trip, targeting cod on Rhode Island’s Cox’s Ledge.

I had fished for cod before, from other party boats, but they were either half-day trips or trips aboard “tourist boats” that left from resort towns and fished in protected waters. This was my first full-day trip out into the open Atlantic, on a somewhat scruffy boat carrying a load of serious-looking fishermen, a trip with “the guys” and not just with the family.

It was a 2 ½-hour trip to the ledge, 2 ½ hours of growing anticipation, and I wasn’t disappointed. As soon as we arrived at the captain’s chosen spot, and the boat came tight on its anchor, I dropped my bait to the bottom and was immediately rewarded with the thumping bites of a cod. Everyone on board enjoyed a steady bite of mostly small fish, until one fisherman in the stern corner quietly leaned into his bent-over rod and began bringing what was obviously a bigger fish toward the surface.

I stared down into the clear ocean water, and eventually the flickering green silhouette of a fish began to materialize, becoming clearer and better defined as it neared the boat. But then, out of nowhere, a much larger silhouette also appeared, circled the cod once or twice, and just as some of those standing around me said the word, “Shark,” turned toward the fish and bit through its body just behind the head. The disappointed angler began reeling harder, hoping to at least get a few steaks out of what remained of his fish, but just as he began to lift the head out of the water, the shark returned, cobalt blue back out of the water, less than two feet from my shoes as it raced across the boat’s stern, grabbed what remained of the cod, snapped the fisherman’s line, and returned to the depths.

I didn’t know it, but I became an offshore fisherman in that moment, so enthralled by the shark’s beauty and power that I promised myself I would catch one someday, a promise that I kept some years later on a trip that led to a lifetime of chasing sharks, tuna, and occasional billfish off the coasts of New York and New England.

I kept codfishing, too, and like everyone who codfished back then, lost the occasional fish to an opportunistic shark, although it never particularly bothered me. It was all a part of the game.

But these days, it seems that people are a lot less tolerant, and “depredation,” particularly shark depredation, has become a hot issue.

In late 2024, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst conducted an extensive survey of anglers between North Carolina and Maine, seeking information on their experiences with depredation. The study intended “to gather data on how often recreational anglers experience sharks, seals, birds, or other gamefish snatching their catch.”

I was happy to see that the survey wasn’t focusing solely on sharks, because I’ve probably experienced more depredation events from bluefish stealing scup and black sea bass from me while fishing on offshore wrecks than I have from sharks, bottlenose dolphin, or any other animal.

Evan Prasky, the graduate student conducting the survey, acknowledged the wide range of depredating species in a comment he made in the Miami Herald, which was quoted on the University website: “Unfortunately, the face of depredation is sharks. However, we are also exploring how common it is to see seals, dolphins, birds, and other fish are depredating. It could be any predator, any fish that is bigger than the fish you have…if you are fishing and a 10-to-15-foot shark is eating your bait near the boat, it’s like watching a lion eat a zebra. The sharks will slap the side of the boat and fight for it. It’s the greatest show in nature.”

However, fishermen, particularly in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, are less enamored of the “show,” and more interested in getting fish to the boat in one piece. In those waters, the primary depredators are sharks, dolphin, and goliath grouper, all of which enjoy some sort of federal and/or state protection, and all of which draw hostile reactions from many anglers.

More rational anglers are pushing for passage of H.R. 207, the so-called “SHARKED Act,” which was sponsored by Rep. Robert J. Wittman (R-VA). That bill, which has passed the House of Representatives but has not yet been taken up by the Senate, calls for the Secretary of Commerce to establish a task force, composed of one representative from each regional fishery management council, one representative from each regional marine fisheries commission, one representative of a state fish and wildlife agency from each of the regional fishery management councils, one representative from the National Marine Fisheries Service, one individual with expertise in the management of highly migratory species, one researcher with expertise in shark management and behavior, and one researcher with expertise in shark ecology.

The task force with be charged with finding ways to improve coordination and communication among fisheries managers and shark researchers with respect to shark depredation, identify research priorities related to shark depredation, recommend management strategies to address shark depredation, and help develop and distribute educational materials that will help fishermen minimize depredation incidents “including through changed angler behavior and expectations.”

