FINFISH AQUACULTURE AGAIN UNDER SCRUTINY

 

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

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

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

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

and also directed

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

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

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

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

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

The article begins with the words,

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

then goes on to say,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The article also reported that

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

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

And it notes that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As the New York Times’ article notes,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first claim is that

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

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

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

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

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

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

The plaintiffs in Ariel Seafoods allege that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plaintiff’s second claim for relief is that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plaintiff’s third and final claim for relief is that

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

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

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

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

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NMFS guidelines provide that

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

Moreover, the same guidelines direct that

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

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

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

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

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

The complaint also raises other data issues, including

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NMFS RELEASES REVISED RECREATIONAL CATCH AND EFFORT ESTIMATES

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

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

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

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

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

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

The big question is what happens next.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----

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/

  

THE OTHER MENHADEN ISSUE

 

When the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board meets on November 10 and 11, most eyes will be focused on the debate over Addendum II to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden.

Addendum II deals solely with the so-called Bay Cap, which currently sets a 51,000 metric ton limit on the amount of menhaden that the reduction fleet may remove from the Chesapeake Bay.  Depending on what the Management Board decides, the Bay Cap may be reduced, may be tied to estimates of coastwide menhaden abundance, and/or may be broken down into smaller, seasonal quotas.

A lot of thought and attention has been poured into Addendum II, largely due to claims that localized depletion of menhaden is leading to osprey nest failure, depriving Maryland pound netters of their share of the menhaden harvest, and also depriving larger marine predators, including striped bass, of an important forage species.  However, as Addendum II itself admits, the Bay Cap is a purely precautionary measure; neither localized depletion nor its supposed side effects on birds, fish, fishermen, and marine mammals has ever been confirmed by any rigorous scientific study.

Thus, the Addendum II debate has largely come down to anglers and conservation groups calling for reduced menhaden harvest, based on little hard data, while the reduction fleet calls for the Management Board to maintain the status quo until such data is developed, something that will probably take a few years.

It’s hard to predict what the Management Board will decide, but I suspect that it will make some sort of change, if only to break the Cap down into seasonal quotas.  But whatever it does, its actions will have little impact outside of the Chesapeake Bay, as the coastal catch limit will remain in place, so overall menhaden harvest isn’t likely to change significantly.

That’s why the first item on the Management Board’s agenda, “Set Specifications for 2027-2029 Fishing Years,” is arguably the more important issue.

Last year, the 2025 Atlantic Menhaden Stock Assessment Update caught managers and stakeholders by surprise, after it determined that the natural mortality rate was lower than previously believed—M=0.92, rather than M=1.17.  That resulted in significant changes to the estimates of both fecundity—that is, overall egg production, which is used as the gauge of menhaden abundance—and the fishing mortality rate.  While menhaden were once believed to be above their fecundity target, with fishing mortality below target, the 2025 Update revealed that they were still neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing, but that fecundity was just 5% above the threshold that defines an overfished stock, while fishing mortality was above its target, although still well below the threshold level.

It turned out that, to have at least a 50% probability of reducing fishing mortality to the target level, thtotal allowable catch for 2026-2028 would have to be reduced from 233,440 to just 108,450 metric tons, a

That was a very big cut for the menhaden fishery to absorb in a single year, although perhaps not quite as big as it first appears, given that, in recent years, the menhaden industry has only landed about 80% of its TAC, with 2023 landings—the last year that was available at the October 2025 meeting—coming in at 181.75 metric tons.

But the menhaden industry wasn’t particularly fond of a 73 metric ton reduction, either.

In the end, after a long debate that saw a motion to cut the TAC to 108,450 metric tons defeated, and another motion to phase in the cut over three years also fail to get enough support, the Management Board decided to punt, and reduced the TAC by 20%--to 186,400 metric tons—which was effectively no cut at all, given that landings in both 2023 and 2024 were below that figure.  On the positive side, instead of setting the TAC for the next three years, the Management Board only established it for 2026, which is why we’re looking at the issue again this November.

