BLACK SEA BASS FACING THE FUTURE

A decade or so ago, black sea bass weren’t on most anglers’ minds, at least not in New York and New England.

There were a few hard-core wreck fishermen who targeted them during the summer, and a few party boats that made winter trips out to deep-water wrecks where the big knot-headed males could be found in abundance, but for most of us, black sea bass were something that we caught by accident while drifting for fluke, or that came up on mixed-bag for-hire trips, along with the fluke, maybe blackfish, and porgies.

Like a lot of our local species, black sea bass were badly overfished by the late ‘80s, but thanks to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, with its prohibitions on overfishing and its rebuilding deadlines, the stock bounced back in a big way.  

As the 20^th Century drew to a close, the Mid-Atlantic black sea bass fishery was dominated by New Jersey, where the fish were actively targeted by the party boat fleet, and mostly prosecuted in the states between New Jersey and Virginia.  

To give some idea of how dominant the southern Mid-Atlantic was at that time, in 2000 the four states of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia landed 83% of all the black sea bass harvested by anglers in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions.  New Jersey, alone, accounted for 54% of the recreational landings.

At that time, the fishery was still largely unregulated.  Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley, the lawsuit that first gave real legal teeth to the conservation and stock rebuilding mandates of Magnuson-Stevens, wasn’t decided until 2000, and it took a while for the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to adopt management measures that complied with the Court’s decision.  However, once such measures were put in place—somewhat reluctantly, on the part of some Council members, and not without a lot of bitter debate—the stock began to rebuild.

That rebuilding was helped by something that, in most other respects, is viewed as bad news—the gradually warming climate, and its impacts on ocean temperatures.

Biologists have found that black sea bass recruitment—the number of young-of-the-year fish that enter the population—is highly dependent upon the conditions that they encounter during their first winter of life, spent near the edge of the continental shelf.  Warm, salty water is conducive to juvenile black sea bass survival, so as the water warmed, more black sea bass began to appear at the northern end of their range.

The increase of fish in northern waters became so marked that in 2009, for the first time, anglers fishing off the four states between New York and Massachusetts accounted for the majority of recreational black sea bass landings.  While, at 57%, it was only a slim majority, it was the sign of permanent change; the southern states steadily gave ground from there.  By 2016, the regions’ roles were completely and exactly reversed from what they were in 2000.  By then, it was the northern states that accounted for 83% of the landings; New Jersey’s percentage had steadily fallen to only about 11.5%.

And the northern states achieved that dominance with a significant handicap, as states between New York and Massachusetts adopted smaller bag limits and a 15-inch minimum size in 2016, while states from Delaware south were allowed to maintain a 15-fish bag and 12 ½-inch size limit and New Jersey was allowed to adopt regulations that varied throughout the year, but featured a 12 ½- or 13-inch size limit throughout.

At the same time that the black sea bass fishery was improving, biologists’ knowledge about the species was improving as well.

For many years, black sea bass were considered a “data poor” species; a 2012 benchmark stock assessment failed to pass peer review because the underlying data was deemed inadequate for management purposes.  So for a while, fishery managers were flying blind, and were forced to adopt very restrictive management measures to avoid accidentally overfishing the stock.

But knowledge was slowly being developed.  A cooperative tagging study conducted by National Marine Fisheries Service biologists between 2002 and 2004 determined that there were three substocks of black sea bass in the New England/Mid-Atlantic region, which remained isolated from each other during the summer, but mixed to some extent on the wintering grounds.

The study found that the northern stock summers between Massachusetts and, roughly, Moriches Inlet, New York; in winter, most migrate to the edge of the continental shelf near Hudson Canyon (about equidistant between New York and New Jersey), although some travel as far as North Carolina.  The central stock summers between Moriches Inlet and the Eastern Cape of Virginia, and migrates in a generally southeasterly direction to winter at the edge of the continental shelf.  The southern stock, summers between southern Virginia and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and moves into deeper waters during the winter, but most fish stop before reaching the edge of the shelf.

