Last Thursday, in Part I of this series, I questioned a
premise behind a recent report issued by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation
Partnership, entitled “A Vision for Managing America’s Saltwater Recreational
Fisheries” (http://www.trcp.org/assets/pdf/Visioning-Report-fnl-web.pdf). I asked whether it is truly possible to
create a “unified vision” for both anglers and the recreational fishing
industry, and whether any effort to do so would inevitably leave the
recreational angler, and particularly the recreational angler who cares about
the effective conservation and restoration of fish stocks, as the junior and
oft-ignored partner in the enterprise.
However questionable such “unified vision” might be, parts
of the report are unquestionably true.
It is difficult to take issue with the statement that
“Recreational and commercial fishing are fundamentally
different activities that require different management approaches. Currently, federal fisheries managers set
catch limits for recreational and commercial fishing at or near maximum
sustainable yield. While this may be an
ideal management strategy for commercial fishing, where harvesting the maximum
biomass is desired, it is not an effective management tool for saltwater
recreational fishing. Recreational
anglers are more focused on abundance and size, structure of the fisheries, and
opportunities to get out on the water…”
Ricky Gease, Executive Director of the Kenai River
Sportfishing Association, was a member of the commission that produced the
final report. He expanded on the above
concepts at a recent Senate hearing, noting that
“Recreational
fisheries are based on angler days, and reliant on maximum sustained
production, which is getting the most fish into an ecosystem, rather than
maximum sustained yield, which looks at value from the fishery.” (http://peninsulaclarion.com/news/2014-02-27-4)
As an angler, it all strikes me as common sense. For example, the current striped bass regulations
generally allow an angler to keep two 28-inch fish every time they go
fishing. From a “quality fishing”
perspective, there is a very big difference between a day when you only catch two
bass, even if you keep both of them, and a day on which you land a dozen fish,
keep a couple and let the rest go free.
If all you want is a couple of fish for dinner, it is far quicker,
easier and—especially—cheaper to pick them up at the store. Recreational fishing should offer something more.
What seems to make no sense at all is that after correctly
identifying the problem, the “Vision” report turns around and makes
recommendations that do exactly the wrong thing, perpetuating the sort of
management that emphasizes harvest rather than abundance.
Before I explain that comment, we should probably take a
brief detour to examine concepts related to “maximum sustainable yield” and
their implications for fisheries management.
NOAA Fisheries defines “maximum sustainable yield” as
“the largest long-term catch or yield that can be taken from
a stock or stock complex under prevailing ecological and environmental
conditions.”
A stock managed for maximum sustainable yield (“MSY”) may
seem abundant, but will generally have an attenuated age and size structure. There will be almost no older, larger
fish. Such a stock reflects the adage
that “any fish that dies of old age is wasted;” fish are harvested when still
relatively young, and successful spawning depends on having a large number of
newly-matured fish in the population, as the high fishing mortality rate allows
few older fish to survive.
Because the data available to biologists and to fisheries
managers are, at best, imperfect, trying to manage a stock for maximum
sustainable yield is risky. Any error
can cause harvest to exceed sustainable harvest levels.
Still, MSY provides a useful benchmark for federal fisheries
managers. A stock which is much too
small to produce MSY—in most federal management plans, about half the size
needed to produce MSY—is deemed to be “overfished”, and the Magnuson Act
dictates that it be promptly rebuilt.
Similarly, a fishing mortality rate that exceeds MSY—that is, the
harvest rate that’s too high to be sustainable—constitutes impermissible “overfishing”
under Magnuson, which currently emphasizes sustainability.
In practice, federal fisheries managers normally set an “Overfishing
Limit” equal to MSY but then, to allow for the inevitable “scientific
uncertainty”, set a lower “Allowable Biological Catch” (“ABC”) to cap harvest. They then set an “Annual Catch Limit” that
may be equal to the ABC, but is typically set somewhat lower, to account for
“management uncertainty” resulting from any errors in predicting the effect of
regulations on landings or in quantifying what such landings (particularly
recreational landings) actually were.
Commercial fishermen generally want to see the Allowable
Biological Catch set as close as possible to the Overfishing Limit, and the
Annual Catch Limit set right at ABC, because doing so will lead to the highest
possible landings, and will thus yield the highest economic return.
However, as the “Vision” report noted, anglers want
something else. They don’t want to kill
as many fish as they can, they want to catch
as many fish as they can—even if most of those fish are let go. And
they want a reasonable chance to catch a “big one” once in a while.