When all is said and done, this is the issue that should be attracting the most attention.  Addendum II is a response to regional concerns, but has little data to support it.  The coastwide TAC will affect every state between Maine and Florida, and is supported by not just one, but two different stock assessments, the 2025 stock assessment update, which addresses menhaden in a single-species context, and also the 2025 Ecological Reference Point Benchmark Stock Assessment Report.

So, while people may debate localized depletion in the absence of definitive research, the fact that current fishing mortality is well above the target level is undisputably real.

The American Saltwater Guides Association has been following the menhaden TAC issue since it first arose last year, and recently advised that

“While most of the attention has been focused on Draft Addendum II and the Chesapeake Bay Cap, a potentially much larger conservation opportunity is developing separately.  On September 28^, the Menhaden Technical Committee and Stock Assessment Subcommittee presented preliminary projections for the 2027-2029 coastwide quota.  The current 186,840 metric ton TAC carries a 99.5% probability of exceeding the ecological fishing target in each of those years.  A TAC of 114,200 metric tons—a 39% reduction—gets that risk down to 50%.  At 110,200 metric tons, a 41% reduction, the probability of exceeding the target falls to 40%.  These are preliminary numbers presented on Monday and have not yet been published in the final ASMFC materials.

“This is NOT the same decision as Draft Addendum II…comments submitted on Draft Addendum II cannot substitute for comments on the coastwide TAC.  If you want the Board to hear from you on both issues, you need to comment on both issues separately.  That decision maters enormously; cutting the current 51,000 metric-ton Bay Cap in half would leave 25,500 metric tons of additional menhaden in the Bay, while a 40% coastwide TAC reduction would leave roughly 75,000 metric tons more menhaden in the ecosystem—nearly three times as much…

“So, if you’ve already commented on Draft Addendum II, you’re not finished.  Continue advocating for a fixed Chesapeake Bay Cap of 25,500 metric tons, but send a separate comment on the coastwide TAC to comments@asmfc.org with “Menhaden Ocean TAC” in the subject line…”

The Guides Association is calling for a 40% reduction in the coastwide TAC, which is pretty close to the 39%/114,200 metric ton cut that is needed to achieve a 50% probability of reducing fishing mortality to the target level.

In a rational world, such a reduction should be adopted as a matter of routine—after all, what is the purpose of having a target fishing mortality rate if you don’t strive to achieve it?—but I suspect that, come November, we’re going to see another bitter debate, with some members of the conservation community seeking to not only reduce the fishing mortality rate, but carry on their campaign to put the reduction industry out of business, while the reduction industry seeks to delay any reduction in the total allowable catch.

In such an environment, even common-sense management measures, such as reducing fishing mortality to the appropriate target, become controversial, and compromise becomes the only way to move forward.

Thus, although I’d certainly like to see the total allowable catch for 2027 reduced to the level that would provide no less than a 50% probability of reducing fishing mortality to its target, realistically, I would consider it a victory of the Management Board phased in a reduction that would finally achieve such 50% probability by 2029.

Even that will probably be difficult to achieve, particularly since the federal agencies, which long represented a rational, science-driven voice at the management table, have for the past year abandoned that stance in favor of one that is much more supportive of the fishing industry, regardless of impacts on the resource.

Given the expected difficulties, anyone concerned about menhaden conservation would do well to contact their state’s ASMFC representatives, and let them know that getting fishing mortality under control, and back to or under target, ought to be the Management Board’s first priority.

This could be the last chance to do so for the next three years.

 

NEW PAPER ARGUES FOR REDUCED ATLANTIC MENHADEN NATURAL MORTALITY RATE

 

A recently-released paper, “Investigation of Atlantic menhaden mortality rates,” authored by Jerold S. Ault and Jiangang Luo, which appeared in the November 2026 edition of the journal Fisheries Research, has been drawing the attention of menhaden advocates.