As written, H.R. 207 seems a reasonable approach to the shark depredation issue, although there are always concerns about what steps might be taken after the task force concludes its work, submits its report, and some level of shark depredation continues.

Unfortunately, less rational anglers are already attempting to address depredation through violent and often illegal actions.

In May 2025, a Florida charter boat captain was sentenced to 30 days in prison, and had to pay a $51,000 fine, after being convicted of shooting and poisoning dolphin (of the mammal kind) in the Gulf of Mexico. According to a press release issued by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida,

In the summer of 2022, [Zackary Brandon] Barfield grew frustrated with dolphins eating red snapper from the lines of his charter fishing clients. He began placing methomyl inside baitfish to poison the dolphin that surfaced near his boat. Methomyl is a highly toxic pesticide that acts on the nervous system of humans, mammals, and other animals, and is restricted by the Environmental Protection Agency…to control flies in non-residential settings. Barfield recognized methomyl’s toxicity and impact on the environment but continued to feed poisoned baitfish to the dolphins for months.

While captaining fishing trips in December 2022 and the summer of 2023, Barfield saw dolphins eating snapper from his client’s fishing lines. On both occasions, he used a 12 gauge shotgun to shoot the dolphins that surfaced near his vessel, killing one immediately. On other occasions, Barfield shot, but did not immediately kill, dolphins near his vessel. On one occasion he shot a dolphin while two elementary-aged children were on board, and another with more than a dozen fishermen on board.

While that individual was apprehended and punished for his actions, one can only wonder how many similar acts are committed by captains and private boat anglers, unwitnessed, on the open sea. However, given the hostility expressed by anglers, directed mostly at sharks and, to a lesser extent at goliath grouper, there’s probably more of it going on than we think.

For example, comments to one Facebook post on a page created by a group calling itself the “Offshore Fishing Club” say things like, “Every time a shark makes it to my boat, it dies. It’s the darnedest thing!” “yes, its funny, when one comes to my boat they float down to the bottom with a headache…” “Use the Tripple S method. Shoot. Sink. Shutup.” And “Hawaiians were known to hook three baits on a wire leader and a three-way swivel and let sharks battle one another to whatever outcome. This keeps them occupied when you’re fishing and they can sort out their own needs.”

The latter comment received 128 “likes,” with the first response being, “damn that’s genius,” so many anglers’ hostility to sharks, and their willingness to kill apex marine predators, even when those fish are legally protected from recreational harvest, is impossible to deny.

Another Facebook page, from a group calling itself “KILLSHOT Life,” recently asked the question “So what do we do about Florida’s goliath grouper problem?” While the comments were far more temperate than those made on the Offshore Fishing Club page with respect to sharks, with most respondents merely seeking open seasons and higher landings, there were nonetheless a share of people who merely wrote, “Fillet and release,” while others said things like “Just switch to a powerhead and let the reef Take them back,” and “I been killing everyone I catch for 20 yrs ! They are destroying the quality fish around Florida and offshore ! But everyone trusts the ignorance of the government…”

The National Marine Fisheries Service prohibits goliath grouper harvest, and the species is very tightly regulated in Florida, but it appears that some anglers are nonetheless killing them because of depredation.

While that sort of action is impossible to justify, just about every recreational fisherman would like to avoid, or at least minimize, depredation events. In Florida, many anglers believe that dive boat operators who feed sharks, in order to bring them close to skindivers, are part of the problem, claiming that they teach sharks to associate boats with food.

The American Sportfishing Association, the fishing tackle industry’s largest trade association, has claimed, “Often employed by divers, shark feeding can condition sharks to associate humans and boats with food, and the practice has likely led to an increase in shark depredation, when a shark eats a hooked fish before an angler can successfully land it, in the South Atlantic and Gulf as well. ASA supports a shark feeding ban as part of its approach to address shark depredation.”

In response to such concerns, Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) introduced H.R. 3831, the Florida Safe Seas Act, which would prohibit shark feeding in federal waters off the coast of Florida (Florida already prohibits shark feeding within state waters). The bill has been passed by the House of Representatives, but as is the case with the SHARKED Act, the Senate has yet to take any action.

