A REMINDER OF FISHERIES PAST: THE SHIFTING BASELINE SYNDROME IS REAL

Fisheries debates go on and on. 

I’ve been involved in the process since the late 1970s, and very heavily involved for the past thirty years or so.  Many things have changed in that time.  Fisheries science has gotten much better.  We have data-based management plans for most important species these days; back in 1995, a virtual population analysis used to manage striped bass marked the first time that such an analysis was used to manage an important Atlantic coast species.

In the past thirty or so years, we’ve seen many important fish stocks crash (striped bass was the first to really get our attention, more than forty years ago), and we’ve seen a lot of stocks rebuild thanks to effective, science-based regulations. 

We’ve also seen some of those stocks decline again, often because managers failed to respond quickly and forcefully enough to halt the decline before fish became scarce.

But while many things have changed over those years, one thing has been annoyingly consistent:  The arguments coming from some corners of the fishing industry, to the effect that no new rules are needed, because the fish are as abundant as they’ve ever been.

Sometimes, you’ll hear people say that fish are even more abundant than ever, although their concept of “ever” rarely extends beyond their own lifetimes, which is a pitifully short span to consider, given the age of the seas.  Even so, it is a typical reaction.  It’s even been given a name, the “Shifting Baseline Syndrome,” a term coined by fisheries biologist Daniel Pauley, who noted that

“Each generation of fisheries scientist accepts as baseline the stock situation that occurred at the beginning of their careers, and uses this to evaluate changes.  When the next generation starts its career, the stocks have further declined, but it is the stocks at that time that serve as a new baseline.  The result obviously is a gradual shift of the baseline, a gradual accommodation of the creeping disappearance of resource species.”

The Shifting Baseline Syndrome doesn’t only impact fisheries scientists.  It impacts fishermen and people in the fisheries industry, too, and often makes them forget—if they ever knew—just how much we have lost over a relatively short period of time.

The other day, I was moving things around in the basement, and happened to find some old copies of the Long Island, Metropolitan New York edition of The Fisherman magazine, which casts a dismaying light on how much we have lost in just the past thirty years.

The inshore season never really ended back then.  The Fisherman’s January 5-11, 1984 edition, which recapped the 1983 season, reported that

“Although excellent [winter] flounder catches were made in the Quogue Canal back in January, the official ‘spring run’ in Great South Bay on March 5^th and 6^th.  The Hecksher Park Grounds were hot were hot and many big flatties were included among the catches.  Good fishing continued through the month…

“By the 20^th of May the fluke were sharing the limelight with the winter flatties who continued to provide excellent fishing throughout the month of May…

“Despite decent fluking in Moriches Bay, flounder fishing remained excellent here throughout June…”

The recap went on to describe the return of flounder to the bays in October, and continued strong into December, meaning that flounder fishermen had a January to December fishery back in those days.

The recap never clearly described what “excellent” flounder fishing looked like, but other Fisherman issues provide a good clue.  For example, the April 10-16, 1986 edition includes reports from the same area reporting that

“the [private fishing boat] ‘Crab II’ corralled 125 flatties in Dickerson’s Channel.  Carl [a local tackle shop owner] thought that most boatmen were averaging between 30 and 40 flatties working Dickerson’s Channel or south of Hecksher State Park…

“the Miss Captree [party boat] reported consistently good fishing all week…Most trips saw catches of 15-25 flatties per man common with high hooks between 35 and 40 fish…

“the Captree open boat Capt. Joseph II reported good fishing all week…[One angler] had 45 flatties, while [four others] accounted for 129 fish including the pool winner.”

Unfortunately, catches like that will never be seen again.  

Although that fishery began to decline soon after, industry opposition to needed management measures preventedfisheries professionals from preventing its collapse.  In the spring of 2019, so few winter flounderwere caught in New York State that surveyors reporting to the National MarineFisheries Service couldn’t find anyone who managed to catch a single one. 

Although some flounder were certainly caught last spring, it’s likely that most boats carrying passengers out onto Great South Bay caught fewer flounder over the course of the entire season than the individual fishermen mentioned above caught on a single half-day trip.  

In a last-ditch effort to protect the stock, New York has adopted a 60-day season and 2-fish bag limit.  Yet there are now some industry voices who are asking that the season be extended; they acknowledge that very few fish remain in the bays, but still want to be able to keep any flounder that they happen to catch in the ocean.

But everyone knows that the flounder stock has collapsed.  

What about others that still have legs, such as tautog (blackfish)?

The 1983 recap isn’t so valuable here, although it does mention that up in Long Island Sound, there was

“very good shoreline angling for tautog as well,”

which is something that we haven’t seen for a couple of decades.  However, as late as 1993, the fishing in the Sound and North Fork of Long Island appeared solid, with the November 18, 1993 issue reporting

“In Huntington…[one angler] had 30 tog to 9 pounds.  [Another angler] had 28 to 7 pounds…

“In Orient Point on the Prime Time III [party boat] the blackfishing has been excellent fishing also in the vicinity of Fishers Island.  Fish average 6 to 11 pounds!”

Even on the South Shore of Long Island, where the bottom tends to be flat, sandy and generally unattractive to tautog, fishing was quite a bit better 25 years ago. 

