MAGICAL THINKING: SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER EFPS

 

Managing the red snapper fishery, and particularly the recreational red snapper fishery, in the South Atlantic has proved to be one of the most intransigent challenges for East Coast fisheries managers.

It’s not because the fish are scarce.

While that was a problem once, with the stock declining to just three percent of its spawning potential in 2009, subsequent efforts have rebuilt it to the point where it is no longer overfished, and no longer experiencing overfishing. 

But that didn’t solve the biggest problem facing red snapper managers.  Red snapper have become abundant enough that a lot of them are being caught by anglers fishing for other varieties of bottom fish when the red snapper season is closed, and those snapper are being caught in waters deep enough to make barotrauma a real problem.  As a result, scientists believe that many of the red snapper that are caught during the closed season and returned to the water by anglers die after being released.

To compensate, the recreational red snapper fishery in the South Atlantic has been burdened with a very short open season, which has ranged from just one to ninc days, with recent seasons at the shortest end of that spectrum.  Even that hasn’t been enough to fully constrain anglers to their annual catch limit.  As a result, a group of commercial fishermen have sued, asking a court to compel the National Marine Fisheries Service to get the recreational kill under control.  In late 2024 NMFS, recognizing the merit of the commercial fishermen’s arguments, entered into a settlement agreement to adopt regulations that would end recreational overfishing by June 6, 2025.

On January 14, 2025, NMFS came up with a proposed regulation, Amendment 59 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery in the South Atlantic, that would not only have gotten overfishing under control, but would also, because of decreased dead discards, have nearly triple recreational and commercial red snapper landings.  However, it would also have required a section of ocean off northern Florida to be closed to all bottom fishing, from December 1 through the end of February.

The recreational fishing community found the proposal completely unacceptable.  They wanted to be able to land more red snapper, but didn’t want to reduce their high dead discard rate, if that meant closing the bottom fishing season off northern Florida for three months during the winter.

That might sound selfish, irresponsible, and wasteful; the sort of thing that you might expect from a spoiled child rather than a group of supposedly rational adults.  Yet, as it turned out, the recreational representatives were able to make their arguments to the only people who might think that such a juvenile response made sense—the incoming administration in Washington.

Thus, under the new administration, the final version of Amendment 59 did not include the three-month bottom fishing closure; but it did revise the definition of overfishing, the definition of an overfished stock, the acceptable biological catch, and the annual catch limits (including sector catch limits) for South Atlantic red snapper, which allowed it to declare that overfishing was no longer occurring.  As if someone waved a magical wand, NMFS’ concerns about recreational overfishing just seemed to disappear.

The commercial folks apparently didn’t believe in magic, though, because they’re suing NMFS again, arguing that Amendment 59 will allow recreational overfishing to continue, and harm commercial fishermen as a result. 

But even with those changes, the recreational fishermen weren’t all that satisfied with Amendment 59.  While it let them keep pouring out dead, discarded red snapper during the closed snapper season, it didn’t let them kill more fish to take home.  So like a child who wheedles another piece of cake out of Grandma after their parents say “No,” organizations affiliated with the recreational fishing industry pushed to have state agencies manage red snapper, knowing that the states would allow anglers to land the snapper denied them by both good science and federal law.

And so, just a few days ago, NMFS announced that

“NOAA Fisheries Issues Exempted fishing Permits Authorizing State Management of Recreational Harvested [sic] Red Snapper in the South Atlantic in 2026.”

Apparently, state management of the South Atlantic red snapper stock, under the recently approved exempted fishing permits, is going to bring us another magical moment.  For if you recall, under federal fisheries management, the 2025 recreational red snapper season in the South Atlantic lasted only two days, and at that was twice as long as the season set for 2024.

Yet, now that state fisheries managers have been allowed to wave their sorcerers’ wands, Florida anglers will be able to enjoy a 39-day season, broken up into 30 days in May/June and three three-day periods in October, while Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina anglers will be allowed to fish for 62 consecutive days in July and August.

It’s nothing short of miraculous that just switching over from federal to state management will lead to seasons that are 20 to 30 times as long as those previously permitted by NMFS, presumably all without overfishing or doing any harm to the stock at all.

But, as was the case with Amendment 59, there are some people out there who just don’t believe in magic. 

The Ocean Conservancy deemed the exempted fishing permits and the move to state management

"An end run around sustainable management,"

while observing that

“Just last year, NOAA’s own analysis showed that a two-day recreational fishing season was needed to prevent overfishing.  There is no doubt that these exemptions to allow months-long fishing seasons will lead to overfishing, while new, unproven data collection measures mean we likely won’t even realize the fish are declining until the damage is done.”

The organization’s press release goes on to say,

“Ocean Conservancy has used available data to estimate the amount of fish that could be caught with exempted permits.  The annual catch limit for the recreational sector is 22,797 fish.  A recent two-day red snapper fishing season in Florida alone resulted in 24,885 landed fish, which exceeds that limit.  A simple expansion using this Florida landings rate, and ignoring the contribution from other states which will have even longer fishing seasons, suggests that as many as 485,000 fish could be landed in a 39-day season.  This is over 20 times the annual catch limit—a clear violation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

The Environmental Defense Fund expressed similar sentiments, while also noting that

“Recreational fishing is an American pastime, and responsible innovation is critical to managing fisheries for the future.  But NOAA’s decision allows states to sidestep core federal safeguards that exist to prevent overfishing at a time when South Atlantic red snapper remains overfished [sic] and under a rebuilding plan.  These permits go well beyond the limited, pilot-scale purpose of exempted fishing permits and instead function as an alternative system without enforceable catch limits or accountability measures required by law.”

So how did we get to this point, where someone within NMFS or its parent, the Department of Commerce, seems to have contradicted NMFS’ findings from a year ago, and has suddenly decided that a season 20 times as long as last year’s won’t lead to overfishing—even though last year’s two-day season did?