The bill is strongly opposed by shark diving operations, which argue that scientists have never established a clear link between shark diving and shark depredation.

A recent paper, published in the April 26, 2026 edition of the ICES Journal of Marine Science suggests that shark depredation may be a natural response to increasing populations of sharks, fish, and recreational fishermen. Titled “Characterizing a century of shark depredation in US Atlantic recreational fisheries,” (characterization paper) the paper breaks the last century down into twenty five-year eras, each marked by different levels of sharks, fish, and recreational fishing activity, and argues that “At its essence, shark depredation is the result of human-wildlife overlap: in this case, spatially and temporally dynamic overlap between recreational anglers and sharks competing for a shared resource. Navigating the challenges associated with recent increases in shark depredation (real or perceived) requires a broader understanding of how this overlap has evolved over time.”

The characterization paper’s authors begin by describing the first quarter-century, 1925 to 1950, noting that “In the early 1930s, Ernest Hemingway documented some of the earliest instances of depredation by sharks.” Then, after the onset of the Second World War interrupted cod liver oil deliveries to the United States from Europe, a domestic shark fishery emerged to produce a substitute vitamin source. The authors summarize the period as “a reasonable representation of the initial overlap between anglers, fisheries, and sharks in a relatively untouched ecosystem,” when sharks and a relatively small number of anglers both had significant interactions with abundant fish stocks, but a relatively low rate of interactions with each other.

Between 1951 and 1975, the end of the war saw the domestic shark fishery decline to insignificance, while commercial landings of various finfish species increased, as did the number of recreational fishermen, who benefitted from more leisure time and more available and more affordable fishing boats. The growing recreational fishery included a flourishing shark fishery, which grew even larger after the publication of Peter Benchley’s novel, Jaws, inspired more anglers to seek what the book portrayed as a dangerous ocean predator. With shark populations still relatively high, target fish populations declining, and more anglers on the water, there was probably more competition between anglers and sharks for the remaining fish, and an increase in shark depredation.

The years between 1976 and 2000 saw two trends from the previous 25-year period, an increase in recreational fishermen and a decrease in the fish that they targeted, continue. In addition, thanks to the passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, which included provisions designed to support and grow the domestic commercial fishing industry, commercial fishermen were encouraged to develop fisheries for “underutilized” sharks; at the same time that recreational shark fishing grew in popularity. Chinese markets opened up to shark fins caught by American fishermen, and commercial shark landings grew from 135 tons in 1979 to 7,172 tons in 1989. Both the recreational and commercial shark fisheries were completely unregulated until 1993, when the first fishery management plan for Atlantic sharks was adopted. By then, a number of shark species were already overfished, and the public began to become aware of the need for shark conservation.

That period, with its relatively low numbers of sharks and depleted stocks of targeted sportfish, resulted in relatively few interactions between recreational fishermen and sharks. It was the time when many of today’s anglers entered the sport, and a majority of those anglers view the relatively low level of shark depredation that occurred in those years, as well as the relatively low shark population, as “normal,” even though, when viewed in a historical context, the number of sharks and the number of depredation events were actually unusually low.

The latest 25-year period, 2001 through 2025, saw successful fisheries management efforts increase the abundance of both sharks and many species of fish targeted by anglers, while the number of recreational fishermen also continued to rise. The characterization paper notes that, as a result of such increasing abundance of sharks, targeted fish species, and anglers, “overlap between these three groups is likely at an all-time high.”

As biologist Marcus Drymun and his co-authors noted in “Depredation: An old conflict with the sea,” published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, “it is important to recognize lifting baselines; that is, instances where previously depleted populations are recovering after decades of decline. For example, [one research team] attributed increases in population trajectory for several US shark species to the successful implementation of science-based management measures. It is vital that these success stories are celebrated.”

However, many anglers are not celebrating the restoration of shark populations. Instead, as the characterization paper observes, “a growing body of recreational anglers were expressing concerns that proliferating shark populations were causing increases in depredation. Collectively, these anglers were vocalizing a shift in attitude from ‘sharks threaten our safety’ in the 1980s to ‘sharks threaten our recreational fishing opportunities.’ This led recreational anglers to associate rising depredation with management measures that protect sharks.”