Additional biological information, which cast more light on how the black sea bass functions as a protogynous hermaphrodite (which begins life as a female, and at some point changes over to become male), was also developed, and all of the new data was incorporated into a new benchmark stock assessment that, in early 2017, was judged suitable for management purposes.

It found that the black sea bass stock was not only healthy, but that spawning stock biomass was at 240% of the target level.  It also, for the first time, refined the assessment to a regional level, dividing it into a northern and southern component, using Hudson Canyon as the dividing line.

Although the assessment did not precisely conform its analysis to the substocks identified in the tagging study, for practical purposes, it divided the population into the northern stock on one hand, and the central and southern stocks on the other.

That sort of separation made some kind of sense, since the huge 2011 year class that we observed off New York and Connecticut (and others observed farther north in New England) didn’t seem to appear to be nearly as large in the southern region.  And, while the southern population was doing OK, the northern population was far more robust.

The trick, then, was to bring black sea bass management into the 21^st Century, so that it reflects both the new knowledge and realities on the water.

The ASMFC and the Mid-Atlantic Council are trying.  In 2016, they allowed the southern states to enjoy relatively liberal regulations, while states between Massachusetts and New Jersey, which enjoyed the larger population of fish and accounted for most of the landings, were forced to bear a correspondingly larger responsibility for conserving the stock.

Now, ASMFC has produced a Draft Addendum XXX to the Summer Flounder, Scup, Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan for Public Comment, which has the potential to significantly improve the black sea bass management process.  Its two key proposals would 1) see black sea bass managed on a regional basis, and 2) allow annual regulations to be based on a more nuanced, science-dependent approach, rather than the current rote exercise of comparing the previous year’s estimated landings to the current catch limit, and making adjustments that look good on paper, but often fail in the real world.

Of course, as always, the Devil is in the details.

If regional management is adopted, it can be done in one of two ways.  Allocation can be done based on numbers of fish, caught within either the past 5 years (2011-2015) or the past 10 years (2006-2015), with either two regions (Massachusetts-New Jersey and Delaware-North Carolina), three regions (Massachusetts-New York, New Jersey standing alone, and Delaware-North Carolina) or four (Massachusetts-Rhode Island, Connecticut-New York, New Jersey standing alone, and Delaware-North Carolina).  Or it can be based on both the number of fish caught during a 5- or 10-year period and the available biomass, in which case the states would be split into a northern region consisting of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York, and a southern region consisting of all the other states, with New Jersey getting some additional consideration because it straddles the Hudson Canyon dividing line between the northern and southern populations.

Once ASMFC decides what it wants to do there, it must decide whether all states within a region must adopt the same regulations, or whether conservation equivalency should remain an option.

There’s little doubt that the discussions are going to be contentious.  New Jersey is already trying to gain the best of both worlds.  Paul Haertel of the Jersey Coast Anglers Association is advising anglers to support

“options that would allow New Jersey to become its own region or to be placed in the southern region as opposed to remaining in the region with states to our north…JCAA supports the quotas being established based on the historical percentage of the harvest over at least the last ten years.”

He then begins whining that

“In 2011 draconian regulations were forced upon us that resulted in New Jersey harvesting their fewest sea bass during this entire century.  It would be wrong to use this year as part of the basis for developing quotas.  There was relaxation of the regulations in 2012 at which time New Jersey was placed in the northern region.  Then for 2013, New Jersey was forced to establish harsh regulations that resulted in us harvesting only 61% of our target quota…Those stringent regulations that NJ set in 2012 have hurt us every year since.  Further, NJ’s historical share of the harvest was 47.7% for the period from 2001 to 2010 and probably even more than that previous to those years.”

