FROM THE USUAL SUSPECTS: MORE MUDDLED MUSINGS ON MENHADEN

 

Regular readers of this blog know that, about one year ago, an updated assessment of the Atlantic menhaden stock indicated that previous estimates of the menhaden’s natural mortality rate were too high, and that when that overestimate was corrected, the spawning stock biomass was found to be about 37% smaller than previously believed.  As a result, in order to have at least a 50% chance of constraining fishing mortality to or below the target level, 2026 menhaden landings would have had to have been reduced by a little over 50%.

And regular readers of this blog will also know that, at the October 2025 meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, the Board chose to reduce the annual catch limit for 2026 by only 20%, a decision that had no real impact on menhaden landings, as such landings had only come in at about 80% of the catch limit in the immediately preceding year.

Preliminary indications are that, in order to have a 50% chance of achieving that fishing mortality target in 2027, and probably 2028 and 2029 as well, fishing mortality is going to have to be reduced by 39%, and the annual catch limit reduced from the current 186,400 metric tons to something like 114,200 metric tons.  Those numbers are real, and anyone concerned with menhaden conservation and the long-term sustainability of the stock ought to be out shaking the trees, and letting their state representatives on the Management Board know just how they feel.

Unfortunately, we’re talking about menhaden, one of the most politicized fish on the East Coast, and about a lot of people who throw around numbers, and make impassioned statements, that aren’t very real at all.  Some of it comes from being uninformed—an issue I addressed, with suggestions how to fix it—about ten days ago, and some of it comes from a desire to spin the menhaden issue in a particular direction, whether or not all the spin is necessarily true, something that I wrote about last June.

Unfortunately, the latter sort of advocacy seems to be taking up a lot of space in the news, with the latest example being a petition that was recently sent to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, asking him to promulgate emergency regulations to shut down the menhaden reduction fishery in federal waters off the New York Bight.

It’s not completely clear where the petition came from. 

The Forage Fish Campaign, a group that I’ve cited before for distributing dubious information, provides links to the petition on its website, but its name doesn’t appear anywhere in the petition itself, except as a cited reference in four of the footnotes.  The sponsors listed in the petition include the Jersey Coast Anglers Association; the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association; the New Jersey-based Hi-Mar Striped Bass Club; the Tackle Box Fishing Company (a fishing tackle retailer); two New York charter boats, the Jamaica Bay-based Karen Ann Charters and the Montauk-based My Joyce Fishing Charters; Capt. Ron’s Fishermen (an Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey party boat); and Moran’s Dockside (an Avalon, New Jersey tackle shop).  Whether those sponsors conceived of the petition on their own initiative or, as seems more likely, were recruited by The Forage Fish Campaign or some other entity, cannot be determined with absolute certainty.

The petition’s entreaty to Secretary Lutnick seems to depend on provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, specifically 16 U.S.C. 1855 (c), which provides

“(c) EMERGENCY ACTIONS AND INTERIM MEASURES

(1)             If the Secretary finds that an emergency or overfishing exists or that interim measures are needed to avoid overfishing for any fishery, he may promulgate emergency measures or interim regulations necessary to address the emergency or overfishing, without regard to whether a fishery management plan exists for such fishery…

(3) Any…emergency regulation or interim measure promulgated under this subsection—

(A) shall be published in the Federal Register together with the reasons therefore;

(B) shall…remain in effect for not more than 180 days after the date of publication, and may be extended by publication in the Federal Register for one additional period of not more than 186 days; provided the public has had an opportunity to comment on the emergency regulations or interim measure…”

The problem with using that provision as justification for asking the Secretary to promulgate emergency regulations is threefold.  First, the Atlantic menhaden stock assessment update, which sets out the current state of the stock, came out a little over one year ago, so it is difficult to argue that anything contained in that assessment update constitutes an “emergency,” for if it did, why didn’t the petitioners seek Secretarial action a year ago, rather than waiting until now?  Second, the stock assessment update made it clear that the Atlantic menhaden stock is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.  Finally, material released to the Management Board along with the 2025 stock assessment stated that, at the current annual catch limit, there was absolutely no chance—a 0% probability—of overfishing occurring in 2026, 2027, or 2028, so it is very clear that there is no need for the Secretary to promulgate “interim measures…to avoid overfishing.”