We might find part of the answer in the cover letter that Roger Young, the Executive Director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, sent to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on January 23, 2026, along with Florida’s state management proposal.  After two introductory paragraphs, Mr. Young got down to business:

“First, we want to reinforce our appreciation for your unwavering commitment to rein in bureaucracy and return the power of fisheries management and conservation to the states where it belongs.  Unfortunately, based on an initial review of the commentary and questions within NOAA’s response letter, it appears that NOAA intends to delay the success of our shared goals.  To ensure that this is not the case, we determined that directly responding to you, rather than through NOAA, was crucial to our shared success.  To that end, to mutually maintain the momentum that our teams have built over the past year, it is abundantly clear that direct involvement from our offices is crucial.  If not, based on precedent, career NOAA staff will inevitably create a bureaucratic blockade at the behest of status-quo defending adversarial interests to prevent Florida’s EFP from going into effect in May 2026.  Given the social, economic, and cultural importance of recreational fishing in Florida, we greatly appreciate your leadership in seeing Florida’s application through to approval so Floridians can enjoy their God-given rights to recreate, and enjoy, our natural resources.

“Under President Trump’s leadership in 2017, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross blazed a trail in the Gulf of America to state management in recreational Red Snapper fishing.  Bureaucratic intransigence and inertia at NOAA were guiding anglers to the dead end of federal regulators’ overreach.  By 2018, all five states in the Gulf of America were firmly in control of their destiny and managing this public fishery for the benefit of the public.  The number of days of fishing proposed Gulf of America-wide by NOAA Fisheries in 2017: three days.  The number of fishing days announced by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2025: 127 days.

“Based on Florida’s experience in seeking assignment of state management authority in the Gulf of America, much of NOAA’s response appears to potentially delay action under the guise of ‘data’ collection—the same tactics that led Congress to force NOAA to accept and approve state EFP’s [sic] in the Gulf of America given the weaponization of NOAA under President Obama…  [emphasis in original]”

The letter provided a master class in ass-kissing, emphasizing everything—“rein in bureaucracy,” “bureaucratic blockade,” “status-quo defending,” favorable mention of Trump’s first term, and even “weaponization” of a federal agency by “President Obama” (although “Barak Hussein Obama” might have been worth a few extra points)—that was likely to hit administration hot buttons.

Of course, Roger Young’s letter missed a couple of important points.  When he argued that

“there is nothing in [the] Magnuson-Stevens [Fishery Conservation and Management] Act (MSA) that dictates an EFP’s harvest be included in annual catch limits,”

he not only ignored National Standard 1, which states that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing…”

but seemingly implied that it was acceptable for an annual recreational catch limit of 22,797 fish to be overfished roughly twentyfold—by more than 450,000 fish, if the Ocean Conservancy’s calculations are correct (which they may not be, as in the real world, such an extreme leve of removals would probably lower abundance and catchability to the point that the 2025 fishing mortality rate, achieved over a 2-day season, could not be maintained for the full duration of the 39- or 62-day seasons planned for 2026)—so long as that overfishing occurred pursuant to an exempted fishing permit.

The letter was also quick to criticize the 3-day federal waters red snapper season in the Gulf of Mexico in 2017, while failing to mention that such short season was adopted in order to offset the excessively long state waters seasons allowed by state fisheries managers in that year.

But given Roger Young’s intended audience, it is highly unlikely that such omissions were ever noted or, even if someone had noticed them, that they would have had any influence on the outcome.  The entire purpose of his letter was to move the decision making on the exempted fishing permits away from the scientists and subject matter experts at NMFS, and put it in the hands of people who couldn’t tell a red snapper from a red herring on their best day.

Thus, the South Atlantic states’ exempted fishing permit requests received an enthusiastic response; on May 1, 2026, President Donald Trump himself declared, in a social media post,

“WE JUST DELIVERED A HUGE WIN for our Great Fishermen and Anglers in FLORIDA, GEORGIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, and NORTH CAROLINA!  We have just officially approved ALL STATE PERMITS for the 2026 Red Snapper recreational season.  For years, our GREAT FISHERMEN have been punished with VERY short Federal fishing seasons despite RECORD HIGH fish populations and the States begging to oversee these permits.  The incompetent Biden Administration tried to SHUT DOWN THE OCEANS to our Fishermen, entirely.  We love and respect our Fishermen and, unlike the Democrats, will only do good for them.  To all those who fish ‘Red Snapper’—TRUMP and NOAA are delivering for you.   ENJOY!!  President DONAND J. TRUMP.”

And there you have it.

In 2025, anglers in the four South Atlantic states managed to harvest an estimated 38,048 red snapper—15,251 fish over the annual catch limit—even though the federal red snapper season only lasted for two days.  In 2026, that catch limit will remain unchanged, but even with state management extending the red snapper season to 39 days in Florida and 62 days in the three other South Atlantic states, South Atlantic red snapper landings are expected to remain at sustainable levels.

Maybe those folks who believe that there is something magical about state-level fisheries management are onto something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REGIONAL FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCILS: "A FAIR AND BALANCED APPORTIONMENT"

 

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act states that

“it is therefore declared to be the purposes of the Congress in this Act…to establish Regional Fishery Management Councils to exercise sound judgment in the stewardship of fishery resources through the stewardship of fishery resources through the preparation, monitoring, and revision of [fishery management] plans under circumstances (A) which will enable the States, the fishing industry, consumer and environmental organizations, and other interested persons to participate in, and advise on, the establishment and administration of such plans, and (B) which take into account the social and economic needs of the States.  [formatting omitted]”

To help achieve that purpose, Magnuson-Stevens further provides,

“The Secretary [of Commerce], in making appointments [to the regional fishery management councils], shall, to the extent practicable, ensure a fair and balanced apportionment, on a rotating or other basis, of the active participants (or their representatives) in the commercial and recreational fisheries under the jurisdiction of the Council…[T]he Secretary shall submit to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries of the House of Representatives [an annual] report on the actions taken by the Secretary to ensure that such fair and balanced apportionment is achieved.  The report shall (i) list the fisheries under the jurisdiction of each Council, outlining for each fishery the type and quantity of fish harvested, fishing and processing methods employed, the number of participants, the duration and range of the fishery, and other distinguishing characteristics; (ii) assess the membership of each Council in terms of the apportionment of the active participants in each fishery; and (iii) state the Secretary’s plans and schedule for actions to achieve a fair and balanced apportionment on the Council for the active participants in any such fishery.  [emphasis added, formatting omitted]”

It is a requirement that often seems to be honored more in the breach than in practice.  Few regional fishery management councils have a truly “fair and balanced apportionment” of council seats among the various subsectors of the commercial and recreational fisheries, although the nature of the imbalance is different on different councils.

