It’s now almost official:
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is batting an even .000
when it comes to rebuilding and maintaining healthy fish stocks.
A quick review of the ASMFC
Stock Status Overview shows that, of the 23 stocks managed solely by the Commission
(10 other stocks are managed by both the Commission and the National Marine
Fisheries Service), only four are deemed to be “Rebuilt/sustainable” (a fifth, Massachusetts-Rhode
Island tautog, is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing, so probably
belongs in that category, too) with three more “Recovering/rebuilding”.
In contrast with that meager good news, seven
ASMFC-managed stocks are considered “Depleted” and four more are of “Concern.” The state of the remaining four stocks is “Unknown.”
And it’s probably important to note that the designation “Rebuilt/sustainable”
is a little misleading, because none of the four stocks granted that status
were actually rebuilt by ASMFC. One, black drum, was never overfished, and ASMFC
recently inherited a second, cobia, that had benefitted from years of federal
fisheries management. The Gulf of
Maine/Georges Bank stock of American lobster seems to be benefitting—so far—from
warming waters more than from ASMFC management measures, while the fourth
stock, Atlantic menhaden, acquired “rebuilt/sustainable” status not through any
management effort, but instead through
a new stock assessment, which showed that the population, once thought
depleted, had really been healthy all along.
So when you look at the numbers, there’s not much for
ASMFC to take pride in, on the “rebuilt/sustainable” front. In the seventy-seven years since ASMFC was
founded in 1942, and in the twenty-six years since the Atlantic Coastal
Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, which gave ASMFC the power to enforce its
management decisions, was passed in 1993, ASMFC has failed to rebuild a single
overfished stock, and then maintain such rebuilt stock at sustainable levels.
“Well, wait!” I might hear you saying. “What about striped bass?” Because for many years, ASMFC’s recovery of
the once-collapsed striped bass stock, which was declared fully rebuilt in 1995,
has been hailed as one of the great achievements of East Coast fishery managers.
But striped bass aren’t doing well any more.
Remember how I started this blog post, saying that ASMFC’s
failure to rebuild and sustainably manage even one stock of fish was “almost
official”?
The “almost” comes from the fact that the 2018 benchmark
striped bass stock assessment hasn’t yet been released, nor has the peer review
report that judges the assessment’s fitness for use as a fishery management
tool. However, ASMFC
has released a “Preliminary ASMFC Summary of the 2018 Benchmark Stock
Assessment for Atlantic Striped Bass.”
That preliminary summary makes it clear that ASMFC has not just failed,
but failed dismally, to sustainably manage what is arguably the premier finfish
species that comes under its sole management authority.
The preliminary summary tells the sad story.
“The combined full [fishing mortality] was 0.307 in
2017. Fishing mortality for both the
Chesapeake Bay fleet and the ocean fleet has been increasing since 1990…
“Abundance of age-8+ striped bass (considered the mature
component of the population) increased steadily through 2004 to 16.5 million
fish. After 2004 age-8+ abundance
oscillated and has been in decline since 2011. Age-8+ abundance in 2017 is estimated at 6.7 million fish, a value near the 30th percentile of
the time series.
“Female [spawning stock biomass] started out at low levels
and increased steadily through the late-1980s and 1990 peaking at 113,602 [metric
tons] (250 million pounds) in 2003 before beginning to gradually decline; the
decline became sharper in 2012.
Female SSB was at 68,476 mt (151 million pounds) in 2017…
“For this assessment the…SSB threshold was estimated at
91,436 mt (202 million pounds), with an SSB target of 114,295 mt (252 million
pounds). The [fishing mortality]
threshold was estimated at 0.240, and the [fishing mortality] target at 0.197…
“Female SSB for Atlantic striped bass in 2017 was 68,476 mt,
below the SSB threshold, indicating the stock is overfished. [Fishing mortality] in 2017 was 0.307, above
the [fishing mortality] threshold, indicating the stock is experiencing
overfishing. [emphasis added,
internal references removed]”
Because the final benchmark assessment has not yet been
released, those conclusions haven’t yet been reflected in the ASMFC stock status
overview. When they are, they will
change the current scorecard to seven “wins” (stocks that are either
rebuilt/sustainable or recovering/rebuilding) versus twelve “losses” (stocks
that are either depleted or of concern); based on such numbers, ASMFC’s career
winning percentage is a mere 37%--a number that drops to just 30% if the stocks
of “unknown” status are included as well.