In  addition, the Management Board is going to meet on November 10 and 11 to address 2027, 2028, and 2029 management measures, so it seems a little premature to petition the Secretary before the ASMFC, which has managed menhaden for decades, has had a chance to do its job.

Given all of that, it would seem that menhaden don’t qualify for emergency treatment and, even if they did, that the Secretary should give the ASMFC a chance to act before declaring an emergency.

Still, it might be worth taking a look at some of the petitioners’ arguments to understand how and why those arguments are legally and factually faulty.  That examination should probably focus on the petitioners’ claim that emergency action was justified by key provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, in the form of National Standards for Fishery Conservation and Management 1, 2, 8, and 9.

National Standard 1 states that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.”*

A definition contained in an earlier section of Magnuson-Stevens explains that

“The term ‘optimum,’ with respect to the yield from a fishery, means the amount of fish which—

(A) will provide the greatest overall benefit to the Nation, particularly with respect to food production and recreational opportunities, and taking into account the protection of marine ecosystems;

(B) is prescribed as such on the basis of maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as reduced by any relevant economic, social, or ecological factor; and

(C) in the case of an overfished fishery, provides for rebuilding to a level consistent with producing the maximum sustainable yield in such fishery.”

National Standard 1 might appear to provide the best support for the emergency regulations, as an argument can easily be made, based on the 2025 stock assessment update, that menhaden landings need to be reduced substantially if the species is to be able to fulfill its ecological role; in fact, the target fishing mortality level is based on ecosystem reference points intended to allow the menhaden to do just that.

As noted above, materials provided to the Management Board ahead of its October 2025 meeting make it clear that current management measures are already adequate to prevent overfishing—a 0% probability of overfishing occurring is as much prevention as anyone can ever hope to achieve—so the only remaining question is whether the current management measures achieve optimum yield.

That analysis would begin with the question raised in subparagraph A:  Do the current menhaden management measures provide the greatest overall benefit to the Nation?  Menhaden aren’t typically eaten, and aren’t targeted for sport or food by recreational fishermen, so the usual valuations of food production and recreational opportunity cannot be applied.  

One might argue that the menhaden fisheries contribute to both food and recreation indirectly as the fish caught by the reduction fleet are used, in large part, for agricultural and aquacultural feeds, nutrition for the chicken, salmon, and other foods that land on Americans’ plates, while menhaden caught by the bait fishery are used as bait for crab and lobster, and also as bait and chum in the recreational fishery.  So the current regulations don’t seem to conflict with that portion of subparagraph A.

Having said that, we might still question whether the current menhaden management measures “take into account the protection of marine ecosystems,” and whether, with respect to subparagraph B, such management measures are designed to achieve maximum sustainable yield, “as reduced by any relevant…ecological factor.”

It is easy to argue that they do not.

However, as noted at the start of this essay, all that is needed to achieve the various ecological goals for Atlantic menhaden is to reduce menhaden landings by 39% coastwide.  That can be accomplished by cutting both reduction and bait landings by 39%, and/or by cutting every state’s quota by 39%.  There is no indication that shutting down only the reduction fishery, while leaving the bait fishery completely intact, and doing so only in the New York Bight, is necessary to ensure that menhaden fulfill their ecological role.