Thus, in the House of Representatives, Congressman Nick Begich (R-AK) recently introduced H.R. 8598, the “North Pacific Fishery Management Council Representation Enhancement Act of 2026.”  He explained,

“The North Pacific Fishery Management Council was established to advance policies in the interest of all user groups across our fisheries.  In Alaska, many different user groups rely on the same resource, and we need to make sure every one of them has a seat at the table.  Ensuring balanced representation is critical to addressing broader challenges facing Alaskan fisheries, including declining abundance.  This bill is about restoring balance, strengthening accountability, and making sure fisheries management works for all Alaskans.”

 A press release announcing the legislation’s introduction stated that

“The bill amends…Magnuson-Stevens…to require that Alaska’s appointments to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) include representation from recreational fishing, small-scale commercial fishing, and subsistence user groups.

“The NPFMC plays a central role in managing fisheries in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska.  However, concerns have grown that current council composition does not adequately reflect the full scale of Alaska’s fishing communities, including subsistence users, small boat fishermen, and recreational stakeholders…

“The bill directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…to develop guidelines to verify representation and implement the changes, with new requirements taking effect for future council appointments.”

The motivation for the new bill was undoubtedly the ongoing debate over the bycatch and resultant dead discards of salmon, halibut, various crabs, and other living marine resources by large factory trawlers that target walleye pollock in a high-volume but low-value (per pound) fishery that is the largest commercial fishery in the nation.  As reported by National Fishermen in a 2023 article,

“Amid widespread consternation about the incidental numbers of halibut, crab, salmon, and other species that trawlers haul up in the Bering Sea, state and federal management regimes have come under increasing fire.

“To some, inaction by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to impose trawl bycatch caps on salmon and crab demands an overhaul of the 11-member panel that votes on management strategies submitted to the Department of Commerce…

“David Bayes, a charter boat operator out of Homer [Alaska] and the Facebook administrator of STOP Trawling Now, says that it wasn’t the original plan of the council’s founders to stack the panel with members whose conflicts of interest could undermine other facets of fisheries management.  But he adds that it evolved quickly as various sectors in the industry scrambled for representation and votes in key fisheries issues.

“’If one looks back at the verbiage and intent when the regional councils were formed through the Magnuson-Stevens Act, once sees that the lawmakers at the time had the forward thinking to realize that in order for dynamic and ever-changing fisheries to be regulated, they would need to be regulated by the fishermen themselves.’

“Bayes adds that conflict of interest was acceptable at the time the councils were founded, ‘because that was the only way to have fishermen regulating fishermen.’

“But competition for representation among Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, and conflicts among gear types quickly changed who was placed in the seats and left the fishermen behind.

“’They’re bringing the heaviest hitters they can find, which are often government officials, CEOs, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-political staff, etcetera,’ says Bayes.”

Similar appointment and representation problems exist on every state, although the precise form that they take can differ.

In New England, for example, the appointed members of the New England Fishery Management Council include seven who are either commercial fishermen or closely allied with the commercial fishing industry, three charter boat operators, and two members of the marine conservation community.  There are no private anglers (that is, anglers who fish solely for recreation and/or personal use, and have no business connection to the fishery) at all.  Commercial fishermen, provided that they have the support of just half of the state and federal government seats, can dictate the outcome of any vote.

Along the Gulf of Mexico, the eleven appointed members of the Gulf Fishery Management Council have a very different look.  There, six members are recreational fishermen or closely tied to the recreational fishing industry (including one legislative affairs specialist who serves as a consultant for the Center for Sportfishing Policy and an academic who sits on the Coastal Conservation Association’s Board of Directors), just two are commercial fishermen, two are academics (one of whom describes himself as a “lifelong recreational fisherman” while the other is “an avid recreational fisherman, licensed captain, and co-owner of a seafood market), and one member is both a recreational for-hire captain and a commercial fishermen.

It’s thus probably not surprising that most votes at the Gulf Council tend to favor the recreational sector.

Here in New York, we have a very active recreational fishery, with four important recreational species—bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass—managed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, acting cooperatively with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.  Over the past five years—2021 through 2025—New York anglers have actively pursued all four species, taking an estimated total of 6,398,348 trips primarily targeting bluefish, 13,495,821 targeting summer flounder, 6,696,384 targeting scup, and 2,108,877 targeting black sea bass.  The fishery has been dominated by private anglers, fishing either from shore or from their own vessels, who were responsible for 99.8% of all bluefish trips, 96.8% of all trips primarily targeting summer flounder, 96.3% of all trips targeting scup, and 92.9% of all trips targeting black sea bass.

Yet, since I stepped down from my at-large seat on the Mid-Atlantic Council in 2005, New York has not had a single private angler hold a Council seat.  In over two decades, the recreational seats have been held either by for-hire operators or by individuals closely allied with the for-hire industry or, in one instance, by a former state fisheries manager.

While I can’t say that New York’s private anglers—who unquestionably dominate its recreational fishery—have been completely unrepresented on the Mid-Atlantic Council, as the state’s fisheries managers have always done a reasonably good job of representing everyone’s interests, the lack of private anglers on the Mid-Atlantic Council representing New York, or any other Mid-Atlantic state, hardly represents the kind of “fair and balanced apportionment” of seats, either from New York or on the Mid-Atlantic Council as a whole, contemplated by Magnuson-Stevens.

When the people holding the recreational seats from any given state, or on the Council as a whole, only represent those making—to be very generous—5% of the recreational trips for Council-managed species, something is definitely very, very wrong.

And we should never pretend that the interests and the objectives of the private anglers and the for-hire fleet is the same. 

