BLUEFISH OVERFISHED; MANAGEMENT CHANGES AHEAD

A year or two ago, I was picking up a few things in a local tackle shop when a fellow South Shore Marlin and Tuna Club member walked in.  We talked for a couple of minutes about various things, and then he commented that “I never thought I’d ever say this, but I think they’re going to have to start doing something about bluefish.  There are none around.”

There is already a bluefish management plan, of course, but its provisions are extremely lax:  No size limit, no season, and a 15-fish recreational bag.  And if anglers aren’t expected to catch their entire quota, some portion of that quota can be, and often is, transferred to the commercial sector.  Over the past few years, anglers throughout much of the northeast and mid-Atlantic have noted that bluefish have been hard to come by.  There are pockets of abundance, and times when fishing is hot, but in most places, at most times, the fish have been hard to come by.

That scarcity was underlined this summer, when some folks that I know out in Montauk were protecting the “secret” spot where they were able to reliably find some big blues, when the rest of the ocean was barren.

A midsummer bluefish drought at Montauk is a good sign that something is very wrong.

Now, a peer-reviewed operational stock assessment has confirmed that there is a problem.  It informs us that

“The bluefish stock was overfished and overfishing was not occurring in 2018 relative to the updated biological reference points.  Spawning stock biomass (SSB) was estimated to be 91,041 [metric tons] in 2018, about 46% of the updated biomass target reference point SSB_MSY proxy=SSB_35%=198,717 [metric tons], and 92% of the SSB_threshold=99,359 [metric tons]…Fishing mortality on the fully selected age 2 fish was 0.146 in 2018, 80% of the updated fishing mortality threshold reference point F_MSY proxy=F_35%=0.183…Recruitment over the last decade has been below the time series average [of 46 million age 0 fish], except for 2013 where recruitment was 48 million fish.  [emphasis added, internal references deleted]”

The question is, what happens next?

In the long term, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council will have to develop a rebuilding plan, that will restore bluefish abundance to the target level within ten years.  That will almost certainly require some reductions in commercial and recreational landings although what those reductions will be haven’t yet been determined.

Undoubtedly, there will be a lot of push back from the usual voices, who claim that all the bluefish are offshore (maybe partying with the also overfished striped bass, which such folks also claim are hanging out in the EEZ these days), or vacationing off Africa (yes, I really heard something like that at a meeting called by the Mid-Atlantic Council here in New York) or being devoured by mako sharks, which have recently been offered some very modest protections (heard that one at the same meeting).

Others will just say it’s just “the cycle,” and that no remedial measures are needed.

Fortunately, all that will amount to nothing but meaningless noise, because the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act clearly says

“The Secretary shall report annually to the Congress and the Councils on the status of fisheries within each Council’s geographical area of authority and identify those fisheries that are overfished or approaching a condition of being overfished…

“If the Secretary determines at any time that a fishery is overfished, the Secretary shall immediately notify the appropriate Council and request that action be taken to end overfishing in the fishery and to implement conservation and management measures to rebuild affected stocks of fish…

“Within 2 years after an identification [of an overfished stock] or notification [that a stock is overfished or likely to become overfished] the appropriate Council (or the Secretary [in the case of highly migratory fisheries]) shall prepare and implement a fishery management plan, plan amendment, or proposed regulations for the fishery to which the identification or notice applies—to end overfishing immediately in the fishery and to rebuild affected stocks of fish; or to prevent overfishing from occurring in the fishery whenever such fishery is identified as approaching an overfished condition.  [emphasis added; internal numbering omitted]”  

The law’s use of the word “shall” takes away all discretion from the Councils, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Secretary of Commerce.  If a stock is found to be overfished, as is the case with bluefish, NMFS shall initiate a rebuilding plan.  If it fails to do so, it will likely be sued, and compelled to act by the courts, no matter how many uninformed people claim that such plan isn’t needed.

The Mid-Atlantic Council has already indicated that a rebuilding plan will be created, saying that

“The results of the bluefish operational assessment indicate that the stock is overfished with overfishing not occurring.  Following official Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office notice of the overfished status, the Council will have to initiate a bluefish rebuilding plan within two years.”

We’re unlikely to see regulations arising out of a bluefish rebuilding plan before 2022, and it could take longer than that if the Council drags its feet.  So what a lot of people are curious about is what the short-term impacts of the operational assessment will be.

From what we can see right now, those impacts will be significant.