The paper argues that the natural mortality rate for Atlantic menhaden used in the most recent benchmark stock assessment, M=1.17, was much too high, and that a rate of M=0.50 was probably a more realistic estimate, noting that

“This estimate was substantially lower than the value currently adopted in the Atlantic menhaden stock assessment and was consistent with previous assessment results, species life-history characteristics, and observed longevity.”

If the paper’s conclusions are correct, they would have very serious implications for Atlantic menhaden management, as a sharply reduced natural mortality rate would, once input to the population model, result in a significant reduction in estimates of Atlantic menhaden fecundity (the overall number of eggs produced, which the menhaden assessment uses in lieu of spawning stock biomass to gauge menhaden abundance) and a corresponding increase in the fishing mortality rate.  Stock status would almost certainly change from the current “not overfished” and “not experiencing overfishing” to “overfished” and “experiencing overfishing,” and that change would justify the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board slashing menhaden landings and placing significant new restrictions on the menhaden fishery.

Thus, it’s not at all surprising that the various menhaden advocacy groups are calling attention to the paper, which effectively supports their claims that the Atlantic menhaden population is in trouble.  We see a group that calls itself “The Forage Fish Campaign” alleging that

“Atlantic menhaden are likely collapsing after years of overharvest,”

and other advocacy groups making similar assertions.  For them, the Ault paper is pretty much a dream come true.

So what does the Ault paper actually say?

Its primary approach deals with a coastwide mark-recapture study—that is, a tagging study—undertaken by the National Marine Fisheries Service during the years 1966 through 1971, which placed magnetic tags in more than one million menhaden, and the efficiency of the magnets used to detect those tags in fish caught by the menhaden reduction industry. 

Inefficient magnets, which failed to detect many of the tags present in recaptured menhaden, would in theory lead to the false conclusion that a larger proportion of the tagged fish succumbed to natural mortality, either eaten by a predator or, perhaps, being a part of one of the mass die-offs that occur from time to time, when too many menhaden crowd into a harbor or back bay, then die when a falling tide, and perhaps elevated water temperatures, leave them with too little oxygen to survive.

Such false conclusion would then lead to an inaccurate stock assessment for, as the paper notes,

“Accurate mortality estimates are essential because stock assessment outcomes, including estimates of biomass, fishing mortality, biological reference points and sustainable harvest levels, are highly sensitive to assumptions regarding natural mortality.”

When the benchmark stock assessment adopted the natural mortality estimate of M=1.17 in 2020, a level that, the Ault paper states,

“represents a 2.3-fold increase relative to the value of M=0.50 yr^-1 used in the previous [2015] benchmark assessment and was approximately 14 standard deviations above the mean of more than a dozen previously published estimates, as well as natural mortality values used in recent U.S. and international stock assessments [citations omitted]”

that high estimate of natural mortality

“contributed to the [benchmark assessment’s] conclusion that Atlantic menhaden spawning biomass exceeded 80% of unfished levels.”

It also led to the benchmark assessment’s conclusion that Atlantic menhaden fecundity was above its target level, while fishing mortality was below its target, which is about as favorable a conclusion as a stock assessment can reach.

Unfortunately, it was almost certainly the wrong conclusion, as we learned when the 2025 Atlantic Menhaden Stock Assessment Update was released about one year ago.  In presenting its findings, it stated that

“The only new change for this update assessment is inclusion of a new vector of natural mortality based on a revised analysis of the historical tagging data that was completed by the M Working Group.”

But that change was important.  After taking another look at the magnet efficiency question, the biologists performing the assessment settled on a lower estimate of natural mortality, M=0.92.  That, in turn, was enough to substantially reduce the estimate of fecundity, and increase the estimated fishing mortality rate.  As a result, the status of the stock changed “not overfished” and “not experiencing overfishing,” with fecundity above the target level and fishing mortality below target, to the same “not overfished” and “not experiencing overfishing,” but with both fecundity and the fishing mortality rate somewhere between their target and threshold levels.  In the case of fecundity, that level was only about 5% above the threshold that defines an overfished stock.