That association has led to the increasing pressure coming from the recreational community to relax shark management measures, along with the increasing number of anglers who are willing to kill sharks, in violation of existing management measures, in a futile effort to stem the number of depredation incidents.

Yet, while anglers continue to blame the sharks, they should also be blaming themselves, for as the characterization paper argues, the increasing levels of depredation are caused not only by increasing numbers of sharks, but also by increasing numbers of anglers, which lead to increasing numbers of shark/angler interactions. Yet many recreational fishermen, like many in the recreational fishing industry, focus only on reducing the number of sharks, while seeing no problem with the number of anglers continuing to grow.

Depredation by many different species, be they sharks, grouper, dolphin, seals, or anything else, is a growing problem, and seems to be the inevitable result of a growing number of anglers venturing out on the water and competing with the ocean’s native predators for the same target species.

Anglers, perhaps naturally, see themselves as the victims of such competition.

The depredation problem can’t be ethically addressed by depleting the number of ocean predators, just so anglers can enjoy their sport. But it can be solved once the angling public understands that they share the sea with sharks, seals, dolphin, and other native predators, and that so long as they compete for the same target species, anglers are going to have to share a portion of their catch, as well.

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

 

SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER: WHEN THE LAW AND THE SCIENCE ARE NOT ON YOUR SIDE

 

Back in the late 1970s, when I was in my final year at law school, I got a part-time job with a firm that specialized in corporate governance.  Most of the work was pretty mundane, and involved calling stockholders to make sure they’d received their proxy materials, or in the case of a corporate takeover, whether they received the information statement and understood how to tender their shares for either cash or shares in the surviving company.

But once in a while things got heated, when a slate of dissident shareholders tried to oust corporate management, or when a company launched a takeover of another company that did not  particularly want to be taken over by anyone.

I ended up staying with the firm for a few years after graduation, at first keeping the part-time gig, then taking a full-time job at its Manhattan headquarters, where I had an inside seat on such things as the leveraged buyout era of the early 1980s, the savings and loan insolvency crisis, and a few other newsworthy events.  But perhaps the most intense corporate fight I ever took part in involved Texas Air Corporation taking over Continental Airlines.

It was a weird combination, as Texas Air was a union-busting operator of low-cost airlines, while Continental was a highly-regarded full service airline with a large, unionized workforce.  But Texas Air offered a good enough price that Continental stockholders were more than willing to sell a clear majority of the outstanding shares, and grant an irrevocable proxies that ensured that Texas Air could control the vote at any shareholder meeting.

Continental’s takeover seemed inevitable, but in a desperate, last-minute effort to avoid it, Continental implored the Texas Congressional delegation to introduce a private bill that would prevent the takeover from taking place.

The effort failed, and Continental’s chairman, who apparently had a little too much of his identity tied up in the company and in his job, ended up shooting himself to death in his office.

Today, I can’t help but recall those days, when I see the recreational fishing industry appealing to Congress to grant them an extended recreational red snapper season in the South Atlantic, after they failed to make a credible case using science or the law.

Science certainly didn’t help them. 

The best available data suggests that recreational fishermen landed about 36,000 South Atlantic red snapper over the course of a two-day season last year, exceeding an annual catch limit of 29,656 fish, and released about 1,400,000.  The landings number contains a significant level of uncertainty, but the percent standard error—the measure of uncertainty—in the release figure is 20, a reasonably low figure and one deemed completely suitable for management work.

And that’s important, because the biggest cause of red snapper fishing mortality is release mortality—the number of fish that die after anglers return them to the water—which dwarfs the number of red snapper that anglers actually take home.  Since, in recent years, the recreational red snapper season was closed for 363 or 364 days of the year, but fishing for other bottom fish that share the same habitat continues, it’s reasonable that such release mortality can be very high.  When setting the recreational and commercial catch limits, the National Marine Fisheries Service sets aside 475,000 red snapper solely for dead discards, and then allocates the remaining fish—from an original annual catch limit of 509,000—between the two sectors, thus making recreational landings a very small part of the entire mortality picture.

