STRIPED BASS: A DEAFENING SILENCE

By now, it’s no longer news that the most recent striped bass stock assessment has found that the stock is both overfished and experiencing overfishing.

That’s been covered in newspapers, in angling magazines, and on various websites.  The lack of striped bass is a constant topic of discussion among both surf fishermen and the private-boat angling fleet.

Massachusetts has just announced that it is thinking about allowing more commercial fishing days each week, because its commercial fleet had only landed about 24% of its striped bass quota by August 1; in most years, fish are abundant enough to see the entire quota caught by Labor Day.  Last year, even with an enhanced season, Massachusetts’ commercial fishermen left significant quota uncaught.  That doesn't bode well for the health of the stock.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board is holding a meeting on August 8, to decide how to address the problem.  Ahead of that meeting, anglers have been urging each other to contact their states’ ASMFC representatives, to ask them to take meaningful action to end overfishing and rebuild the striped bass stock.  Outdoor writers along the striper coast have been echoing the same sort of advice.

But the one group that has remained deafeningly silent on the issue is the big tackle industry/boatbuilding industry/anglers’ rights coalition that claimed to be pro-conservation when they joined together to push their “Modern Fish Act” agenda last year.

Some of us claimed that such conservation talk was all smoke and mirrors, and that those organizations’ sole goal was to find a way to kill a few more federally-managed fish, in particular Gulf of Mexico red snapper.  But the industry and anglers’ rights groups bombarded us with propaganda about how much good their bill was going to do; just one year ago, it was impossible to look at any angling-related media and not see someone urging anglers to support the bill.  

A letter written to the Cape Cod Times by one industry voice, who served as the Director of the New England Boat Show, was typical.

“The Modern Fish Act would deliver common-sense and responsible updates to fisheries management throughout the country, including New England.  Specifically, the Modern Fish Act will bring data collection into the 21^st Century, giving us better information to prevent overfishing.  This in turn will bolster conservation efforts that have been a hallmark of Magnuson-Stevens for decades.”

Now, we have overfishing occurring in one of the most important recreational fisheries in the New England/Mid-Atlantic region.  We have a real, live conservation issue playing out in the striped bass fishery, and some state fishery managers calling formeasures that could significantly, and permanently, impair the stock.  All of those organizations who talked a good conservation game last year now have a chance to get active and actually play the conservation game this year.

So do we see the New England Boat Show folks, who claimed to be so concerned about conservation, writing letters to papers about ending overfishing and rebuilding the striped bass stock?

Not that I could find.

And, taking the pressure off that one event and its staff, do we see the big boating-industry trade group, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, that was such an enthusiastic Modern Fish Act supporter, issuing even one press release in favor of striped bass conservation?

Again, not that I could find.  

NMMA does have an “Advocacy” tab on its website, but when you go to the “recreational fishing” section, the only thing I could find was some figures on the economic value of recreational fishing and more Modern Fish Act drivel.  

Admittedly, when I went to their more consumer-oriented “Discover Boating” website, I did find a striped bass pageo, which sort of described the species, suggested how to catch them, and—need I say—referred visitors to a new page that would list the “best boats for saltwater fishing,” which they might then consider buying.

But a discussion of striped bass conservation was nowhere to be seen.

When we take a look at the other big industry trade group, the American Sportfishing Association, things get a little more complicated, but the end result is the same.

Michael Nussman, ASA’s former President, claimed that the Modern Fish Act bill

“includes key provisions that will adapt federal fisheries management to manage recreational fishing in a way that better achieves conservation and public access goals.  Recreational fishing provides many economic, social and conservation benefits to the nation, and with this legislation, the federal fisheries management system will better realize those benefits.”

But again, now that we’ve reached a conservation crisis point with striped bass, ASA is remarkably silent. 

To be fair, late last fall it did come out against opening the so-called “Block Island Transit Zone,” an expanse of federal waters extending north and west of Block Island, Rhode Island, to striped bass fishing, saying

“Striped bass are the lifeblood of our fishery in the Northeast, and the prohibition on striped bass harvest in the EEZ has unquestionably been an extremely valuable conservation measure.  Opening a portion of the EEZ is a step in the wrong direction for recreational anglers and could risk the future health of the striped bass stock.”

But now that such “lifeblood” is dripping away, and “the future health of the striped bass stock” is clearly in peril, where is the American Sportfishing Association? 

If you take a look at the ASA’s Keep America Fishing page, which is intended to get anglers involved in the fishery management process, striped bass are nowhere to be seen. 

If you go to the page that shows what ASA’s government relations folks are doing in each of the states, you will find mention of the Block Island Transit Zone, but no mention of rebuilding the overfished striped bass stock at all.

ASA’s silence on the issue is particularly curious, because the organization recently hired a new Atlantic Fisheries Policy director who is tasked with addressing fisheries such as striped bass, and it would seem logical that rebuilding the overfished striped bass stock should be at or near the top of ASA’s East Coast agenda.  That would seem even more likely given that the person ASA hired is Michael Waine, who used to serve as ASMFC’s Striped Bass Fishery Management Plan Coordinator.

Of course, that’s the same Michael Waine who, five years ago, advised ASMFC’s striped bass management board to ignore clear language in the management plan that required them to begin a plan to rebuild the striped bass stock within ten years, because

“we’re uncomfortable with projecting out far enough to tell you when [the female spawning stock biomass] will reach its target because the further on the projections we go the more uncertainty that is involved,”

so maybe ASA’s silence on rebuilding the overfished stock is understandable.