In the Mid-Atlantic, we only need to look at the current efforts to draft a “Recreational Sector Separation Amendment, that

“may consider managing for-hire recreational fisheries separately from other recreational fishing modes.”

That’s carefully worded language that doesn’t assume any particular outcome should the proposed amendment be adopted, but anyone following the process knows that the for-hire operators are looking for special privileges for their customers, that will allow them to take more and/or smaller fish, perhaps during a longer season, than those allowed to the private anglers that make up most of the fishery.

Since there is only a single recreational allocation, and both private and for-hire anglers take their fish out of the same allotted pool—at various meetings, the for-hire members sitting on the Council have made it abundantly clear that they don’t want a fixed quota for their sector alone— if the for-hire fleet is gifted with regulations that allow their customers to take more fish home, everyone else in the fishery are going to have to get a little less, for fishery management is, in the end, a zero-sum game; when someone wins, by getting more fish, someone else must lose and give up some part of their share.

But when private anglers have no effective representation on the Council, there’s nobody to object when they end up on the losing end.

In the Gulf of Mexico, we see something happening that is the mirror image of what’s going on in the Mid-Atlantic.

Sector separation already exists in the Gulf red snapper fishery.  It was adopted a number of years ago in response to chronic overfishing by private red snapper anglers, who exerted enough political pressure on their states to extend state-waters red snapper seasons, and so reduce the federal waters season to just three days—remember, it is a zero-sum game—which would be the kiss of death for the federally permitted for-hire fleet.  In order to protect the for-hires from the excesses of the private boats, the Gulf Fisheries Management Council (then called the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council, although that name has since been changed for political reasons) established a separate sub-quota for the for-hire industry.

Since then, the Council adopted Amendment 50 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico, which allows states limited flexibility to set regulations for their private boat recreational red snapper fishery, so long as those regulations constrain each state to its federally-established recreational quota.  But the for-hire red snapper fishery remained the exclusive domain of federal fisheries managers.

Now, the private angler-dominated Gulf Council is considering a new Amendment 64:  Delegation of the Federal For-Hire Management Authority for Red Snapper to the Gulf States, which would allocate the for-hire red snapper quota among the states, and allow states the same sort of limited regulatory flexibility that they currently have in the private boat fishery.

While that might seem benign on its face, for-hire operators are concerned that it will both allow some states to take advantage of others, stealing a portion of their for-hire quota, and possibly even provide a means for states to give some of what are now for-hire fish to private boat anglers.  As explained by long-time for-hire operator Gary Jarvis, of Destin, Florida,

“It became abundantly clear that this was about a fish grab.  The draft document provided alternatives for how the allocation would disseminate to each state’s for-hire fleet, and was determined on EACH STATE’S OWN REPORTED LANDINGS.

“The state of Louisiana was not satisfied with this breakdown, so they proposed a new methodology.  The new methodology would move fish from the eastern gulf into the western gulf.  It would reduce Florida’s fleet percentage from over 48% of the federal for-hire allocation to over 38%.  This literally shows they want to control the federal for-hire fleet but it would not be enough fish for what they want out of the document or…they did not report the correct amount of fish in the first place.  That is the reality of this document…

“When it came to public testimony, to call it anything less than ass whipping would be an understatement.  Federally permitted for-hire fishermen and women from Florida (Ft. Myers, Tampa, Big Bend, Panama City, and Destin), Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas all gave public comment stating they wanted nothing to do with state management of the Gulf federally permitted fleet.  The only person who gave testimony in favor of it was the executive director of the Louisiana Charter Boat Association.

“This association is funded by the State of Louisiana, through a percentage of every fishing license sale in the state, via a department which is tremendously influenced by CCA.  The executive director could not get a single one of their members to give testimony in favor of this, despite never having fished professionally or in control of any federal permits…”

Given the antipathy the for-hire fleet seems to have for the proposed amendment, it’s pretty clear that the amendment is being shoved down their throats by representatives of the private boat fishery.

So, while the precise details differ from council to council, the underlying theme remains the same—Magnuson-Stevens’ requirement for “fair and balanced apportionment” of council seats is being ignored just about everywhere when appointments to the regional fishery management councils.

Although there might be a handful of exceptions, council seats are typically awarded to those who are supported by organizations that have the right political connections and make the right contributions to the right parties and elected officials at the right time.  Experience in and knowledge of the fishery means far less than experience in and knowledge of how to bend the political process to a sector’s or subsector’s advantage.  Depending on the council involved, small-boat commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, for-hire operators, subsistence fishermen, conservation interests, and others who lack the needed political clout in a particular region might all find themselves marginalized and their concerns ignored by representatives of more powerful special interests.

Whether one is dealing with the North Pacific, New England, Mid-Atlantic, Gulf, or any other regional fisheries management council, the situation remains the same..

Thus, Congressmen Begich’s bill makes a lot of sense.  But assuring fair and balanced apportionment shouldn’t be limited to Alaska and the North Pacific Council.

What we really need is legislation that will make it a reality on every coast of the United States.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAGNUSON-STEVENS AT 50: CAN IT STILL DO ITS JOB?

 

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act turned 50 years old on April 13.  At the time, when foreign factory trawlers could still fish just 12 miles of the United States’ shores, putting multiple fish stocks in peril, the law, as it was amended from time to time over the intervening years, represented a revolutionary step forward in the annals of fisheries management. 

Since its passage, and particularly since it was amended by the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006, the law has resulted in science-based, legally-enforceable fishery management plans for over 450 separate fish stocks.  Since 2000, thanks to Magnuson-Stevens, 52 once overfished stocks have been completely rebuilt.

Still, no law is perfect.  Problems remain.  As someone who has participated in the recreational New England groundfish fishery for virtually all of my life, I am all too sadly aware of the collapse of the southern New England stocks of winter flounder and Atlantic cod, collapses that the various provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, no matter how well conceived, were unable to prevent.  I remember the vast spring runs of Atlantic mackerel that no longer occur off my local shores; remember January days spent on a pier, enjoying runs of Atlantic herring that have since disappeared, and lament the loss of the inshore fishery for whiting (more properly, silver hake) that used to fill the New York Bight with life every winter.

