Folks
tend to think of fishing as an innocent pastime, something that takes us back
to a cane-pole childhood where cares were few and simple pleasures abundant.
Unfortunately, today’s fisheries are as politicized as timber and oil
production, with various interests each fighting for a share of the resource.
Anglers
must play a role in that battle, for it will ultimately determine whether our
fish stocks are managed for long-term abundance, or depleted for short-term
gain.
Thus,
as we enter the new year, we should be asking ourselves what can be done to
assure that fish stocks remain healthy and sustainable well into the future.
It
may be hard to believe, but the biggest challenge conservation-minded anglers
face is just convincing policymakers that we exist. The typical angler shies
away from the myriad of meetings, hearings and such that are part of the
management process. However, it’s said that nature abhors a vacuum, so when
anglers are silent, someone always presumes to speak on our behalf.
Right now, that “someone” is a small group of organizations
affiliated with the recreational fishing and boating industries, which have
joined together to form the Center for Coastal Conservation (Center). Operating
in partnership with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), it
is promoting a report entitled A Vision for Managing
America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries, which TRCP
published in 2014.
That
report was produced by a handpicked “commission” headed by two prominent
members of the angling and boatbuilding industries, and a number of
organizations closely connected with the fishing and boating industries were
recognized for having “contributed” to the report.
Thus,
it was hardly surprising when such report favored policies that would increase
recreational harvest and provide economic benefits to the recreational fishing
industry.
It recommended that the annual catch limits of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery
Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens),
which have proved effective in restoring fish stocks, be abandoned in favor of
the sort of “soft,” mortality-based targets that provide little protection
against overharvest. The report would also replace Magnuson-Stevens’ fixed
deadlines for rebuilding fish populations with longer, undefined recovery
periods that would supposedly reduce “socioeconomic impacts,” but would certainly
let managers drag out the rebuilding process for as long as they chose.
Neither the Center nor TRCP appear troubled by the fact that
such changes to Magnuson-Stevens would deny anglers the abundance of fish that
they need to fully enjoy their chosen pastime. And as last year’s debate over
striped bass management demonstrated, a lot of anglers want
fish stocks fully restored. Even so, both organizations are trying hard to
convince policymakers that the entire angling community supports its report; TRCP has claimed that it
represents “the
first time the recreational fishing community united to present a precise list
of recommended changes to federal laws and policies.”
For
most of the past two years, the Center has made the same claim, as it tried to
impose the views expressed by the TRCP report on the rest of the angling
community. In reality, most recreational fishermen probably don’t even know
that such report exists; thus, they can hardly be “united” behind it.
So
as the new year dawns, the first thing that anglers ought to do is tell
policymakers that neither the Center nor TRCP represents them, and that they
want a strong Magnuson-Stevens that will best assure that they, their kids and
their grandkids will be able to enjoy an abundance of fish in the sea.
Yet Magnuson-Stevens, as good as it is, isn’t perfect. It
encourages management decisions based on the number of fish that may be safely removed from the ocean, rather than how many
fish should be left in the ocean to assure that the larger species which feed
upon them may also thrive. Thus, anglers should strive to make 2016 the year that
forage fish are managed conservatively, to enable them to provide necessary
ecosystem services.
For as a nation, we reap greater benefits if there are
sufficient menhaden around to support populations of striped bass and king
mackerel than we are if those menhaden are captured, processed and turned into
fishmeal that’s sent off to China. And we probably reap even greater benefits
when forage fish such as sand eels (more properly, “sand launce”), which are
not currently harvested in any numbers, aren’t made the targets of new
industrial fisheries. Needed work to protect forage fish
has already begun, but it remains too far from completion.
There
are also a number of species that do not support directed fisheries, but are
caught incidentally by fishermen seeking something else. Some such fish are
retained, to be sold or eaten with the rest of the catch; others are returned
to the water, where many do not survive. Because fishermen don’t particularly
value these fish, they are often not included in management plans, and even
when they are, the health of such stocks are seldom, if ever, assessed.
Yet such fish are part of the ecosystem, and must serve some
particular function. Even though biologists may not fully understand what that
function is, it is folly to assume that any species is not important. For as pioneer ecologist Aldo Leopold noted,
“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or
plant, ‘What good is it?’…If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built
something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard
seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of
intelligent tinkering.”
Thus, any reauthorization of Magnuson-Stevens should protect not
only forage fish with clear ecological roles, but all members of marine
ecosystems, whether or not they are considered commercially or recreationally
valuable.
Yet
Magnuson-Stevens doesn’t govern every fishery. Some are managed at the state
level, where regulations are often a bigger product of local politics than of
science. That’s not going to change.
On the other hand, Congress gave the
Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) authority to enforce its management plans within
state waters; thus, it is not unreasonable for Congress to prescribe how
ASMFC’s management plans are written.
Such
prescription is badly needed. When compared to the successes of federal
managers, ASMFC’s record is dismal. Over the past 20 years, it has not rebuilt
a single species under its sole jurisdiction.
Of the nineteen stocks
managed solely by ASMFC, only three are deemed to be at
sustainable levels while two—both stocks of red drum—are thought to be
rebuilding. Of the remaining fourteen stocks, six are deemed “depleted” and
three to be of “concern,” while the status of the other five remains unknown
(although one of them is considered to be “overfished”).
Requiring
ASMFC management plans to comply with the conservation and rebuilding
provisions of Magnuson-Stevens could only help that situation.
Making
that happen won’t be easy, but it is not an impossible dream.
Letting
policymakers know that there is a legion of anglers who believe in a vision of
healthy, sustainable populations of fish, and not in the “vision” that the
Center and TRCP would impose, is the first step in achieving that goal.
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This essay first appeared in "From the Waterfront," the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which may be found at http://conservefish.org/blogs
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