In fact, the petition unintentionally argues against itself in this regard.  It complains that the reduction fleet removed 13 million pounds of menhaden from the waters off New Jersey over the course of two days, although it never offers an estimate of the total poundage of menhaden removed from the New York Bight over the course of a season.  However, the petition states very clearly that

“The Bight’s menhaden play a key role [in New Jersey’s fishing industry], with the commercial bait fishery based in New Jersey catching over 80 million pounds of menhaden annually…  [emphasis added]”

So, given that the reduction fleet is only in the New York Bight for a relatively short period—or periods—each year, does it really catch significantly more menhaden in Bight waters than the bait fishery does?  And if petitioners truly believe that the removal of menhaden from the waters of the New York Bight is causing ecological harm sufficient to invoke the provisions of National Standard 1, why does it not object to the bait fishery, which it acknowledges removes more than 80 million pounds of menhaden—very possibly as much as, if not more than, the amount of menhaden removed by the reduction fleet—from the New York Bight each year?

The answer might be as simple as the fact that the reduction fleet uses big boats, while the bait fishery uses small ones, and the petitioners like the latter boats better, even if they collectively kill the same numbers of fish.

National Standard 2 requires that

“Conservation and management measures shall be based on the best scientific information available.”

Right now, the best scientific information available with respect to Atlantic menhaden is the 2025 stock assessment update, which found that the stock is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.

And if the stock is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing, it’s hard to argue that any emergency management measures are needed.

The petitioners try to get around that simple truth by making statements such as

“The most recent stock assessment science concluded Atlantic menhaden are so critical to the striped bass diet that to rebuild striped bass populations [which are currently overfished], significant reductions in the catch of menhaden are required so more are left in the water as food for striped bass growth, survival, and reproduction,”

citing the 2025 Ecological Reference Point Benchmark Assessment and Peer Review Report as support for that statement, or claiming that

“NOAA and ASMFC ecosystem science concluded that more menhaden must be left in the water as bait to help striped bass grow, survive, and achieve healthy population levels,”

citing an ASMFC press release from about one year ago.

However, when one actually looks at the referenced documents, one finds that the plain language of the documents doesn’t quite say what the petitioners claim.

The 2025 Ecological Reference Point Benchmark Assessment, for example, never states that

“Atlantic menhaden are so critical to the striped bass diet that to rebuild striped bass populations, significant reductions in the catch of menhaden are required.”

In reality, it states that

“When fished at their current [fishing mortality] rate, striped bass do not reach their biomass target under any menhaden [fishing mortality] scenarios,”

and that

“the ability of striped bass to reach their biomass target under their [fishing mortality] target in the single-species stock assessment depends on the recruitment regime assumed for future years; striped bass did not reach their spawning stock biomass target under the current [fishing mortality target] if recruitment remains at the very low levels observed since 2019”

even if menhaden are abundant.

While striped bass are the most sensitive species to menhaden abundance included in the ecosystem model,

“striped bass biomass declined by 61% in the extreme [fishing mortality] scenario where menhaden were effectively extirpated from the system, and striped bass biomass increased by 6% if menhaden fishing ceased.”

If ending all fishing for menhaden, along the entire coast, only caused striped bass biomass to increase by a mere 6%, it’s hard to argue that just shutting down the reduction fishery in the New York Bight is going to have a significant impact on the striped bass population, particularly if squid, sand eels, or other forage species not included in the ecosystem model used to assess Atlantic menhaden are present in large numbers.

Similarly, the October 31, 2025 ASMFC press release referenced in the petition never comes close to saying that “NOAA and ASMFC ecosystem science concluded that more menhaden must be left in the water as bait to help striped bass grow, survive, and achieve healthy population levels,” but merely notes that

“the goal of the [ecological reference points] is to maximize Atlantic menhaden fishing mortality while also accounting for the forage needs of Atlantic striped bass.  [emphasis added]”

The fact that petitioners so badly distort the message of the documents that they cite is convincing evidence that the petition is not supported by the best scientific information available.

National Standard 8 states that

“Conservation and management measures shall, consistent with the conservation provisions of this Act (including the prevention of overfishing and rebuilding of overfished stocks), take into account the importance of fishery resources to fishing communities by using economic and social data that meet the requirements of [National Standard 2], in order to (A) provide for the sustained participation of such communities, and (B) to the extent practicable, minimize adverse economic impacts on such communities.”