Magnuson-Stevens faces challenges that were never contemplated back in 1976, a warming ocean, and resultant shifting stocks, probably first among them.

Thus, it may be time to consider how Magnuson-Stevens, and the regulations promulgated thereunder, must adapt, if the statute is to remain the most expansive and effective fisheries management law in place anywhere in the world.

Recently, the Ocean Conservancy has done just that, issuing a report titled “Drifting Off Course:  Challenges in U.S. Fisheries Management and Charting a Path Forward.”  The report’s introduction notes

“In many ways, the [Magnuson-Stevens Act] has been a success story, having rebuilt over 50 fish stocks and driven overfishing down to historic lows.

“However, a lot has changed for the ocean in the last 50 years, and new challenges are developing that will push our fisheries to their limits.  From marine heatwaves to degraded habitats, the fish and ecosystems that millions of Americans rely on are under stress.  At the same time, management shortcomings, economic vulnerabilities, food insecurity, lower investment in research, and technology advancements are colliding with long-standing conservation and management challenges like bycatch and continued overfishing.

“It’s clear that business as usual is not enough to guarantee abundant fish populations that can support coastal communities and fisheries.  The future of fisheries—and the health of our ocean—for the next five decades will depend on tackling the challenges we face today.”

The Ocean Conservancy report is 28 pages long, far too long to analyze in a single blog post.  I couldn’t even do it justice if I tried to provide a summary; you ought to just click on the link that I provided above and read the whole thing for yourself. 

Right now, I’ll just hit some of the high points.

The first section of the report is

“Failure to Rebuild Many Overfished Stocks,”

although the section’s scope is broader than that; it makes the important point that managers shouldn’t just be focusing on recovering stocks that have already become overfished.  Instead, they ought to

“Act early before rebuilding is necessary.”

Or course, that’s easier said than done, because as soon as managers suggest any cuts in commercial or recreational landings to head off a stock decline, all of the industry spokesmen turn out, as well as the commercial fishermen, for-hire operators, and tackle shop owners, to declare that the stock isn’t overfished yet, and that managers shouldn’t reduce their incomes and put them out of business (“You’re going to put me out of business” is one of the most-repeated claims at fisheries hearings; I’ve attended such events for many decades now, and have heard the same individuals repeatedly make that very claim, sometimes over the course of twenty years or more), to the point that it’s often easier, and far more politically expedient, for fisheries managers to wait until a stock really does become overfished before taking meaningful action, and then blame the resulting harvest reductions on the provisions of Magnuson-Stevens.

As the Ocean Conservancy observes,

“Managers are required to manage stocks to avoid the need to rebuild in the first place but rarely take such actions.  When a stock begins to decline, taking action to halt that trend is important to avoid the complex management that rebuilding requires.”

That’s all true and sensible, but when the debates over “my right to earn a living” and “angler access” to fish begin, truth and common sense quickly vacate the room.  And that leads to another issue:  Even when action is taken, whether to rebuild an overfished stock or to prevent further stock decline, such action is often incremental, with only the minimum 50% probability of success, in an effort to minimize the economic and social harm to the fishing community.

Unfortunately, such minimal efforts often fail, and end up causing more harm in the end, as one reduction in landings doesn’t get the job done, so fishermen are forced to reduce repeated cuts to catch and income that are never quite enough to get rebuilding underway, but erode faith in and support for the management system.

The New England cod fishery may be the best example of that sort of ineffective management.

For, as the report notes,

“…42 stocks remain overfished.  Many of those stocks that need to rebuild are still experiencing overfishing despite legal requirements that management should end overfishing immediately.  In a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) analysis, 65% of stocks in rebuilding plans had flat or decreasing population estimates.  When rebuilding plans fail, stocks remain at reduced abundance, increasing the economic strain on communities.”

The answer to that is very simple in principle although, in practice, hard to implement due to commercial and recreational industry resistance:

“To get rebuilding back on track, managers must act more decisively, while accounting for climate change and human-caused impacts to stocks, to end overfishing through improved rebuilding plans.  Ultimately, rebuilt fish stocks must remain a central goal of fisheries management in order to maintain fishing opportunities for coastal communities.”

In that context, one big threat to rebuilding tends to fly under the radar, at least in the minds of the public at large, and is the subject of the report’s second section:

“High Demand from Recreational Fisheries.”

It’s not something that the public—or most recreational fishermen—spend much time thinking about. 

They picture a recreational fisherman as someone who ventures out on his or her local waters, often with family in tow, hoping to catch a few fish for dinner, while often catching nothing at all.  That image is in sharp contrast to their idea of commercial fishing, in which industrial-scale trawlers spend weeks out at sea, sweeping the ocean bottom with nets that engulf and kill anything that they encounter.  In their minds, recreational fisherman can never do the same harm to fish stocks that is caused by the commercial fleet.

And the funny thing about that is that those mental constructs are both completely accurate and very wrong, all at the same time.

Because it’s true that there are big commercial vessels out there, like the factory trawlers working off Alaska, that collectively catch not only three billion pounds of their target species, walleye pollock, each year, but also about of 140,000,000 pounds of unwanted bycatch, including valuable species such as halibut and salmon, which are discarded dead and wasted.  But much commercial fishing is conducted at a far smaller scale.  It’s also true that individual recreational fishermen don’t kill very many fish on any one trip, and often don’t kill any at all; however, those individual anglers took nearly 195,000,000 fishing trips last year, and even if they only took home, on average, two or three or four fish on every trip, the total number of fish that they killed can add up pretty fast.

Plus, recreational fishermen tend to focus on a relatively small number of species, which are often at relatively high trophic levels and thus naturally low levels of abundance.  While commercial fleets may target things like walleye pollock, witch flounder, yellowtail flounder, menhaden, squid, monkfish, and other species that are not frequently caught by anglers, recreational fishermen target species such as summer flounder, red snapper, Pacific halibut, bluefin tuna, etc., which are also commercially important.  In some fisheries, recreational landings far outweigh commercial removals.