But it isn’t only the industry that has remained silent on a rebuilding plan.  The anglers’ rights groups haven’t exactly been at the forefront of the conservation effort.  

Consider the Coastal Conservation Association, long the largest and most effective of the angler’s rights organizations.  CCA was another ardent Modern Fish Act supporter which claimed that such law, despite its provisions to weaken annual catch limit and rebuilding timeline provisions of the current statute, represented

“a common-sense policy that remains true to our conservation goals while providing access to our nation’s healthy natural resources.”

Unlike the big trade associations, CCA does recognize that the striped bass is facing problems, and admits that there is a “crisis” in the fishery.  It even noted that

“There had been rumors that the [Atlantic Striped Bass Management] Board would attempt to relax the current reference points—rather like moving the goal posts when you’re losing the game—rather than take the hard steps necessary to recover the stock, but the Board elected not to take the easy way out…”

While that sounds good, it’s just not true.  The Management Board didn’t seek to lower the biomass reference point in the currently contemplated addendum, but it may still initiate a full amendment process that will consider changing the goals and objectives of the management plan, as well as establishing new reference points.  So “moving the goal posts” is still very much on the table. 

And, so far, the Management Board has most definitely not taken “the hard steps necessary to recover the stock.”  

Instead, it has merely proposed an addendum that would have a 50 percent probability of successfully ending overfishing next year (and, correspondingly, a 50 percent probability of failing to meet that goal).  But the Management Board has completely ignored the management plan’s explicit requirement to rebuild the stock within ten years; instead, there is only a “theoretical” likelihood that reducing fishing mortality to target will rebuild the biomass at some undetermined point in the future.

Thus, a CCA staffer’s comment that

“Taking these steps to manage to the target reference point sends a strong signal that they want this population to return to its former abundance and not simply find the simplest way out of this mess”

is a substantial overstatement.

As noted above, the Management Board failed to draft a 10-year rebuilding plan five years ago, trusting that the stock would keep “trending” upwards, and that didn’t work out very well.

But CCA still isn’t mentioning that ten-year rebuilding requirement at all.

When you think about it, that makes sense.  CCA was one of the primary architects of the 2014 manifesto, A Vision for Managing America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries, which first articulated the ideology that gave rise to the Modern Fish Act.  That document proclaimed that

“The [National Marine Fisheries Service] should manage recreational fisheries based on long-term harvest rates, not strictly on poundage-based quotas.  This strategy has been successfully used by fisheries managers in the Atlantic striped bass fishery, which is the most sought-after recreational fishery in the nation.  By managing the recreational sector based on harvest rate as opposed to a poundage-based quota, managers have been able to provide predictability in regulations while also sustaining a healthy population.”

It also took issue with ten-year rebuilding plans, saying

“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…

“Instead of having a fixed deadline for stocks to be rebuilt, the [National Academy of Sciences] recommended that the regional councils and fisheries managers set lower harvest rates that would allow fish stocks to recover gradually while diminishing socioeconomic impacts.

“The commission [that produced the document under the watchful eyes of ASA, NMMA, CCA and other related organizations] supports the National Academy of Science’s recommendations to provide the regional councils and fisheries managers greater latitude to rebuild fish stocks in a timely and reasonable manner.”

If CCA admitted the truth, it would also have to admit that its preferred approach of managing striped bass based on “long-term harvest rates” that allowed “predictability in regulations,” but didn’t take account of recruitment problems in the stock, was a leading contributor to the continued decline in the striped bass population, and ultimately resulted in the stock becoming overfished.

It would also have to admit that setting “lower harvest rates that would allow fish stocks to recover gradually while diminishing socioeconomic impacts,” instead of adopting the ten-year rebuilding plan, is exactly the strategy that the Management Board adopted five years ago, which has since failed miserably.

If CCA called for a ten-year striped bass rebuilding plan, it would be effectively admitting that, for at least the last half-decade, its fisheries advocacy has been based on a false premise.

Don’t expect that to happen any time soon.

Instead, anglers who care about a healthy, sustainable and fully-rebuilt striped bass fishery are pretty much on their own.  While they might get some help from the big groups on a few issues, and one or two perceptive and forward-looking organizations, such as the American Saltwater Guides Association, will provide support, the fight to rebuild the striped bass population lies mostly on bass anglers’ shoulders.

When the Modern Fish Act passed, the American Sportfishing Association noted that

“ASA was proud to work with a united set of organizations to support the passage of the Modern Fish Act, including the Center for Sportfishing Policy, Coastal Conservation Association, Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation, International Game Fish Association, National Marine Manufacturers Association, Recreational Fishing Alliance, The Billfish Foundation and Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

“Working together and advocating with the same message was instrumental to the bill’s success.  The bill had some expected—and unexpected—detractors along the way but having the core of the recreational fishing community speaking with a unified voice allowed Members of Congress to not have to pick sides within our community (as has sometimes been the case in the past).  They knew the Modern Fish Act had the backing of the true recreational fishing community.”

They were all willing to work together and spend untold amounts of human, financial and political capital in their effort to steal a few percentage points of quota from the commercial sector, and catch an additional red snapper or two—and even did so in the name of conservation.

But when the striped bass is facing real problems, not one of them was willing to dedicate far, far less time and money to the cause of timely rebuilding the overfished stock.  

Their silence has been deafening.

This time, striped bass fishermen are completely on their own.

If the Management Board can be convinced to adopt a rebuilding stock for striped bass, and not put the population at further risk, it’s up to us to get the job done.