With baseball spring training about to begin, this might be
the time to note that a manager with that sort of record won’t be managing for very long…
And perhaps more troubling than the mere fact that ASMFC
seems unable to recover and then maintain once-depleted fish stocks—a fact that
was made even worse after ASMFC frittered away its erstwhile success with
striped bass—is how and why its failures occur.
Striped bass provide the perfect example.
As the preliminary summary of the bass assessment makes
perfectly clear, the decline of the striped bass stock should not have come as
a surprise to anyone. While the extent
of the decline, and the extent of the overfishing, was probably greater than
anyone expected (except, perhaps, for anglers up and down the coast, who have long
been telling managers that bass were having real problems), long-term
increases in fishing mortality, and continuing decreases in overall abundance and female
spawning stock biomass, have been obvious for a number of years.
Bit ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board has repeatedly refused to fully address them.
In November 2011, despite a stock
assessment update that warned that striped bass were well on their way to
becoming overfished, the Management
Board decided not to move forward on efforts to cut harvest because the stock
wasn’t overfished yet.
Action to prevent the stock from becoming
overfished was treated, by many, as anathema.
Even after the 2013
benchmark stock assessment effectively forced the Management Board to take action,
it took as little action as it could get away with, and less than its own
management plan called for.
“If the Management Board determines that the fishing mortality
target is exceeded in two consecutive years and the female spawning
stock biomass falls below the target within either of those years, the
Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to reduce the
fishing mortality rate to a level that is at or below the target within one
year.”
Amendment 6 also requires that
“If the Management Board determines that the female spawning
stock biomass falls below the target for two consecutive years and the fishing
mortality rate exceeds the target in either of those years, the Management
Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass
to a level that is at or above the target within [ten years].”
The 2013 benchmark assessment indicated that both of those
triggers for action had been tripped. While the Management Board did initiate efforts to reduce harvest to the
target level—although some of its members, mostly from the Chesapeake Bay region, tried
very hard to stretch that reduction out over three years, instead of the one
year the Amendment required—it completely ignored the requirement to
rebuild the stock, despite the fact that the Amendment said that such rebuilding “must” be done.
Thus, the Management Board brazenly and broke a covenant that it had made
with the public the moment that it adopted Amendment 6.
Almost as soon as the
new addendum, intended to cut landings by 25%, was put in place, there were
efforts to increase the kill.
Michael
Luisi, a fishery manager from Maryland, and Robert O’Reilly, his counterpart from
Virginia, made a motion to “reconsider” the harvest reductions at the
Management Board’s November 2015 meeting.
That motion ultimately failed.
Just one year later, a
new stock assessment update found that the fishing mortality rate in 2015 was
0.16, barely below the 0.18 target. Even
though the two values were statistically indistinguishable, Luisi
made another motion, this time asking ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical
Committee to calculate how much regulations could be relaxed in order to bring the
mortality rate all the way up to target, because
“perhaps just that very small change could be something that
saves a few of the fishermen in my state.
“A half an inch in minimum size could mean a lot to our
fleets, our charterboat and recreational fleet; more so the charterboat
community.”
“there is nothing uncertain about the economic hit that
netters in Delaware have taken and the Chesapeake charter fishermen that have
been here for the last three or four meeting [sic] we’ve had here. I don’t think they’re here just because they
want a few extra bucks. They’re here because they see a real threat to
their business. I think that this
addendum at least gets us on the right track to correcting an over action that
we took a few years ago.”
Again, the effort to increase harvest failed, but the theme
of crafting regulations that would better serve the short-term interests of
fishermen, rather than the long-term interests of the fish stock, continued
on.
“Does the Board want to manage the manage the stock to
maximize yield, maximize catch rates, maximize the availability of trophy fish,
and what is the acceptable level of risk when it comes to preventing stock
collapse?”
While one would hope that the acceptable level of risk with
regard to stock collapse is as close to zero as possible, the Management Board ultimately advised the Technical Committee to consider a range of
reference points, including some that would increase the kill, while also
increasing the risk to the striped bass stock.
At no time did the Management Board require that such
reference points prevent harvest from exceeding the stock’s maximum sustainable
yield. At least one Management Board
member wanted to do that, but he did not prevail in the vote.
Unfortunately, such efforts to elevate the fishermen’s interests over those of
the fish aren’t limited to the striped bass.