Bluefish, like striped bass, are primarily a sport fish.  While they can be and are eaten, most anglers prefer to release most or all of their catch, to maintain stock abundance and hopefully catch them multiple times, rather than tossing their blues in a cooler and immediately removing them from the population.  That means that a large proportion of the recreational fishing mortality is attributable to fish that don’t survive release, rather than fish that are intentionally killed.

Fishery managers estimate that about 15% of bluefish die after release.  In the past, that percentage was applied across all size ranges of fish.  However, because anglers tend to keep the smaller bluefish, while releasing larger individuals, managers believe that such a simple approach does not accurately reflect the poundage of bluefish that are lost to release mortality, although it does reflect the number of fish lost.  And because the recreational bluefish allocation in calculated in pounds, rather than in numbers of fish, it’s poundage that matters.

Thus, beginning with the 2020 fishing year, managers will use a different approach to estimate the quantity of fish lost to release mortality.  As a result, the estimate of recreational release mortality will be much higher than in previous years, and that’s going to have a big impact on the size of the recreational harvest limit, which will be substantially smaller than in was in 2019.

This year, the recreational catch target was 18.11 million pounds.  An estimated 2.49 million pounds in release mortality was subtracted from that, resulting in total allowable recreational landings of 15.62 million pounds.  Managers didn’t expect anglers to catch their entire quota, so 4 million pounds was transferred to the commercial sector, leaving a recreational harvest limit of 11.62 million pounds.

Next year, if the Bluefish Monitoring Committee’s recommendation is followed, the recreational catch target will be lowered to 13.51 million pounds, to account for the worsening state of the stock.  At the same time, the release mortality estimate was increased to 9.9 million pounds to account for the fact that it is usually the larger blues that are released.  The result is a total allowable recreational landings limit of just 3.62 million pounds; because anglers are expected to catch that entire amount, there will be no transfer of fish to the commercial sector, resulting in a recreational harvest limit that, while equal to the allowable recreational landings, is roughly 30 percent of the 2019 recreational quota (note that these numbers might change just a bit, depending on whether the Mid-Atlantic Council decides to go with annual catch limits that change every year, or whether they choose a constant catch strategy that averages out annual landings, but either way, they’re in the ballpark).

The commercial sector will face a similar cutback.  In 2019, the commercial quota, boosted by the transfer from the recreational sector, was 7.71 million pounds.  In 2020, it will fall to 2.77 million pounds.  And the commercial sector should be happy that it won’t fall any lower, for while anglers will see a substantial number of fish deducted from their annual catch target to account for release mortality, there is no accounting for discard mortality in the commercial calculation.

That’s right:  The official level of discard mortality in the commercial bluefish fishery is precisely zero.

That estimate is clearly wrong, given that many states govern their commercial bluefish fishery with daily trip limits, and further given that gill nets are one of the most common gear types that commercial bluefishermen employ.  A combination of trip limits and gill nets will inevitably lead to some level of dead discards, a level that could be very high when the fish are locally abundant.

That’s one thing that needs to be fixed in any future amendment to the management plan.

So it looks like both commercial and recreational fishermen are going to be landing fewer bluefish next year, and probably for quite a few years going forward.

Until the Mid-Atlantic Council makes a final decision on how it will set the recreational harvest limit—averaged, or year-by-year—and until the recreational landings for 2019 can better be estimated, it’s impossible to guess what next year’s regulations will look like, although it’s fair to say that either a season, size limit or smaller bag limit, and maybe all three, will result.

The good news is that the updated data has put an end to the transfer of “unused” recreational quota to the commercial sector, and should put a stake through the heart of the pending Allocation Amendment, which threatened to permanently reallocate such unused quota from recreational to commercial fishermen.  Now, the entire recreational quota will, in all likelihood, be landed.  If the Allocation Amendment survives in any form, it will probably just be as a tool to adjust commercial allocations among the coastal states.

The Allocation Amendment could also be broadened to include the new rebuilding plan, and thus kill two birds with one stone.

And with any luck, if the Allocation Amendment survives, it could be a vehicle that introduces a whole new concept to the federal fishery management system, at least in the New England and Mid-Atlantic fisheries.  That’s the notion that fish don’t have to be killed to be used, and that managing a recreational fishery primarily (but not exclusively) for catch-and-release—something that is already accepted in freshwater fisheries for everything from brook trout to muskellunge—is just as viable as managing it for yield.

Should that occur, then the current bad news for bluefish may morph into some very good news for the long-term abundance of our coastal fish stocks.