 The petitioners themselves admit that

“Omega Protein Corporation and its vessel operators, Ocean Harvesters, are estimated to provide a total of about 500 part-time and full-time jobs as part of its entire reduction fishery operation based in Reedville, Virginia…These estimates also suggest the company accounts for as much as $29 million in annual payroll and benefits.”

That would certainly seem to make Reedville one of the “fishing communities” contemplated by National Standard 8, which would entitle it to “sustained participation” in the menhaden fishery, and oblige regulators to “minimize adverse economic impacts” of its management decisions.

The petitioners argue that

“this benefit comes at significant cost to the Bight Region, Atlantic Coast, and national economies supported by the recreational fishing industry,”

but offer no data, much less data meeting the “best scientific information available” standard of National Standard 2, demonstrating that the reduction fishery is causing any significant harm to fishing communities in the New York Bight.

Thus, far from supporting petitioners’ call for emergency regulations prohibiting reduction fishing for menhaden in the New York Bight, National Standard 8 provides reason to minimize adverse economic impacts on Reedville, and to reject the petition’s request for such emergency regulations.

Finally, National Standard 9 reads,

“Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable, (A) minimize bycatch and (B) to the extent bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch.”

While every fishery, including the recreational fishery, has some level of bycatch and discard mortality, the petitioners have made no effort to document or quantify bycatch in the reduction fishery, but rather merely assume that such bycatch is significant enough to justify citing National Standard 9 as support for their request for emergency regulations.

There is no question that the reduction fishery generates some level of bycatch, but the best evidence available to date suggests that such bycatch represents only a small percentage of the overall catch, and that the level of bycatch has remained consistent for over a century.  It is entirely possible, although very far from certain, that new studies could find that the reduction fishery creates a more severe bycatch problem than uncovered in past research, but until such studies emerge, the best scientific information available indicates that nothing in National Standard 9 provides any support for petitioners’ request.

Thus, once again, we see the menhaden debate muddied by advocates making untenable claims, and seeking to shut down a fishery for no better reason than they don’t like its ownership or the fact that it operates on a larger scale than most fishing businesses.

The problems facing Atlantic menhaden are real, and need to be addressed when the Management Board meets in November.

The last thing that the menhaden needs is to have those real problems obscured, and the debate muddled, by trumped-up claims made by advocates and advocacy groups more interested in knocking down a particular industry than in building up menhaden abundance.

 

 

 

 

 

LET'S NOT GIVE UP ON STRIPED BASS

 

By now, many—probably most—serious striped bass anglers have heard that Maryland has released its juvenile abundance index for 2026, and that such index recorded a very uninspiring 5.5.  

While that is the best Maryland JAI since 2018, it is still barely above the long-term average of 10.8, and helps entrench the period 2019 through 2026 as the eight years with the lowest average JAI, 3.15, in the 70-year history of the Maryland juvenile abundance survey.  The next-lowest eight-year average, 3.57, occurred in the period 1979-1986; the fact that those years encompassed most of the stock collapse of the late 1970s and 1980s provides some context as to just how dire the current striped bass recruitment situation really is.

Virginia also released its juvenile abundance index for 2026, and at 9.52, it was above that state’s long-term average JAI of 7.77.  However, it’s important to note that the calculation of Virginia’s long-term average began in the late 1960s, and that from the late 1960s through 1986 or so, recruitment was atypically low.  

To put that in perspective, if we replaced the period used to calculate Virginia’s long-term average JAI with the years 1992 through 2006, which the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission uses to determine whether the “recruitment trigger” in the fishery management plan is tripped, we’d find that the 2026 JAI was just a bit over Virginia’s recruitment trigger value of 8.22.  We’d also find that such recruitment trigger, which marks the 25^th percentile of all JAIs in the 1992-2006 period, is already above the long-term average of 7.77, so the simple fact that Virginia’s 2026 JAI is above the state’s long-term average doesn’t provide much reason to celebrate.