Now, the Ault paper argues that the stock assessment update still significantly overestimated the natural mortality rate, saying

“the revised analysis continued to rely on aggregated, landings-weighted estimates of magnet efficiency derived from plant-test experiments.  Magnet efficiencies varied substantially among plants and over time, ranging from 0% to 100%, indicating highly heterogeneous, strongly non-normal distributions of tag-detection efficiency that are not adequately characterized by simple averages.  Because tag-recovery probabilities directly influence estimation of natural mortality, fishing mortality, and catchability, the use of aggregated efficiency values may obscure important spatiotemporal variation and contribute to parameter confounding.  These observations suggested that treating magnet efficiency as a fixed external input could contribute more uncertainty to mortality estimation than the movement or catchability components of the model.  Consequently, despite reducing the estimate of natural mortality from M=1.17 to M=0.92 yr^-1, the revised estimate remained higher than values suggested by Atlantic menhaden longevity, life-history characteristics, and previous stock assessments.”

With those issues in mind, the researchers Ault and Luo began recalculating the natural mortality rate, using two different approaches, one based on the menhaden’s life history, one based on a reexamination of the tagging data.

The issue of magnet efficiency was a large part of the latter reexamination.  The paper explains that

“Prior to the mark-recapture study, high-strength magnets were placed throughout the processing lines of participating reduction plants to remove metal debris from the fish meal and prevent damage to processing equipment.  The tagging study assumed that tagged and untagged fish were fully mixed within the population prior to capture.  Following harvest by commercial purse-seine vessels, fish landings were delivered to reduction plants for processing, where fish bearing implanted ferromagnetic tags could be detected and recovered by the plant magnets.  Consequently, the probability that a tag was recovered and reported depended directly on the efficiency of the plant magnet system.  Because magnet efficiencies varied among plants among plants and through time, recovery probabilities were imperfect and heterogeneous.  Accurate estimation of magnet efficiency was therefore essential because recovery probabilities directly influence estimates of survival, fishing mortality, and natural mortality in mark-recovery analyses.  [citations omitted]”

Much of the paper was dedicated to the models used to determine magnet efficiency and thus a better estimate of natural mortality; they were, as one might expect, highly reliant on statistical analysis and other elements of mathematics that probably need not be discussed in detail here.

However, the discussion of the two analytical approaches taken by the researchers is worth examining. 

“Model-based estimates of natural mortality should therefore be evaluated in the context of independent biological evidence, including observed longevity and age structure.  Liljestrand et al (2019) did not reconcile their mortality estimate with the documented age structure of Atlantic menhaden.  Even after corrections reduced the estimate to M=0.92 yr^-1, the implied maximum lifespan remained only approximately 5-6 years under natural mortality alone.  This prediction is inconsistent with historical observations of Atlantic menhaden attaining ages of 11-12 years in fishery and survey samples.  Discrepancies between model-derived mortality estimates and independently observed longevity warrant careful evaluation, as natural mortality estimates should be both biologically plausible and statistically supported.

“Our reanalysis produced a natural mortality estimate of M=0.50…, less than half the original estimate reported by Liljestrand et al (2019).  After correcting the input data, the principal source of this difference was not the fishing-effort data themselves but the methodological treatment of tag-recovery efficiency.  The resulting estimate is consistent with observed longevity, life-history characteristics, and previous stock assessment results for Atlantic menhaden, making it more biologically plausible than the substantially higher estimates adopted in recent assessments.  Given the strong influence of natural mortality on stock assessment outcomes, these findings have important implications for future stock assessments and the biological reference points, stock status determinations, and fisheries management decisions that depend on them.  [citations omitted]”

It is certainly a compelling argument, and as noted at the start of this essay, the menhaden advocacy community has been making some effort to have the Ault paper deemed the definitive analysis—what in a federal context might be considered the “best scientific information available”—with respect to the Atlantic menhaden’s natural mortality rate.