“we almost put a moratorium on winter flounder, we would have
been one of two states that would have done that, which would have put a
further hit on both recreational, commercial and bait and tackle people and
marinas and so for those supplies.”
Putting “a further hit” on the flounder by continuing a
harvest they could not sustain did not appear to concern him at all.
“It’s bad enough that you can’t go home
with a sea bass, and it looks like next year in New Jersey they can’t go home
with a summer flounder. At least they’ll
have, you know, one fish to take home, maybe one winter flounder and one weakfish…How
do you keep an industry going?”
The irony of the fact that he was
basing angling industry survival on weakfish and winter flounder, probably the
two most at-risk inshore species in the region, was apparently lost on
Fote.
The fact that he was willing to
put both species further at risk in order to protect the fishing industry shouldn’t
be lost on anyone else.
Far too many people who sit on ASMFC’s
management boards haven’t yet learned that the only absolute in the management
system is the biological needs of fish stocks.
They don’t understand that scaling
the size of the harvest to the needs—or at least the desires—of the fishing
industry is the surest road to perdition.
They have not yet accepted the truth that
sustainability depends on scaling the size of the industry to the needs of the affected
fish stocks.
And yes, that might mean that
some folks go out of business. But a
stock collapse will turn everyone out into the streets.
Yet there are hopes that things could turn around. ASMFC just released the results of its annual
survey of state commissioners, and some
of the survey results are encouraging. For
example, the answers to the questions
“How comfortable are you that the
Commission has a clear and achievable plan to reach the Vision (Sustainably managing
Atlantic Coast Fisheries)?”
and
“How confident are you that the Commission’s
actions reflect progress toward its Vision?”
hit all-time lows, scoring 7.23
and 6.94 (out of 10), respectively. The
first step toward solving a problem is admitting that it exists.
Other responses were not as
clear. The rating assigned to
“One of the metrics the Commission uses to
measure progress is tracking the number of stocks where overfishing is no
longer occurring. Is this a clear metric
to measure progress?”
was 7.42. Since that question was first asked in 2014, ratings
ranged from 7.80 in 2014 to 7.09 in 2017, suggesting that today’s commissioners
are somewhat ambivalent about the answer.
The response to the question
“Are you satisfied with the Commission’s
ability to manage rebuilt stocks?”
was 6.45; again, that rating fell
between the 2014 high of 7.17 and a 2016 low of 6.19, but the fact that all of
the ratings were relatively low suggested that managing for continued sustainability
was seen as a problem.
Free-form comments to other answers
cast more light on the question of how commissioners feel about the progress
that ASMFC is making. When asked
“What is the single biggest obstacle to
the Commission’s success in rebuilding stocks?”
answers varied widely. But the fact that they included comments such
as
“Public resistance to making the sometimes
hard choices needed to manage stocks in need of re-building,”
“Balancing the needs of the fishing
community with the need to constrain fishing effort,”
and
“Lack of will to make difficult decisions”
provide reason to hope that at
least some commissioners recognize that the old way of doing things at ASMFC
needs to be changed, and that managing in a way that pleases fishermen, rather
than managing in a way that rebuilds and maintains healthy fish stocks, is not
the right way to go.
Perhaps the most revealing
comment, and also the most troubling, noted that
“Increasing stakeholder engagement with outside
entities has caused undo [sic] influences that tend to hamstring our
actions. Engaged commissioners feel
that, in order to maintain their seats, politics and not science must drive the
final outcomes to the advantage of individual stakeholders and ignore the
greater good. This is counterproductive
but perhaps a fact of (commission) life.
Other than setting terms for appointment length, this will be a hurdle
that will be hard to overcome.
Commissioners should not fear being removed should one outcome be ill
received ‘at home’.”
That paints a dismal picture, but
all is not doom and gloom.
There are
some new commissioners taking seats on the management boards who provide a breath of fresh air. I was reminded of that just yesterday, when I
saw an
article in our local newpaper, Newsday, that read
“State Sen. Todd Kaminsky has been
appointed to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission…
“Kaminsky emphasized the need for smart
conservation, mentioning striped bass in particular.’
“’I think there’s a need for more
conservation-minded people on the board,’ he said. ‘As somebody raising a young family on Long
Island, I don’t want to talk to my family about a fish that used to be on Long
Island and isn’t anymore.’”
Amen.
If all of the ASMFC commissioners could understand that, the needed change would already be here.
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