At the same time, there were some mildly hopeful details underlying the overall bad news.  The Maryland press release that announced the 2026 JAI also noted that, although

“the fish were more widely distributed than in recent years,”

“[t]he highest performing areas were the upper Bay and Choptank River.”

No explanation was given as to why there was a greater concentration of juvenile striped bass in the upper Bay.  It is very possible that higher water flows and lower water temperatures, attributable to snowmelt and runoff in the Susquehanna River watershed, particularly those portions of the watershed located in Pennsylvania and New York, made conditions in the upper Bay more favorable for juvenile survival.  If that was, in fact, the case, the greater number of fish in the upper Bay might portend greater numbers of juvenile bass throughout the Bay in the future, should winter and early spring bring conditions—including water flows, temperatures, and zooplankton availability—more favorable to striped bass reproduction.

While such favorable conditions might occur as early as this upcoming winter—right now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting that, at least during December, January, and February, the Chesapeake Bay region will see above-normal temperatures, above-normal precipitation, and no drought conditions at all—that’s not guaranteed, and might not even be likely.  When the striped bass population last collapsed in the late 1970s and 1980s, it took 14 years, from 1975, when the JAI began its decline at 6.69, until 1989’s dominant year class, with a JAI of 25.20, was produced; during those 14 consecutive years, the JAI averaged 4.35.

It’s not at all impossible that we might have to again wait that long before we see another dominant year class emerge.

Unfortunately, it appears that some fisheries managers are already growing impatient, and might not want to give the striped bass time to find a way out of its current troubles.  The website Maryland Matters reports that Carrie Kennedy, the Tidal and Coastal Monitoring and Assessment Division director for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, is already suggesting that the current low JAIs may represent “the new normal” for striped bass recruitment, and that

“Maybe we need to have a conversation about new reference points and new expectations.  I don’t think that we should expect the population to be where it was in the early 2000s.  We have a different Chesapeake Bay.  We have a different planet than we had in the early 2000s.”

And maybe she’s right.

Maybe climate change has seriously wounded the Chesapeake Bay, and rendered it physically incapable of producing the sort of big striped bass year classes that it produced as recently as 2011, 2015, 2017, and 2018, the sort of year classes that, with proper conservation and management, might help to rebuild the striped bass stock to the current spawning stock biomass target.

However, we ought not to forget that, as early as October 2016, Michael Luisi, who represents the Maryland Department of Natural Resources on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, complained about the supposed “severe and tremendous” impacts that the landings reductions imposed by Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass had on Maryland’s fishermen, and tried to immediately increase striped bass landings, even though Maryland’s recreational fishermen never achieved the reductions required by Addendum IV, and actually substantially increased their harvest instead.

Mr. Luisi’s efforts to increase striped bass landings has been a consistent feature of Management Board meetings ever since then.  So has his continuing effort to change the reference points used to gauge the health of the striped bass stock, so that the spawning stock biomass target would be lower, which would allow for higher annual landings.  As early as October 2017, he argued that

“I’ve always been one who has thought that the current targets that are set for spawning stock biomass, or [sic] set to a point where they’re unachievable.  They may be achievable, but we’re unable to maintain them.

“It sets a false expectation for fishermen along the coast…”

It sounds like a good argument, until one looks at historical fishing mortality rates, and realizes that one of the biggest reasons that spawning stock biomass rarely approached the target is because the striped bass stock was experiencing overfishing in 14 of the 22 years between 1996 and 2017, and that when fishing mortality did manage to stay below threshold—maybe it didn’t get all the way down to its target level, but at least overfishing wasn’t occurring—in the years between 1997 and 2003, the spawning stock biomass had no problem rising to and above its target level in multiple years.

It seems that the only reason that the spawning stock biomass target appeared “unachievable” or that managers were “unable to maintain” it was that the same managers never made a serious effort to get overfishing under control.