Managing at MSY won’t produce that kind of fishery. Instead, managers must grow the population
beyond what is needed to produce maximum sustainable yield, and keep harvests
well below MSY, if they want anglers to “encounter” plenty of fish, including a
few “big ones” that don’t get away.
Such a management approach, which sets landings well below
MSY, is also prudent from a conservation perspective, as it provides a buffer
that protects against years of poor recruitment, normal environmental
variability and the errors that inevitably plague managers’ calculations from
time to time.
Thus, there are a lot of reasons to maintain harvest well
below the limits permitted by federal law.
Anglers will encounter more fish.
Anglers will catch bigger fish.
And the fish themselves will have a “cushion” against hard times.
Yet the TRCP’s “Vision” report doesn’t propose such
reductions in landings. Instead, the
report recommends changing the Magnuson Act to let folks kill even more fish than the law allows now. And it recommends handing the management of
some species over to the states, where they would have no federal protection at
all.
The management approach described in the report would lead
to anglers encountering fewer fish. The
fish they catch would be smaller. And
the overfishing would slow or halt stock rebuilding; it could even cause stocks
to decline. But it would allow anglers
to kill more fish in the short term, and maybe that’s what it’s really about.
Of course, the “Vision” report can’t come out and say
that. So it uses certain “code words”
that don’t raise red flags—and in fact, might sound downright reasonable—when most
folks read them, but are fraught with meaning to those engaged in the fisheries
management debate.
Of all those kind of words, none is as filled with meaning
as “flexibility”. It might sound like “reasonable
accommodation”. But in this context, it
means something closer to “continued overfishing” and ‘indeterminate rebuilding
times”.
The “Vision” report notes that
“The Magnuson-Stevens Act currently states that the timeline
for ending overfishing and rebuilding fisheries ‘be as short as possible’ and ‘not
exceed 10 years” with a few limited exceptions to allow for longer
timeframes. While some stocks can be
rebuilt in 10 years or less, others require longer generation times, or factors
unrelated to fishing pressure may prohibit rebuilding in 10 years or less.”
Of course, it never completely closes the circle, and discloses
that those “limited exceptions to allow for longer timeframes” that are already
a part of the law include “cases where the biology of the stock of fish, [or]
other environmental conditions…dictate otherwise,” which would cover both "longer generation times" and "factors unrelated to fishing pressure." That’s something that should have been caught
by the proofreader, because it could make someone unfamiliar with the law
believe there’s a problem, when no problem really exists. Sloppy drafting, at best…
“Echoing the concerns raised by stakeholders and many of the
regional fishery management councils, a report by the prestigious and
nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences concluded that the 10-year rebuilding
provision should be revised to provide greater flexibility than is currently
allowed under the law. Instead of having
a fixed deadline for stocks to be rebuilt, the NAS recommended that the
regional councils and fisheries managers set lower harvest rates that would
allow fish stocks to recover gradually while
diminishing socioeconomic impacts.”
[emphasis added]
Note that the concerns about flexibility were raised by “stakeholders,”
and not by “anglers.” That sheds real light on the motivation for weakening Magnuson, and it’s the same motivation that rendered the law essentially toothless prior to its amendment by the Sustainable
Fisheries Act of 1996.
It looks a
lot like the same motivation that has motivated fishing industry interests—on both
the recreational and commercial side—to try to weaken the law ever since
Sustainable Fisheries was signed into law:
“socioeconomic impacts.”
It’s not about abundance, and it’s not about big fish. It’s certainly not about conservation.
The report, in recommending “flexibility,” echoes the
position of the Gloucester groundfish fleet (http://www.gloucestertimes.com/opinion/x86521185/Editorial-Science-report-shows-need-for-Magnuson-changes),
a group not renowned for their conservation ethic. It echoes the position of a lot of other commercial
groups as well.
For conserving marine resources may be a noble endeavor, and
the Magnuson Act may be the best and most effective
fisheries law in the world, but in the end, there are costs associated with the
effort.
Conservation isn’t compatible with short-term profits, and
if you’re in the industry, that matters.
That is nothing new. Conservation
writer Ted Williams, who is also a hardcore angler, pretty well said it all back
in 2010 (http://www.flyrodreel.com/node/14680). He started by explaining that, prior to ‘96
“Quotas
could be modified by short-term, short-sighted ‘economic considerations,’ and
such considerations always ‘justified’ overfishing. Whenever scientists
cautioned against overfishing, the ‘stake holders’ would overrule them,
regulating in flexibility. ‘There’s no such rush to rebuild,’ was the mantra.