“on the Miss Captree  [party boat].  Thursday’s trip saw 250 to 300 tog to 8 ½ pounds taken with some fares counting 20 fish apiece…

“the Captain Joseph II [party boat] was enthused about the fine showing of blackfish on ocean reefs and wrecks this week.  Good numbers of impressive size fish were the rule on most weekday trips, with more than 100 fish topping the 5 pound mark.”

It’s just not like that on the South Shore anymore.

So the folks who showed up to oppose ASMFC’s Amendment 1 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Tautog a couple of years ago, and said that tautog fishing hadn’t headed downhill either had short memories of what good fishing was like, or was being a little less than honest in their comments.

Bluefish are an even better example of how the definition of “good fishing” has changed.  In the 1980s and ‘90s, the fish were everywhere, and many were large.  The July 4-10, 1985 issue of The Fisherman reported that, on the South Shore, there was

“an impressive run of bluefish situated in the vicinity of the Patchogue Grounds…Many of the fish fall into the 8 to 15 lb. range.

“[T]he Captree open boat Capt. Scotty 3 reporting very good bluefishing with plenty of choppers being taken both day and night.  Fish ranged from 4 to 6 and 8 to 13 lbs…Saturday night’s high hook was [an angler] with 37 blues.  [Two brothers] totaled 42 blues.    [One angler] finished the night with 35, while [another] counted 32 blues for his night’s efforts.”

Such fishing held up for many years.  The October 7, 1993 edition of the fishermen notes that windy weather made fishing difficult on the South Shore, but that in Long Island Sound

“blues can be found in any harbor, on any morning on bunker chunks…This action has been occurring from Greenwich to City Island.”

East of that,

“In Glen Cove…bluefish are every where and some nice size fish have been weighed in…

“In Huntington…reports that the biggest bluefish of the year are in town now…Live bunker is accounting for the larger fish while chunks will catch you all the blues your arms will handle…

“In East Northport…the fishing for blues in all the harbors was very good…

“From…Rocky Point comes the news from Charlie that the blues are all over the beach…

“In Mt. Sinai…the blues are every where…”

You get the idea.  There were a lot of bluefish around back then.  A lot more than anglers are finding these days.

Yet when the expected final operational stock assessment comes out later this month, and reveals that bluefish are overfished, you can expect plenty of resistance to enhanced regulations by people proclaiming that the stock is perfectly healthy.  They'll point toward a few concentrations in a few places to support their claims, forgetting that when the stock is truly healthy, the blues aren’t just abundant in a few places.  Instead, as The Fisherman noted, “the blues are every where.”

Offshore fisheries show the same pattern.  Bluefin tuna provide a good example.

We had a half-decent run off Long Island this year.  There were a lot of fish in the 100-200 pound range, some that were larger, and quite a few smaller, “school” fish.  Too many anglers who should have known better were talking about how good the bluefin tuna fishing was.

Yet, by historical standards, it wasn't really anything to write home about.  What does really good bluefin fishing look like?  The July 4-11, 1985 edition of The Fisherman provides an idea with the following reports from Montauk.

“A rundown of giant tuna action [at Star Island Yacht Club] this week includes…a giant of 641 pounds…a 564 pound tuna…a 436 pound giant [and a] 470 pound tuna…

“Montauk Marine Basin reported twelve giant tuna to 754 pounds weighed during the last week…

“at Captains Cove Marina…[an angler] caught tuna of 528, 530 and 502 pounds on three consecutive days…The ‘Hurry Up’ had three giant tuna during the week, largest 570 pounds….’Sea Doll’ caught his giant tuna, 597 pounds, on the boat’s shake-down trip.”

I could go on—that week’s report did—listing more big bluefin, along with school fish and the sort of 100-pound-plus tuna that people are catching this year.  The reality is that this year’s action, as fast as it was at times, was only a shadow of the sort of fishing that people experienced a few years ago.

Even that fishing was a step down from what anglers experienced in the late 1970s, when I caught my first bluefin—and bluefin were already less abundant during the ‘70s than they were a couple decades earlier, before they began being killed en masse for the Japanese market.

So yes, shifting baselines are real.  But if you tried to tell today’s fishermen that bluefin aren’t doing well, many would disagree.

And that’s very relevant to today’s fisheries debates.  While some species are probably doing better now than they were when Richard Nixon resigned—scup and black sea bass are two that come to mind—most stocks are not faring too well when viewed against their historic numbers.

That can be changed.  Fish stocks can be returned to the sort of abundance they enjoyed a few decades ago, before too many people and too much fishing effort, aided by developments in boats, gear, electronics and such, began to drive down fish populations.

Federally, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act provides a legal framework to properly conserve and manage fish stocks.  In many state-waters fisheries, where the legal requirements of Magnuson-Stevens do not apply, managers are still seeking the will and the courage to make the hard decisions needed to restore fish stocks.

Striped bass will be their next test.  Already, some people are turning their backs on the abundance of the past, and are trying to convince decisionmakers that the overfished stock is really still healthy, because a few pockets of relative abundance remain.

It would be unfortunate if they succeeded.

Tomorrow’s fishermen shouldn’t be deprived of healthy fish stocks simply because too many people believe, or at least claim to believe, that today’s fish populations represent typical and acceptable levels of abundance. 

They are entitled to the same quality fisheries that we enjoyed just a very few decades ago.