Even so, Mr. Luisi again tried very hard to include reduced spawning stock biomass reference points in the draft Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.  When a motion to remove such reference points from the draft Amendment was made, he attempted to argue that

“I do not support the removal of reference points as a discussion point.  I think 1, I think fishery goals and objectives is the fundamental basis for what we do.

“If you don’t have the appropriate goals and objectives, none of the other elements and the other components make any difference.  I would like to see us go forward with goals and objectives, reference points, triggers, stock rebuilding and schedule…”

Mr. Luisi lost the debate back then, but we would be foolish to believe that he has given up trying to skew the fishery management plan toward greater exploitation.

Thus, when we hear a Maryland fisheries manager talk about revisiting the reference points, and about how we shouldn’t expect to see the spawning stock biomass reach the level it did in the early 2000s—another way to say that the current SSB reference point is unrealistically high—it is only reasonable to wonder whether that manager is expressing a legitimate concern about changing conditions in the Chesapeake Bay, or whether that manager is merely setting the stage for another attempt to increase striped bass landings.

Whatever the motivation, giving up on striped bass rebuilding right now—or, more precisely, immediately after the 2027 benchmark stock assessment is released--would be a serious mistake.

Right now, the stated goal of the striped bass management plan is

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

In order to achieve that goal, the management plan’s objectives include, among a number of other things, to

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

and

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

The current reference points are, at least in part, calculated to achieve such goal and the objectives of sustaining long-term abundance and a broad age structure that includes a reasonable abundance of fish that are at least 15 years old.

Changing the goals and objectives, and so the reference points, to allow higher landings, at the cost of reduced abundance, increased long-term risk, and fewer older, larger females, would be a mistake, particularly in the face of current poor recruitment, as it may well be those older, larger females that hold the key to rebuilding the stock. 

Over 25 years ago, Dr. David Secor published a paper, “Spawning in the nick of time?  Effect of adult demographics on spawning behavior and recruitment in Chesapeake Bay striped bass,” in the ICES Journal of Marine Science.  In that paper, Dr. Secor concluded that

“Through a moratorium on Maryland State harvests in the Chesapeake Bay the 1982 year-class [which was the key to rebuilding the striped bass stock after it had collapsed] was effectively protected and became a dominant one.  Ironically, most egg production in 1982 was attributed to striped bass >10 years in age.  Old remnant females produced during the 1960s were a hedge against a long period of recruitment overfishing which occurred during the 1970s.  Striped bass epitomize periodic strategists, spreading risk of failed replacement through variability in spawning behavior over many spawning seasons.  This life history tactic indicates that a truncated age structure would result in stock abundance being more closely linked to annual changes in year-class strength.”

In other words, doing what Mr. Luisi has suggested in the past—changing the goals, objectives, and reference points to allow higher annual landings, while compromising a broad age structure, reducing the number of age 15+ fish, and reducing long-term abundance—could remove the very old fish from the population that might be needed to spearhead the current recovery of the striped bass stock, as older fish spearheaded the recovery forty-plus years ago, and so make that recovery much harder to achieve.

As I noted before, it’s possible that Ms. Kennedy is right, and that long-term changes in the Chesapeake Bay will make rebuilding to the current spawning stock biomass target impossible.  But that has not yet been established, and there is no reason to hurry to change the reference points now.

If changes in the Bay have truly made the current spawning stock biomass target unachievable, that will be revealed to be true over time, but it would be a serious mistake to rush to give up on the striped bass’ recovery, and change the reference points before the data conclusively demonstrates that such recovery cannot and will not occur.

To give up too soon would potentially deprive striped bass fishermen, recreational and commercial, of the benefits that accrue from a healthy and abundant stock, and put the long-term sustainability of the striped bass population at risk.

We can, and without a doubt should, wait at least another decade or so before condemning the bass to such fate.