Thus, recreational fishing can be a very substantial source of fishing mortality.  As the report notes,

“managing saltwater recreational fisheries can be uniquely challenging, especially as coastal populations have increased by 40% over the past 50 years.  The number of individual angler trips has increased over time, anglers are geographically distributed rather than consolidated in commercial fishing ports, and anglers’ catch heads home in coolers instead of into a fish house.  Despite the small-scale impact of each individual angler, the cumulative effect of recreational fishing on the health of fish stocks can be very large.  In the Southeast, recreational fisheries are allocated more than half of the catch for many popular stocks, such as greater amberjack (80%) and gag grouper (65%) in the Gulf [of Mexico], as well as red snapper (71.93%), red grouper (56%) and most of the porgy complex in the South Atlantic.

“As a result, managers struggle to sustainably manage recreational fisheries that are largely open access, constrained only by measures such as season length and limits on daily catch.  In some fisheries, the recreational sector routinely exceeds its annual catch limit.  Some anglers are dissatisfied with management and want more opportunities to fish, creating pressure to allow catch above sustainable limits.”

The latter problem has become particularly acute in recent years, as recreational fishing industry-aligned groups such as the Center for Sportfishing Policy, American Sportfishing Association, and Coastal Conservation Association have aggressively attacked the federal fisheries management system in an effort to increase recreational landings.

The Ocean Conservancy report recognizes the need for better recreational data collection, and better cooperation between management bodies.  It also recognizes that

“Managers must ensure that recreational fishing is managed consistently with requirements to prevent catch from exceeding annual sustainable limits, which means that greater consideration of precautionary management tools—such as buffers that account for the uncertainty inherent in managing open access fisheries—is necessary.”

Yet it is rare for managers to do so in the real world.  Even though the recreational fishing industry often complains about recreational fishing data, calling the Marine Recreational Information Program a “suspect data system,” and even though guidelines adopted by the National Marine Fisheries Service call for fisheries managers to account for such management uncertainty either when setting the annual sector catch limit or by adopting a lower annual catch target, the adoption of such buffers for management uncertainty is often eschewed as managers try to placate the recreational industry by setting catch limits as high as is legally permissible.

The result is often landings that exceed the recreational sector’s annual catch limit.

Few would disagree with the premise that the way to reduce both scientific and management uncertainty in fisheries management is to improve the level of fisheries science, and so provide better data relating to both the biology of fish stocks and the sources and magnitude of commercial and recreational fishing mortality.  Unfortunately, the trend has been in the opposite direction, with an administration that is actively crippling the data-gathering process.  Thus, another one of the problems cited in the report was the

“Lack of Investment in Science, Data and Traditional Knowledge.”

For, as the report observes,

“Since early 2025, NOAA Fisheries lost nearly 550 employees of the approximately 3,000 that were at the agency previously, and many of those were career scientists at the NOAA Fisheries Science Centers.”

It explains,

“The [Magnuson-Stevens Act] requires the best scientific information available to be used to set fishing limits, which has helped to reduce overfishing and rebuild stocks.  Conducting scientific research and data collection takes resources—people, time, equipment and facilities—and the science supporting fisheries management is underfunded and under-resourced.  Recent…cuts, along with long-standing gaps in support, mean that it is increasingly difficult to deliver the core information needed to manage fisheries.  This comes at a time when innovative approaches to modeling, data collection and forecasting are all available to be implemented but can’t get off the ground due to lack of investment.  As the marine environment continues to experience more rapid and less predictable changes, the need for investment in science and surveys to quickly identify and respond to ecological shifts is greater now than it has ever been.”

The problem is that the administration, and some members of Congress, prefer ignorance to paying the costs of good science.  Still, about eight weeks ago, I spent a few days on Capitol Hill, visiting various offices and advocating for adequate funding for fisheries management; many of those I spoke with provided a sympathetic hearing.

We can only hope that translates into a good appropriations bill.

But as long as we’re on the subject of political interference with good fisheries management, we probably ought to look at one more section of the report,

“Deregulation and Poor Governance,”

which is separate from, but closely tied to, the funding cuts.  As the report notes,

“instead of tackling the modern-day challenges, there is a concerning trend to turn away from the best practices that we know deliver sustainable fisheries.”

The problems stem from a couple of executive orders signed a little over a year ago.

One, Executive Order 14219, “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Deregulatory Initiative,” was intended to

“commence the deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.”

Needless to say, such executive order was not particularly conservation-friendly, and did not make it any easier to adopt precautionary management measures or rebuild fish stocks.  However, the more direct threat to fisheries was probably posed by a second executive order, signed on April 17 of last year, “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness,” which railed against

“Federal overregulation [that] has restricted fishermen from productively harvesting American seafood, including through restrictive catch limits, selling our fishing grounds to foreign offshore wind companies, inaccurate and outdated fisheries data, and delayed adoption of modern technology,”

and declared as policy to

“unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulation.”

The combination of deregulation and defunding pose an existential threat to good fisheries management and to fisheries that are sustainable in the long term.

The report states that

“NOAA Fisheries and some of the [regional fishery management] councils are now acting to remove stocks from federal management, citing time and resource constraints.  Stocks removed from management could be handed over to the states, removed from management protections altogether, or retained within the federal system as ‘ecosystem component species’ that have few or no management safeguards in place.

“Moving stocks to state management comes with risk.  Fish stocks that are solely managed by states have lower management intensity, more uncertainty as to the status of stock heath and weaker management requirements…And most [states] do not have best-practice requirements to end overfishing and rebuild stocks.”

The report goes on to note that

“Negative perceptions of regulation, combined with the inherent challenges of managing so many different types of fishing, have led to efforts to add ‘more flexibility’ to fishery management or to ‘deregulate’ fisheries…Rolling back important regulations risks the long-term health of economically important stocks.  Flexibility and deregulation also carry a high risk of unintended consequences…”

It also offers solutions for the deregulation problem, but we have to ask whether, in the current political climate, any such solutions would be given due consideration; it is very possible that the essential prerequisites for any meaningful solutions being adopted will come from the ballot box, first in the 2026 midterm elections, and then in the general election in ’28.