Rebuilding while continuing to overfish is, of course, impossible. Overfishing means you kill fish faster than
they reproduce, that you’re in a hole and digging.”
When we see “flexibility” recommended in the “Vision”
report, we see the same kind of pre-1996 thinking starting to reemerge. Given how badly things turned out the last
time, we also have to wonder why.
We also have to wonder why anyone who claims to want to
manage for “abundance” thinks that it is OK to manage fish that way. Again, Ted William might supply an answer,
while showing that the “Vision” report is little more than history repeating
itself.
“Enter
Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), who in 2008…introduced the ‘Flexibility in
Rebuilding American Fisheries Act.’ Pallone’s bill…would supposedly do the
impossible—that is, permit overfishing while restoring stocks. What it would
really restore is the pre-1996 system of manipulating scientifically determined
quotas with short-term, shortsighted economic considerations.
“Of
course, the proponents of Pallone’s bill don’t call what they’re trying to do ‘overfishing,’
arguing instead that the rebuilding timeline of 10 years is ‘arbitrary,’ that
there’s no such rush. For instance, timelines are not ‘a moral issue’ to
Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act co-sponsor Rep. Barney Frank
(D-MA), who accuses the National Marine Fisheries Service of harboring ‘an
anti-fishing bias.’ [BLOGGER’S NOTE:
Frank’s comment re NMFS ‘anti-fishing bias’ almost seems a distorted echo
of the ‘Vision’ report’s comment that ‘the federal system to control commercial
fisheries exploitation is largely inappropriate to managing recreational
fishing.’ Could it be that ‘bias’ or an “inappropriate’
system isn’t the issue, but rather the fact that no business really wants to be
regulated for the good of the general public?] What attracts Frank and his
allies to the bill is that it would allow continued procrastination while
shielding managers from both lawsuits and the obligation to rebuild fish
populations.
“Give
the councils 50 years, and they will still opt for the largest short-term
harvest,” one enlightened council member told me. “In year 47 we’ll be right
where we are today, with the industry people weeping about their hard lot and
demanding flexibility.’”
“The
Oz figure behind this attempted gutting of Magnuson is the Recreational Fishing
Alliance (RFA), which reports that Pallone’s bill has the backing of 100
fishing groups and industry members. The board and staff of the RFA is
dominated by fishing-boat builders, fishing-gear manufacturers, advertisers
fronting as fishing writers, party-boat owners and charter-boat owners…
“There’s
scarcely anyone involved who doesn’t make money killing fish—not that there’s
anything wrong with that. But the RFA would get more respect if it was honest
and called itself a trade association.”
The RFA had nothing to do with the “Vision” report, but
there’s another group which did, and is arguably as much a “trade association”
as RFA. That group, the Center for Coastal Conservation, is listed as a “contributor”
to the “Vision”, and was formed by several other such “contributors”—including
the Coastal Conservation Association, the American Sportfishing Association and
the National Marine Manufacturers Association—specifically to lobby for their
vision for fisheries management (http://www.coastalconservation.us/index.php). If you take a look at who sits on the Center's board
of directors (http://www.coastalconservation.us/board_members.php),
calling them a “trade association” doesn’t seem like a stretch at all.
People who have the same interests tend to have the
same goals.
And when you realize that, and when you note that of the
seven organizations—not including TRCP—that “contributed” to the “Vision”
report, four were either the Center for Coastal Conservation or it’s “Partners”, one, the Berkley Conservation Institute, states on its website that it
“is working
closely with American Sportfishing Assn., Coastal Conservation Assn., the
Center for Coastal Conservation” on various fisheries, and
that the President of the Center for Coastal Conservation sits on the Board of
Directors of yet another contributor, the Congressional Sportsman’s Foundation,
you might start to believe that the effort to weaken Magnuson is being driven
by a single “trade association” this time, too.
Which may explain why they talk about abundance, but act
to weaken Magnuson, just like another trade association tried to weaken Magnuson
before.
Magnuson isn’t perfect. But if you really want to manage for what recreational
anglers want—for abundance and for more big fish—you change the law to make it even
harder to overfish. You change it to make the prompt rebuilding of diminished stocks easier and more certain.
You don’t try to impose “flexibility”.
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