But in doing so, the advocacy community might be falling victim to a collective sort of confirmation bias, given that the Ault paper supports their long-held contentions about the health of the menhaden stock.  For while, in the Ault paper, we have a peer-reviewed study that makes an argument for a natural mortality rate of M=0.50, we also have a peer-reviewed stock assessment that rejects the essential premises and findings of the Ault paper, and sets the natural mortality rate at M=0.92.

At first glance, that might seem unlikely, given that the Ault paper was only recently published.  But if we look at the 2025 stock assessment update, we will find that those premises and general findings had already been established in 2023, although not in their final form.

Thus, the assessment update tells us,

“Ault et al (2023) submitted a working paper to the Atlantic menhaden [Stock Assessment Subcommittee] and the Ecological Reference Points Work Group (ERP WG) that re-analyzed the historical tagging data and produced an estimate of M=0.56, significantly lower than the M=1.17 reported by Liljestrand et al (2019).

“However, Ault et al (2023) had used a different subset of the data and a different approach to handling the parameters, which made direct comparisons with Liljestrand et al (2019) difficult.  The [Stock Assessment Subcommittee] formed a working group to review the datasets and methods in consultation with the primary authors to determine the best estimate of M for use in the Atlantic menhaden stock assessment.  The M [Working Group] and the [Stock Assessment Subcommittee] determined that the main cause of the difference in the M estimate was the handling of the magnet efficiency parameter, which was equivalent to the tag reporting rate in conventional tagging models.  The M WG and SAS found that Liljestrand et al (2019) had overestimated the magnet efficiency rate in their analysis, but did not agree with the stepwise estimation approach proposed by Ault et al (2023) to estimate this parameter.  In the end, the M WG and SAS recommended a revised estimate of M=0.92 from the tagging study, based on the corrected magnet efficiency rate and updated effort and landings datasets, which was lower than the value used in the 2020 benchmark, but higher than the value estimated from Ault et al’s (2023) method.  [emphasis added]”

Thus, it appears that the conclusions reached in the Ault paper do not represent a completely new approach to estimating Atlantic menhaden natural mortality, bur rather an approach that was considered and, after consultations with Dr. Ault, rejected by the Stock Assessment Subcommittee that prepared the assessment update.

That context matters, because such past consideration suggests that the Ault paper does not reflect a new revelation that necessarily resets the natural mortality estimate, but rather an approach that was considered and ultimately rejected before the 2025 assessment update was finalized.

That doesn’t mean that the ultimate conclusions in the Ault paper are wrong, but it does mean that Ault and Luo are offering an alternative estimate of M which does not automatically trump the M=0.92 estimate that was used in the 2025 assessment update; Ault and Luo must still convince the Stock Assessment Subcommittee that their estimate is the correct one.

Having said that, an argument can be made that using the Ault-Luo estimate of M=0.50 would be an appropriately precautionary action until further research either confirms or disproves its accuracy.  However, deeming the M=0.50 estimate to be the best scientific information available would be premature.

So where does that leave us?

The Ault paper was a comprehensive reanalysis of the data used to calculate natural mortality for Atlantic menhaden.  The arguments made in the paper are robust, and make a logical case for the lower natural mortality estimate. 

However, the Ault paper should not be taken as Gospel.

Its core concepts have been considered and ultimately rejected by the Stock Assessment Subcommittee, for reasons stated in the 2025 assessment update.  Unless and until its authors can successfully refute the Stock Assessment Subcommittee’s criticisms, the Ault paper should not be used as a primary driver of menhaden management measures, although its findings may well inform the discussion and debate about menhaden management issues.

It is a paper that seeks to shed light on the natural mortality question, but it does not represent the final word on the subject.  More research still needs to be done.