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.,