The angling industry-connected organizations—the American Sportfishing Association, Coastal Conservation Association, Center for Sportfishing Policy, and the rest—are trying to throw shade on the science produced by the National Marine Fisheries Service, arguing that

“the discard data comes from the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) survey and is the only non-validated data in the catch survey.  It is well-known that these self-reported numbers are subject to digit bias and perhaps extreme digit bias.  When many fish are being caught and released on a trip, people have a tendency to stop counting by individual fish and start counting by number blocks (fives or tens) and they generally round upwards.  Additionally, recall bias can exacerbate the digit bias.  Whether this bias runs high or low is unknown, although experts familiar with these survey methods believe that this process and anglers’ natural behavior (exaggeration) skews it in the high direction.”

While someone reading that statement might come away with the impression that MRIP discard data is particularly unreliable—exactly the impression that the industry spokesman wanted to create—let’s look at it a little closer and see what it really going on.

First, the industry claims that the MRIP discard data is “non-validated.”  Well, of course it is!  The fish were returned to the water, so unless there was a fishery observer on board, or cameras running throughout the trip, placed in a way that they recorded every fish brought into the boat and so could reveal whether those fish were kept or released, surveyors have no choice but to take the anglers’ word about what was discarded.

Verification/validation is practically impossible.

But the thing to remember is that, absent observers or cameras, discards will always be non-validated, even in the state data systems that the industry touts.  There is no way to know for certain how many red snapper might have been released offshore; even if the state creates an smartphone app that supposedly tracks every fish, if the angler, whether forgetfully or intentionally, fails to log a fish on the app, that app will undercount releases, and there is no sort of validation that can detect the unreported fish.

So “non-validated” is just a red herring.

The industry comment also uses a lot of weasel words:  “Perhaps extreme digit bias.”  “People “have a tendency” to stop counting, and “generally” round upward (although no support for the latter assertion was ever provided).  “Recall bias can exacerbate the digit bias.”  The industry comment never clearly states that any of those things are actually occurring; instead, it merely raises possibilities intended to sow doubt in people’s minds.

And, again, we’re not told how state-sponsored data collection systems can avoid the same problems.

Similarly, we are told that “experts familiar with these survey methods believe that this process and anglers’ natural behavior (exaggeration) skews it in the high direction,” but what we’re never told is precisely who the supposed “experts” are.  And that matters, because the beliefs of PhD-level statisticians familiar with the current survey process—folks like the people who developed MRIP—are a lot more credible than a gaggle of industry-related “experts” with an agenda.  Without knowing the “experts’” identities, and either reading their papers or knowing the context in which their beliefs were expressed, the statement is essentially meaningless.

But one thing in the industry comment is meaningful, and that’s the comment that “When many fish are being caught and released on a trip, people have a tendency to stop counting by individual fish…” because that comment is a tacit admission that people are catching, and releasing, a lot of red snapper, and that admission certainly makes it more likely that a lot of red snapper are being released, and that anglers are generating a lot of dead discards, contrary to the industry’s assertions.  (An industry press release, analyzed in detail later in this post, also states that “Anglers bottom fishing in the region often find it difficult to avoid red snapper due to their high abundance,” which seems to confirm that many, many red snapper are being released each year.)

If we accept NMFS’ estimate of 1.4 million red snapper released in the South Atlantic over the course of 2025, if we assume that every fish released was released with a descending device to counter barotrauma (which is a very generous assumption, as it is likely that some percentage of the red snapper released—whether a small percentage or a majority of the fish, it’s impossible to know—were either vented or just tossed back into the water to float away and die), and if we accept the findings of a study published just a few months ago, which found that 29% of the red snapper released with a descender (and 46.8% of the red snapper released without either venting or a descender) die within 48 hours of release, then the recreational sector probably generated about 406,000 dead discards, somewhat below the 475,000 number predicted by NMFS. 

However, given that the number of releases in 2025 was unusually low, and that the average number of releases for the past five years, 2021 through 2025, was about 2.2 million, and given the conclusion of the previously-cited study, that 29% of released fish (provided a descender is used) die within 48 hours of release, those 2.2 million releases would generate about 638,000 dead discards, well over the 475,000 estimated by NMFS, and well above the 509,000 red snapper that constitute the annual catch limit.