 

IMPROVING ATLANTIC THRESHER SHARK MANAGEMENT

 

Although I knew they existed, I never thought much about thresher sharks—I should be more precise, and call them “common” thresher sharks, but as we never see any other species of thresher around here, no one does—until I was in my late teens and working in a tackle shop 50-some years ago, and one of our customers came in puffed up with pride and bragging that he caught a 400-pound thresher on his first trip off Montauk that season.

He was the first person I had ever known who had put one in the boat.

About the same time, I purchased a copy of Capt. Frank Mundus’ book, Sportfishing for Sharks, and noticed that in his chapter on threshers, Capt. Mundus noted that if you catch one, “you won’t be in a crowd,” because threshers were not all that easy to come by.

In the beginning of my shark fishing career, my experience with threshers was spotty, and more or less followed the Captain’s prediction.  We ran into very few.

We did hook a big one early—on the very first shark trip I took on my own boat out of Fire Island Inlet, in the summer of 1984, my first on Long Island—when I ran my 20-foot Sea Ox center console to an area near the Coimbra wreck, which was more than a 40-mile run once we got out of the bay.  From the point of view of both experience and equipment, we were woefully under-prepared, and were pretty well doomed from the moment the fish picked up the mackerel that was drifting on on one of my 30-pound rods.

One of my friends on the boat picked up the rod when the fish hit, but it didn’t do much for a while other than do deep circles around the boat, not taking much line but not giving back any either, while my friend’s back screamed out in pain (because yes, at the time, we were so poorly equipped that we didn’t even have a belt or a harness on board).  After a couple of hours had passed, the shark finally started coming up, making us think that we had hooked a decent mako that was about to go airborne, but what we finally saw was a thresher, which I now think was in the 300 to 400 pound range, that made two long, greyhounding jumps parallel to the surface of the sea, each one broadside to us and maybe four feet above the water, before ripping off a few hundred yards of line and coming out of the water again, this time in a pinwheeling jump that had the fish high in the air—something I’ve never seen a thresher do since—the top half of its body curving one way and its tail the other in a graceful arc reminiscent of the Chinese taijitu symbol used to depict yin and yang, before it fell back into the water and onto the line, breaking it and releasing my friend from any further suffering.

We saw a couple of free-jumping threshers over the next few years, but never had one pick up a bait.  Things sped up a little at the turn of the century, with one thresher boated and one tagged and released, but it wasn’t until 2018 or so that we started running into them often enough that Capt. Mundus’ comment no longer held true—by then, threshers were very much part of the crowd, and in any given season, might show up in our chum slick more often than the blue sharks or shortfin makos that used to make up much of our catch.

Anglers on my boat hooked three different threshers on one notable day in July, only eight or ten miles from shore in around 20 fathoms of water. 

And some of the threshers that we were hooking were big.

One of the Stony Brook University researchers I work with beat one that probably weighed a little over 300 pounds—about the same size as the fish described at the start of this post—in just 68 minutes last season; that shark was fitted with an acoustic tag and released.

A few years before, I had hooked what was roughly a 400-pounder on another 30-pound outfit intended for blue sharks and small makos, fought it for 3 ½ hours before the leader came up, and groaned when an untrained wireman couldn’t hang on, forcing me to spend another hour on the rod before the fight concluded.

And two years ago, during an early July coccolithophore bloom that tinted the water a strange shade of bright blue, I stood at the controls of my boat while another researcher fought a big fish that we never saw—but, given how it fought was almost certainly a thresher—for four hours and forty-five minutes on the same heavy outfit that defeated the 300-pound fish mentioned above in just over an hour, before the shark managed, in what would probably have been the closing minutes of the fight, to tail-wrap itself in the line above the 15-foot wire leader, chafe through the 80-pound monofilament, and set itself free.

I have no idea how large that latter fish was, but I know that the fight took the boat fully five miles from where we hooked up, and I know that after the line popped, the angler fell to the deck like someone who had been shot, and didn’t get up, or even move, for about a half-hour, at which point he got up, climbed down into the cabin, and laid on a bunk for the rest of the ride home.