Of course, he never explained how such regulations were any more "draconian" or more "harsh" than those adopted by New York, Massachusetts or any of the other states with large sea bass harvests.  Then he made what, if he wasn’t dead serious, would sound like intentional irony:

“We believe it would be very unfair to base quotas on years when New Jersey’s share of the harvest was at or near its lowest and other states were at or neat their highest levels,”

because all the while, he was arguing that the base years should include the times when New Jersey was at its highest levels and other states at their lowest because, well, you know that it’s only really fair when New Jersey kills most of the fish.

But that’s why “fairness,” and historical arguments, although so often heard, are so often useless in fisheries management.  Because allocations and regulations should be based on today’s, and more importantly, tomorrow’s realities, reflecting where the fish are and are expected to be.  They should not reflect conditions that occurred in the past and, given current trends, are unlikely to be happen again. 

In fact, the center of black sea bass abundance has moved to the north over the past decade or so, and any allocation of the black sea bass resource needs to reflect that reality.

Thus, instead of listening to the folks down in New Jersey kick their feet and threaten to hold their collective breaths until they turn blue, ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board should endeavor to resolve the black sea bass issue by using the same approach that they have already used very effectively in the scup fishery since 2004—combine the states responsible for the vast majority of the landings into a single region, with a single recreational catch limit, and require all of those states to adopt the same regulations in order to constrain landings at or below a commonly-applied catch limit.

Between 2011 and 2016, the five states between Massachusetts and New Jersey accounted for anywhere between 86% and 96% of the overall black sea bass landings; taking 2011 out of the picture, landings have remained in a very narrow 92.2%-95.7% range, a range that remains consistent even though New Jersey’s share of the overall landings varies between 11.6% and 39.3% of all landings during those years. 

Such consistency suggests that New Jersey should be placed in the 5-state region, despite the fact that it straddles the northern and southern populations; low landings in Delaware, Maryland and  Virginia further suggest that the southern population probably contributes little to New Jersey’s recreational harvest, reinforcing the conclusion that New Jersey should be grouped with the northern states.

Furthermore, allowing New Jersey to become its own region, or allowing it to be treated as a southern state would allow it to exploit the northern population of sea bass while not being subject to the same rules that apply to the northern bloc of states, a situation which would truly not be equitable.

All states in the five-state region, like those in the four-state region responsible for most of the scup landings, should then be required to adopt the same set of regulations, with no conservation equivalency allowed.  In that way, both the catch limits and the harvest estimates could be applied over the entire five-state region, leading to greater overall accuracy and more consistent year-to-year regulations.

Such regulatory consistency would be further enhanced, and unneeded changes avoided, if a final option of Addendum XXX was adopted,

“a performance evaluation process that better incorporates biological information and efforts to reduce discard mortality into the metrics used for evaluation and management response by evaluating fishery performance against the [annual catch limit].  This option seeks to integrate information from the 2016 assessment into the management process, enhance the angling experience of the recreational community, improve the reporting of recreational information, and achieve meaningful reductions in discard mortality to better inform management responses to changes in the condition of this resource.”

In Addendum XXX, fishery managers have a chance to make meaningful improvements in the way black sea bass are managed.  By regionalizing management and insisting on consistent regulations across each region, and by incorporating more and better information into the annual regulatory process, managers can create a system that provides better landings estimates, results in more effective regulation and incorporates the best available science.

Hopefully, that will happen.

Unfortunately, there will be plenty of people, including those down in New Jersey, who will try to throw it off the rails in order to gain some parochial advantage.  If they succeed in undercutting the most effective provisions, both the fish and the larger angling community will pay the price.

The ASMFC will be holding meetings in all of the affected states to obtain angler input on the Addendum.  A schedule of when and where those meetings will be held can be found at http://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file/5a3d59bbp61_BSBDraftAddXXX_PublicComment.pdf.

All black sea bass anglers should try to attend, and urge ASMFC to stay on track, bring black sea bass management out of the past, and propel it toward a new and far better future.