The fishing tackle industry doesn’t like that dead discard number, so it tries to raise doubt as to its validity, but the plain truth is that the industry has not been able to produce any statistically valid data to refute NMFS’s estimate that anglers produce about 475,000 dead, discarded red snapper each year; it can only try to raise doubts about why that figure might be wrong.

So the science is definitely not on the recreational fishing industry’s side.

That makes it difficult to prevail on the law, since the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act is built around science-driven fisheries management.

Thus, after NMFS issued (or was ordered to issue) exempted fishing permits to the four South Atlantic states, which would have allowed their anglers to ignore the annual catch limit for South Atlantic red snapper, and so would have resulted in those anglers overfishing the red snapper stock by as much as 2,000%, it was relatively easy for a federal district court judge to issue a temporary injunction after commercial fishing interests sued, challenging the exempted fishing permits’ validity.

Two of the recreational fishing industry groups, the Coastal Conservation Association and the American Sportfishing Association, intervened in the lawsuit, their spokesmen saying things like

“For years, anglers have faced extremely limited red snapper seasons despite the stock rebuilding far ahead of schedule.  These pilot programs represent a transformational opportunity to improve recreational data collection, expand reasonable public access and advance state-led management approaches that have already proved successful in the Gulf.  ASA is intervening to protect that progress for recreational anglers and the sportfishing industry.”

And

“These pilot programs are about creating an improved recreational data collection and management framework for recreational fisheries, while maintaining strong conservation standards.  Recreational fishermen have waited for years for management that reflects the stock’s rebuilt status and current abundance trends.  The states are stepping up with more responsive management and better data collection, and we believe that effort deserves strong support.”

But neither organization wanted to talk about the 475,000 (or perhaps more) dead discards created by anglers every year, perhaps hoping that one of the new state data collection programs might find a way to pretend the discards didn’t occur.  And neither organization could come up with an answer to how eliminating the annual catch limit, and allowing overfishing, would maintain “strong conservation standards.”

One of the applicants for an exempted fishing permit, the State of Florida, even went so far as to argue that

“There is nothing in the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) that dictates an EFP’s harvest be included in annual catch limits.”

The judge, however, disagreed, apparently believing, unlike the recreational fishing industry, that overfishing, for any reason, is a bad thing—not to mention illegal.  In a long opinion that stated, among other things, that

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

“Because Section 1867 requires EFPs to be consistent with the MSA, as explained above, the NFMSA [sic] must consider whether granting an EFP application would lead to overfishing or implicate other conservation concerns.  The regulations governing EFPs require the NMFS to do the same.  Plaintiffs, however, contend that the government granted the States’ EFP applications without grappling with the evidence that EFPs would lead to overfishing.  The Court agrees, the Government ‘failed to consider an important aspect of the problem’ and thus ‘offered an explanation for its decision that runs counter to evidence before the agency…’”

“[W]hile the Court agrees with the Government that Congress, through Section 1867(d), authorized the NMFS to ‘create an expedited, uniform, and regionally-based process to promote issuance, when practicable, of experimental fishing permits, the Court does not find that Congress gave the Government unbridled discretion to circumvent MSA and the fishery management plan framework through the EFP process.  ‘Congress does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions—it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes.  And it is more than a little doubtful that Congress would have tucked into this particular mousehole of [Section 1867(b)] an elephant that tramples the work done by [the MSA and the fishery management plans].’  As Amicus Curiae aptly observes, ‘nothing in [Section 1867(b)]…gives the [NMFS] general authority to exempt fishing activities from any legal requirements…let alone indicate[s] that Congress meant for [EFPs] to become a vehicle to deregulate fisheries…’  As explained above, EFPs must ‘address’ the ‘needs’ identified under the MSA—not provide an escape hatch from them.  Such needs include the overarching requirement that fisheries be managed to prevent and end overfishing.  [citations omitted]”

That’s powerful language, and it made it very clear that the law was not on the fishing tackle industry’s side either.

Thus, while it might be a little unfair to restate Samuel Johnson’s famed quote, to say that “Congress is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” such aphorism is probably applicable here. 