So, we’re definitely seeing a lot more threshers in recent years, but what we don’t know is whether the increased number of encounters means that the fish are becoming more abundant or, for one reason or another, that they are merely becoming more catchable.

Thresher sharks primarily feed on small schooling fishes, including menhaden, other herrings, various mackerels, etc.  The argument can easily be made that, at least here on Long Island, we have had more of such small schooling species, particularly menhaden and chub mackerel, during the June-August period when most recreational shark fishing takes place, over the past decade than we have at any time in the previous 20 or 30 years, and that such smaller baitfish have concentrated threshers and made them more available to anglers, regardless of their overall abundance.

Although we are now halfway through October, and out of the typical window for recreational shark angling, threshers remain reasonably abundant just off Long Island’s beaches, as they join striped bass and giant bluefin tuna feeding on schools of menhaden migrating south and west along the shore.  But it’s hard to know what that says about thresher shark population trends.

The National Marine Fisheries Service released its Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation Report for Atlantic Highly Migratory Species, 2023-2024, earlier this year, and the information it provides about common thresher sharks is somewhat ambiguous.

From 2020 to 2024, the total dressed weight of commercially landed thresher sharks dropped sharply, from 62,485 to 39,265 pounds, although it was largely flat from 2022 through 2024.

The whole weight of threshers landed in the recreational shark fishery showed a far larger proportional drop between 2020, when anglers landed 54.1 metric tons, and 2024, when a mere 9.0 metric tons were landed.  However, the data does not show a smooth and predictable decline in the intervening years, with 32.8 metric tons landed in 2021 and 14.9 in 2022, before spiking back up to a series high of 55.7 metric tons in 2023.  In that context, the 9.0 metric tons landed in 2024 seems like an outlier, and not necessarily a sign of decline.

The number of threshers reported as retained by anglers in the Large Pelagics Survey, conducted between May and October of each year, showed a more orderly decline, from 24 in 2000 to 7 in 2024.  But when that data is read together with related data indicating that the number of threshers reported as released by anglers in the same survey increased from 17 in 2020 to 31 in 2024, there seems to be little convincing evidence of a significant change in thresher shark abundance.

But we just can’t know for certain, and with thresher sharks now the primary target of New England and upper mid-Atlantic anglers intending to retain a shark for food, data on thresher abundance is becoming more important if the stock is to be properly managed.

Yet no assessment of the thresher shark stock in the northwest Atlantic has ever been conducted.  Now, as NMFS is slowly completing its assessment of the sandbar shark stock, and developing new tools to assess data-limited shark populations, conducting an assessment of the thresher shark stock should be one of the top priorities of the agency’s highly migratory species assessment branch.

Even before that assessment is completed, NMFS should act to better ensure the long-term sustainability of the thresher shark fishery, by imposing a larger minimum size that would better accord with the species’ age at maturity. 

Right now, although the common thresher’s average fork length at maturity is 83 inches—just an inch shy of seven feet—the current recreational minimum size is a mere 54 inches, or four and a half feet, which means that many of the threshers landed have never had the opportunity to mature and to reproduce at least once.  A proposed rule to revise both commercial blacknose shark regulations and recreational Atlantic shark fishing management measures holds out at least the possibility that the minimum size for thresher sharks (along with blue and porbeagle sharks, which will be grouped together with the thresher) could be increased, perhaps to as large as 95 inches, in order to give members of the species an opportunity to mature and reproduce before being removed from the population.

We should learn whether NMFS opts to adopt such new management measures sometime in the next few months—almost certainly in the first half of 2027.

And we can only hope that NMFS decides to take action to properly manage the common thresher, both through a stock assessment and a realistic minimum size, now that the fishery for shortfin makos has been closed, and threshers are the only frequently-encountered large shark in the northeast that is valued as both a food and a sport fish, and so is thus being specifically targeted at a far higher rate than it has ever experienced before.

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what would limiting fishing to the ocean accomplish?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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