TAUTOG: A TEST FOR ASMFC--AND FOR US

Right now, there’s a battle going on for the hearts and minds of America’s salt water fishermen, and for the soul of the nation’s salt water fisheries policy.

On one side, there is a well-funded array of industry organizations and anglers’ rights groups, largely assembled under the banner of something called the Center for Sportfishing Policy, that would weaken protections against overfishing, and the mandate to promptly rebuild overfished stocks, so that anglers can kill too many fish while the industry tries to convince them that if they only buy bigger, faster boats outfitted with ever more effective electronics, and equip themselves with the newest highest-tech gear, they can still catch a lot of the fish that remain and go home with their coolers as heavy as ever.

They try to keep anglers from remembering times when fish were abundant enough, close to port, that you could catch all you wanted from a wooden-hulled boat, rigged with one modest-sized inboard, that might cruise at all of 12 knots on its best day…

On the other side, there are anglers who still cling to a tattered conservation ethic—the folks who fought to protect and rebuild the striped bass and the redfish, who don’t sell their tuna and are among what increasingly seems to be a minority, at least here in New York, who actually obey the law and don’t take short or over-limit fluke, black sea bass and porgy.  Conservation groups—both those focusing on ocean issues and those that generally advocate for clean air and water, and healthy, intact ecosystems—are on those anglers’ side, contributing their political savvy and advocacy networks to the fray.

Conservation advocates support the current version of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs all fishing in federal waters.  

They argue that Magnuson-Stevens’ strict prohibition on overfishing, its requirement that fisheries managers establish strict annual catch limits, based on the best available science, and its mandate that overfished stocks be rebuilt in as short a time as possible has made it an extremely effective law that has reduced overfishing, completely rebuilt 41 once-overfished stocks and helps ensure that other stocks don’t fall into the “overfished” category.

The Center for Sportfishing Policy and its allies argue that, because of Magnuson-Stevens

“Thousands of businesses—from bait and tackle shops along the coast to retailers and manufacturers across the nation—suffer the consequences of the government’s folly.  With their time on the water choked by regulation, boaters and anglers are far less likely to purchase goods and services related to fishing.  This has a chilling impact on business.”

They also allege that

“Many of the problems plaguing saltwater recreational anglers stem from the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the 1976 law governing federal fisheries management.  Administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Magnuson-Stevens does not distinguish well between recreational and commercial fishing, even though these are fundamentally different activities with vastly different economic footprints.

“That fatal flaw is evident in the law’s enforcement of ‘maximum sustainable yield’ and tonnage-based ‘annual catch limits,’ which are easily applied to the commercial sector but are impractical for the recreational sector…”

To illustrate how the Center would like to see managers address issues such as maximum sustainable yield and annual catch limits, Jeff Angers, its President, enthusiastically approved of the Commerce Department’s recent decision to extend the private-boat red snapper season in the Gulf of Mexico, a decision that the Department admits will cause recreational anglers to exceed their annual catch limit—and, by extension, the maximum sustainable yield for the stock—while delaying the stock’s rebuilding by as much as six years.

That makes it pretty clear that organizations like

the Center aren’t very concerned about science-based catch limits, overfishing or rebuilding overfished stocks, and explains why they have endorsed the management approach used by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission with respect to striped bass, where the law does not require managers to concern themselves with any of those issues.

The problem is that in the 17 years since this century began, the National Marine Fisheries Service, following the dictates of Magnuson-Stevens, has managed to rebuild 41 stocks, while ASMFC, using its more “flexible” management approach, hasn’t rebuilt any (note that menhaden may be listed as a “rebuilt” stock, but the change in status from “overfished” to “not overfished” resulted from a change in the methodology used to assess the stock in 2015 compared to the methodology used in earlier assessments, rather than from the efficacy of management measures).

At its annual meeting in October, ASMFC’s management approach will face its next test, as it decides on new management measures for tautog (also known as “blackfish”).

Tautog is a perfect test to determine whether an ASMFC-like management approach can successfully rebuild a recreational fishery; in 2015 (the last year for which commercial data is available), NMFS’ commercial landings data and recreational landings estimates show that close to 90% of the tautog landed are caught by recreational fishermen.

So far, the evidence doesn’t give the ASMFC approach much support.

ASMFC completed its first tautog management plan in 1996—21 years ago.  

In that plan, it acknowledged that tautog’s life history made the fish vulnerable to overfishing, that local overfishing was already taking place, that biologists lacked a lot of data needed to manage the species and that the fishery was largely unregulated by the states.  

It found that

“Tautog resources in the region from Massachusetts to New York are overexploited and at a low biomass level.  There has been an apparent increase in fishing mortality, and fishing mortality appears to be well above any candidate biological reference point for this long lived and slow growing species.”

ASMFC determined that the fishing mortality rate had to be sharply reduced, and set the target at F=0.15.

Despite the poor health of the stock, ASMFC, not bound by Magnuson-Stevens’ mandates to end overfishing and timely rebuild overfished stocks, did not immediately require the states to reduce fishing mortality to the 0.15 target.  

Instead, because fishing mortality at the time was so high—one survey estimated it at 0.58 for the entire New York-Massachusetts region, another reported that it was 0.71 in Rhode Island, while a third estimate, performed by the Stock Assessment Review Committee, set it at 0.79—and a very large reduction in landings would be needed to achieve the target mortality rate, ASMFC was more “flexible” than Magnuson-Stevens would allow,

“taking an initial reduction for two years to a target of F=0.24.  Although the specific landings reductions in each state may vary, on a coastwide average, this step requires a 55 percent reduction in fishing mortality…Under the plan, states are allowed the flexibility to develop a management scheme that will meet the needs of their particular fishery and produce the necessary reductions.”