The Ocean Conservancy report also addresses other issues, including “Persistent Bycatch,” Habitat Loss and Ecosystem Degradation,” “Changing Ocean Conditions and More Frequent Disasters,” and “Economic Vulnerability of Fishing Communities,” which I chose not to address in this essay, primarily because, except for bycatch, they are symptoms of problems that extend far beyond the fisheries management arena; they are problems that Magnuson-Stevens alone cannot solve.

And bycatch, although within Magnuson-Stevens’ ambit, has proven to be a pernicious problem that can only be solved with the right combination of science, technology, and the political will to stand up to the people doing the harm, a political will that has been notably absent on most occasions.

I remember when Magnuson-Stevens, then merely called the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, was signed into law.  I was in my senior year of college, heading on to law school, and already developing an interest in fisheries management issues.  At the time, Magnuson-Stevens held substantial promise.

It has fulfilled that promise, and perhaps done a bit better than that, as later amendments strengthened its conservation measures.  Over the past 50 years, the law has served us well, and continues to form a firm framework to ensure healthy fisheries for a half-century more.

But Magnuson-Stevens can’t do it all by itself.  Provided that it isn’t further weakened by more special-interest amendments like the so-called Modern Fish Act, which serve to undercut the law’s clear requirements for science-driven fisheries management, the next challenges to the statute are more likely to be found not in the legislature, but in administrative agencies that make permissive interpretations of the statute, and issue regulations that fail to protect and restore the nation’s living marine resources.

As is happening now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WESTERN ATLANTIC REGULATIONS MAY THE THE KEY TO HEALTHY BLUEFIN TUNA STOCKS

 

We’ve known for a long time that Atlantic bluefin tuna migrations are complex, with fish spawned into the Mediterranean Sea traveling into North American waters, while fish spawned off North America were thought to cross the ocean to swim off European shores.  Now, thanks to a recent paper published by a team of scientists led by Dr. Barbara A. Block of Stanford University’s Department of Biology and Department of Oceans, we also know that the bluefins’ sojourns to the western Atlantic may be particularly important to tuna stocks’ health.

“Ensuring the future of Atlantic bluefin tuna,” which appeared in the April 20, 2026 volume of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reviews three decades of archival, satellite, and acoustic tagging data, and advises

“that exploitation of Med-spawning fish, particularly on the spawning grounds, may impact all fisheries in the North Atlantic basin through their extensive distributional range,”

and also that

“Shifting selectivity to older year classes releases juvenile bluefin from the Med to the higher productivity of the North Atlantic, where they experience multiple years of growth and lower fishing mortality before returning to their spawning grounds.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued a press release heralding the research, in which Eugenio Pineiro Soler, NOAA’s Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, was quoted as saying,

“Management of this internationally shared resource requires high quality scientific information—and this work provides one example of that.  This research addresses one of the primary sources of uncertainty surrounding the amount of mixing and movement occurring between these two stocks.  This is a critical piece of information needed to inform sustainable yield advice.”

The cross-ocean movements of Atlantic bluefin have long been an issue for not only scientists and fisheries managers, but anglers and commercial fishermen as well; there has always been the questions of whether restrictive regulations constraining harvest of the western stock might be frustrated when tuna cross into the eastern Atlantic, where more permissive management measures prevail, and whether the relatively small United States quota makes sense in the face of the far higher quotas awarded to nations that fish in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic.

The new paper answers those questions, noting that

“electronic tagging results for adolescent and mature fish indicate that the Med stock subsidizes the North American fisheries and, importantly, exploitation of Med spawning fish, particularly on the Med spawning grounds, impacts all [Atlantic bluefin tuna] fisheries in the North Atlantic.”

As NMFS explains,

“The results show that many bluefin tuna move from eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean waters to the western Atlantic to forage and grow.  These fish often remain in the west for several years before returning to the Mediterranean Sea or spawning in the Slope Sea.  Tagging also demonstrated that adult fish tagged in the U.S. and Canadian waters move back to the Mediterranean to spawn and often return the following year to the western Atlantic to forage along the U.S. eastern seaboard.  Importantly, bluefin tuna that originated in the western Atlantic, however, tend to stay west of the 45^oW management line.”

The reason that eastern stock bluefin often migrate into western Atlantic waters appears to be food, with NMFS suggesting that

“Tuna are likely heading west to find and feed on vital prey such as Atlantic mackerel, Atlantic herring, and menhaden, which are abundant in U.S. and Canadian waters.”

But regardless of why many of the eastern stock bluefin move west, the movements of the eastern and western stocks make it clear that management measures intended to protect the western stock bluefin are not compromised by significant numbers of those fish traveling to eastern Atlantic water.  However, the many eastern stock bluefin that enter the western Atlantic also receive such measures’ protection, to the benefit of both North American fishermen and the bluefin themselves.

The paper notes that the eastern stock is thought to be about 10 times as large as the western stock, although there is substantial uncertainty surrounding that number, and that the total allowable catch for the eastern stock is 40,570 metric tons, compared to just 2,726 metric tons for the western stock.  Fishing activity in the eastern Atlantic was and is also much more intense, with the paper stating that

“From 1990 to the mid-2000s, estimated fishing mortality F was, adjusting for underreporting, typically 0.15 to 0.20 [or, very approximately, 15% of the population removed each year] for eastern juveniles (ages 2 to 5) and 0.3 to 0.4 [roughly 25 to 35 percent annual removals] for large individuals 9age 10+), concentrated primarily in the Med.  This period of heightened catch did not occur in the west…or north…, meaning that migrating to the West or North Atlantic provided eastern [Atlantic bluefin tuna] with relative safety from fishing mortality for almost 20 [years].  [citations omitted]”

It thus advised that

“In the Med, shifting selectivity of fishing to older ages in recent years and reducing [total allowable catch] not only controlled overfishing but created, in effect, an escapement management regime…that allowed migrating eastern [Atlantic bluefin tuna] juveniles and subadults to enjoy a longer, safer, and more productive juvenile growth period than those remaining in the Med.  Effectively, an unknown number of Med juveniles were able to ‘escape’ selection at an early age, forage, and reach maturity in the North Atlantic.  We hypothesize that this led to higher spawning contribution per recruit, higher overall abundance, and greater fishery yields, with the lower exploitation rates of North American fisheries providing a release from fishing mortality…  [citations omitted]”

But it wasn’t only the eastern stock that benefited.