Because, while completely unable to prove that their long-sought exempted fishing permits will not lead to significant overfishing of the South Atlantic red snapper stock, and having also been completely unable to convince a judge that the permits’ issuance complied with the law, the recreational fishing industry is now turning its sights on Congress, hoping that legislators will be willing to change the rules of the game so that anglers might overfish South Atlantic red snapper with impunity, despite the provisions of Magnuson-Stevens.

On June 29, the American Sportfishing Association issued a press release announcing that

“Recreational Fishing Leaders Visit Capitol Hill to Urge Action on South Atlantic Red Snapper.”

The release went on to say,

“Recreational fishing and boating leaders from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina were in Washington, D.C. last week for a South Atlantic red snapper fly-in hosted by the American Sportfishing Association (ASA), Center for Sportfishing Policy (CSP), Coastal Conservation Association (CCA), Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) and National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA).

“Fly-in participants met with 30 congressional offices from across the South Atlantic region to discuss the urgent need to secure a meaningful 2026 Atlantic red snapper season and advance longer-term reforms that improve recreational data collection and provide more reasonable access for anglers and fishing dependent businesses.  [emphasis added]”

In other words, they were speaking with congressional staff, and perhaps with some of the members themselves, about how to overfish the South Atlantic red snapper stock and ignore the 475,000 dead discards, despite the clear language of Magnuson-Stevens.

And why they want to do that is pretty well spelled out in the line, “more reasonable access for…fishing dependent businesses:”  The companies that make up the American Sportfishing Association and National Marine Manufacturers Association want to sell more stuff.

Even if that means overfishing the South Atlantic red snapper stock.

The American Sportfishing Association release claims that

“In recent days, the four South Atlantic states have moved to withdraw the original EFPs to pursue revised proposals that account for the court’s ruling and updated technical guidance,”

and if that were all that were happening, everything would be fine.  The states would have to estimate how many red snapper would be killed as a result of the exempted fishing permits, state seasons would be crafted to avoid overfishing, and the annual catch limit of 509,000 red snapper would be respected.  Presumably, the recreational red snapper season would be closed once the recreational catch limit was reached.

But the very next words of the ASA were,

“The recreational fishing community is urging NOAA, the states and Congress to work quickly to preserve a meaningful 2026 fishing opportunity while retaining the core purpose of the EFPs; testing better state data systems that can support improved management and access.  [emphasis added]”

That pretty much undercuts the notion that the states were just trying to comply with the court order and with NMFS’ regulations, because you don’t need Congress stepping in to do that.  The only thing that you need Congress to do is change the applicable law, so that something that would have been illegal—say, issuing EFPs knowing that they would lead to overfishing—is suddenly deemed to be OK.

Once again, the industry makes its motivation clear, talking about “a meaningful 2026 fishing opportunity” and “access,” with state management systems included as a sort of afterthought.

All in all, the phrase “meaningful 2026 season,” or something quite like it, appears in the release six separate times.  At the same time, the release refuses to accept any responsibility for the 475,000 dead discards and their impact on the recreational season, saying

“Anglers bottom fishing in the region often find it difficult to avoid red snapper due to their high abundance.  In recent years, however, the recreational season has often been limited to just one or two days, largely because of persistent shortcomings in the recreational data.  [emphasis added]”

Because that’s the industry’s primary, and perhaps only, strategy:  Blame the data, even if you can’t prove that it’s wrong.  The only other option is taking responsibility for the 475,000 dead discards, and taking responsibility for harming the stock is something that the fishing tackle industry and the anglers’ rights groups like CCA have never, ever had the courage or the integrity to do.

And so they retreat to their last refuge, knowing that they will lose on the science, and will lose on the law, but might still win in Congress, where years of campaign contributions and political connections count far more than science or law ever could.

Hopefully, their appeal is too late. 

Hopefully, long congressional recesses, paired with the need to raise campaign funds and the need to explain two years of inaction, political cowardice, and occasional malfeasance to constituents back home ahead of the mid-term elections, will leave the majority of the folks in Congress too busy trying to save their jobs to get involved in red snapper issues.

But hope is not a plan, and there is still a discomfiting chance that Congress might do the wrong thing and so allow the EFPs to go through.