After that,

“stock status and abundance will be evaluated, and the steps needed to reduce fishing mortality to the F=0.15 target will be identified.”

Without the incentives of annual catch limits and accountability measures for states that filed to achieve the needed reductions, the process was doomed from the start. 

In 1997, ASMFC’s Tautog Management Board adopted an addendum to the management plan which gave the states two years just to reduce fishing mortality to 0.24, and allowed them to fish at that rate for another two years before reducing fishing mortality to the target F=0.15, allowing overfishing to occur for four years rather than two.

In 1999, the Management Board punted again, approving a new addendum that allowed overfishing to continue through 2002.

That sort of thing just may not happen under Magnuson-Stevens, but at ASMFC, it is just fine.

In 2002, the Management Board adopted a third addendum.  

The states hadn’t come close to achieving even the interim fishing mortality rate of 0.24, much less the F=0.15 target.  

According to a new stock assessment, fishing mortality was still very high, estimated at 0.41.  However, the same stock assessment also suggested that the target fishing mortality rate could be raised to F=0.30.  Even though the stock was still in poor shape, that became the new target, and states were instructed to adopt regulations to achieve it.

Five years later, in 2007—eleven years after the initial management plan was completed, and one year past the point where the tautog stock, if managed under Magnuson-Stevens, might have recovered—tautog still weren’t doing too well.  In what had become the fourth addendum to the management plan, ASMFC acknowledged that

“The trend in total stock biomass and spawning stock biomass has been generally flat and at low levels since 1994.”

Recognizing that the increase in the target fishing mortality rate wasn’t going to rebuild the stock, the Management Board backtracked a bit and set a new target at F=0.20.

Flexible management continued.  It still didn’t work.  Without any sort of annual catch limits or accountability measures, the states just had no incentive to impose what would clearly be unpopular harvest restrictions, so they gamed the system to concoct regulations that looked good on paper, but failed in the real world.

In Addendum VI to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Tautog, issued in 2011—now fifteen years after ASMFC first tried to rebuild the stock—ASMFC admitted that

“Tautog harvest is controlled through state regulations that are designed to restrain F at or below the F_target.  States must implement regulations to achieve the F_target but are allowed to select seasons, bag limits, quotas, etc., to achieve the target as best meets their individual needs.  An SSB_target was established in Addendum IV as a metric to evaluate the tautog population and the effectiveness of management measures…

“[T]he 2011 stock assessment update found that the stock continues to be overfished (SSB₂₀₀₉=10,553 mt versus SSB_target=26,800 mt), with overfishing occurring (F=0.38 versus F_target=0.20).”

By then, the message seemed pretty clear:  No annual catch limits plus no accountability measures equals no management discipline and no recovery.

Things came full circle in 2015, when a new benchmark stock assessment determined that the fishing mortality rate really should be 0.15, the same mortality rate suggested in the first management plan, completed nineteen years before.  However, even though they had nineteen years to get there, the states hadn’t reduced fishing mortality to anything close to that figure.  Coastwide, F=0.28.

Now, ASMFC is gearing up for another try.  The Tautog Management Board is debating a new Amendment 1, the first full amendment to the management plan.

Tautog don’t migrate much, so this time, managers are setting up four different management regimes for four different regions, to match the conditions that exist in different places along the coast.  Different biomass and fishery management targets would be set for each region.

It turns out that twenty years’ delay in rebuilding tautog stocks did particular harm in Long Island Sound, where a 47% reduction in harvest would be required to have even a 50% chance of achieving Ftarget by 2021.  For recreational fishermen in New York, that would mean cutting the bag limit from 4 fish to 1.

That’s a big cut, and the suggestion didn’t go over well.  

When ASMFC held a meeting in New York to obtain comments on the new Amendment, the attendees formed an unruly mob that showed no respect for the ASMFC and New York State staffers attending, nor for the process itself.  Like spoiled children, they merely wanted to get their way, without any discussion and without thought for the consequences.

Yet the tactic seems to have worked, because at ASMFC’s October meeting, a decision on Long Island Sound regulations wasn’t made, and proposals have since been put on the table for landings reductions that wouldn't even have a 50-50 chance of achieving the target mortality rate.

Under Magnuson-Stevens, that couldn’t happen; whatever measures adopted would have had to have at least an even chance of rebuilding the population within ten years.

But at ASMFC, it’s 1996 all over again.  Managers seemingly still haven’t learned that you can’t overfish a population back to health. 

But without rebuilding deadlines, annual catch limits, accountability measures or any legal requirement that requires rebuilding plans to actually succeed, they will probably try, and kick the tautog can down the road for another few years, in the hope that a big year class of fish—which even a small population can sometimes produce—might bail them out for a while.

And that is the test that tautog will give ASMFC.

Will they do the right thing to rebuild the stock, after 21 years of abject failure?  Or will they dither again, embracing half-measures that aren’t effective, but also aren’t so controversial?

In the end, that is the test that tautog will give all of us, 

particularly our lawmakers in Washington.

Do we want our fish managed under a law that prevents overfishing, and has successfully rebuilt more than forty once-overfished populations?

Or do we want them all managed like tautog?