“[F]or the western stock, as the supply of eastern [Atlantic bluefin tuna] increased the relatively static western area [total allowable catch] exerted decreasing mortality upon the western stock.  After years of relative stasis, the western-only larval and [longline fishery] catch indices in the Gulf [of Mexico] now show substantial increases indicating that growth of the western stock may have only responded due to managing fishing mortality of the eastern stock…  [citations omitted]”

The management measures adopted for the western stock three decades ago proved to be a conservation success story for the entire Atlantic bluefin tuna population.  As NMFS observed,

“The major conservation and management measures taken by ICCAT, combined with shifting catches to larger fish, resulted in a dramatic turnaround of the stock.  Reducing fishing mortality to sustainable levels allowed several year classes of fish to survive, grow, and leave the Mediterranean to seek the productive feeding grounds of the North Atlantic.  This escapement from Mediterranean spawning areas to wider Atlantic waters with stricter harvest measures allows bluefin tuna to live longer, grow larger, and contribute more offspring to the population.  This emphasizes the importance of managing fishing mortality in areas of high vulnerability such as spawning aggregations…

“Whether the current Atlantic bluefin fishery total allowable catch remains sustainable in the face of a rapidly changing ocean and increasing human demand remains uncertain.  What is certain is the return on investment for state-of-the-art science.

“U.S. anglers have been frustrated in recent years by strict harvest measures for bluefin, but the science confirms that these measures are effective.  Our conservation efforts are having huge impacts—not just for the United States, but across the Atlantic.  Anecdotal evidence supports this, with anglers along the U.S. East Coast catching more and larger bluefin than in the past 30 years.  The stock recovery is such that ICCAT adopted higher total allowable catch for the western stock…”

Yet, among all of those positive comments and unqualified support for good fisheries science lurks a substantial amount of irony. 

For more than a year, the current administration has repeatedly sought to cut the funding and the personnel needed to perform fisheries science at NMFS, whether that science be “state-of-the-art” or the sort of routine surveys and data collection needed to perform basic management tasks for a wide array of species.

And, specific to Atlantic bluefin tuna, it has made the groundless claim that the United States need not count recreationally-caught bluefin tuna against its annual quota, although there appears nothing in any ICCAT recommendation that would support that position.

Nor is it completely clear where the notion came from, although a recent article that appeared in The Fisherman magazine might make one suspect that it arose somewhere within the recreational fishing industry.  That article read, in part,

“There is no doubt that there is a booming recreational and for-hire fishery in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic waters with little catch data being submitted for too many years now.  Earlier this year the [European Union] implemented new mandatory, daily electronic data reporting requirements for marine recreational fisheries targeting certain species, including bluefin.  However, other nations that are not part of the EU but are part of European and African continents are reporting little if any recreational catch, despite landings occurring.  There is still a glaring disconnect.”

The article fails to mention that the only two non-EU countries in the Eastern Atlantic are Norway, which has a national recreational quota of a whopping 10 metric tons—fewer bluefin than anglers killed off the southeastern United States during the first two weeks of 2026—and the United Kingdom, where the recreational quota is a still-tiny 20 mt.  There are more non-EU nations bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, but they include states such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro, none of which are known as recreational fishing powerhouses, and none of which have any recreational quota at all.

So, the argument that the United States is justified in not counting its recreational landings against its quota because some non-EU nations might be doing the same thing falls pretty flat.

Yet the article goes on.

“The ICCAT Eastern Atlantic/Mediterranean management requires that recreational catch be reported and assigned to one’s quota.  The U.S. has argued that a parallel requirement does not exist for the Western Atlantic contracting parties in Western bluefin management Recommendation 22-10.  As a result—and because of the lack of recreational catch recreational catch reporting for many years now by the Eastern Atlantic/Mediterranean contracting parties—the U.S. notified ICCAT in January 2026 that it is exploring continuing to meet its requirement to report our recreational catch but not count it against the US quota…

“Not surprisingly, this proposal has been heavily criticized by our friends across the pond.  It should be noted that our recreational quota is negligible in comparison to the Western and Eastern Atlantic/Mediterranean bluefin quotas that are dominated by commercial quota allocations.”

Once again, we see arguments of dubious merit.

Recommendation 25-05—which superseded Recommendation 22-10 at last November’s ICCAT meeting—clearly states,

“An annual [total allowable catch], inclusive of dead discards, of 3,081.6 [metric tons] is established for 2026, 2027, and 2028…If the total catch in the western area exceeds 3,081.6 t in any year, it shall constitute an exceptional circumstance…  [emphasis added]”

To argue that “total catch” included dead discards, but excluded recreational landings, would be ludicrous.

In addition, Recommendation 25-05 is generally sector neutral; while it mentions recreational fisheries twice, it only mentions commercial fisheries once.  The natural counter to the argument that the Recommendation doesn’t explicitly require including recreational landings in the quota is that it doesn’t explicitly require including commercial landings, either.  The only explicit references are to “total catch” and “dead discards.”  Yet the mandatory counting of commercial landings against the quota is assumed.

But the ultimate argument for counting recreational landings against the U.S. quota is that it would be in the long-term interests of United States fishermen to do so.  As the new research indicates, the restrictive management measures in place in the western Atlantic benefited both the eastern and western bluefin stocks.  Placing greater fishing pressure on fish in the western Atlantic now, by omitting recreational landings from the United State’ quota and so increasing the western kill, could only risk reversing three decades of progress.

In the end, “Ensuring the future of Atlantic bluefin tuna” is a very valuable bit of research.  NMFS was completely justified in calling it “state-of-the-art science.”

But the thing about state-of-the-art science is that, while it is a good thing in and of itself, it is far more valuable if it is actually put to use.  NMFS shouldn’t just issue press releases hailing the paper.  It should put the paper’s findings to practical use, and continue to cooperate with the ICCAT management scheme that made the western Atlantic a valuable sanctuary for bluefin tuna for the past 30 or more years.