IS REALLOCATION THE SOLUTION TO PROBLEMS AT THE MID-ATLANTIC FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL?

I’ve written about it before:  I hate allocation issues, and avoid them whenever I can.

Fights over who gets what share of the fish are always long, bitter, divisive and, all too often, completely unproductive, when after months—sometimes years—of debate, everyone ends up about where they originally started.

I’ve long believed that, instead of commercial and recreational fishermen wasting time fighting over who gets the biggest slice of an already too-small pie, it makes more sense for everyone to work together to make the pie bigger, so that everyone can get what they need, even if what they get isn’t everything that they might want.

But every now and then, a situation arises that justifies looking at reallocation not merely from the usual selfish view, but as a real answer to a fisheries problem, or to correct a true error that has been perpetuated for far too many years.

That sort of situation arose at the October joint meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board, when they looked at the question of the recreational harvest limit for scup in upcoming years.

It turns out that the scup population remains very healthy.  It produced the largest year class on record in 2015, and even though recruitment over the ensuing three years was below average, the spawning stock biomass still stood at about 200 percent of the target level at the end of 2018 and, although it has been declining since then, is still likely to stand at about 175 percent of target at the end of 2020.

In addition, 78% of the scup catch is allocated to the commercial fishery, which has repeatedly failed to come close to landing its entire quota.  In recent years, the commercial fishery has caught between 55 and 84% of its quota, with the high occurring in 2017, followed by the low one year later.

For years, it appeared that recreational fishermen didn’t catch their entire quota, either; for the period 2014-2018, their catch ranged from 63 to 98 percent of their quota.  Their high point occurred, like the commercial high, in 2017, although the low occurred three years earlier.  In 2018, managers believed that about 76 percent of the recreational allocation was caught.

But when the operational stock assessment came out earlier this year, it appeared that the earlier estimates of recreational catch were very wrong.  Once the data was revised in accordance with a new and improved methodology being used to estimate recreational fishing effort, it turned out that anglers had caught far more scup than previously believed.  The estimate of 2018 landings, for example, increased from 5.61 million to 12.98 million pounds.

And the Mid-Atlantic Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, which sets the Allowable Biological Catch for scup each year, set that ABC at either 35.77 million pounds for 2020 (and 30.67 million pounds in 2021), or at 33.22 million pounds, if the Council decided to carry the 2020 ABC over into 2021. 

That spelled trouble for anglers, because 22 percent of 35.7 million pounds—even if discards are taken out of the equation—is a lot less than 12.98 million pounds.  In fact, it’s little more than half of that figure.

Which means that some very severe restrictions would have to be put in place to get landings down to the 2020 recreational harvest limit of 6.51 million pounds.

Cuts of that magnitude would have been controversial even if they were biologically necessary.  In this case, the controversy will be even worse, and with some justification, because while constraining the recreational landings to 6.51 million pounds, and imposing what could be truly Draconian restrictions on recreational landings, is required by the current management plan, such measures are not necessary to prevent overfishing the stock.

Remember, that 78 percent of the scup catch is allocated to the commercial sector.  And that the commercial sector has historically left between 15 and 45 percent of its catch uncaught.  So the recreational overage would, more than likely, be completely offset by the fish that the commercial boats leave in the water.

From a biological standpoint, there is no reason to address the recreational overage by transferring uncaught commercial fish to the recreational sector’s quota.

However, from a procedural standpoint, that’s far easier to say than to do.

The summer flounder, scup and black sea bass management plan contains no provision permitting such an inter-sector transfer.  And it does not list inter-sector transfers as one of the management actions that can be addressed in a so-called “framework,” a simpler management action that is far easier, and faster, to impose than a full plan amendment.

Thus, it appears that anglers may be facing severe scup restrictions in 2020 because of bureaucratic, rather than biological, imperatives.

Yet all is not yet lost.

The folks at the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office understand the problem, and don’t want to cause unnecessary harm to recreational fishermen or to the recreational fishing industry.  Over the next couple of months, they will be working with the Mid-Atlantic Council and the ASMFC to figure out if there is any way to satisfy both the legal requirements for management action and the needs of the recreational fishing community.

Hopefully, by the time the Council and the ASMFC meet again in December, the Regional Office will have found a solution that will get everyone through the 2020 fishing year.

At the same time, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is working on a long-term solution that will prevent this sort of problem from arising again.  Last Wednesday, the Council, by a vote of 13 to 4, and the Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board, by a vote of 10-1, decided to initiate work on an amendment to reconsider the recreational/commercial allocations of summer flounder, scup and black sea bass.

Scup clearly present the most compelling case, given that anglers are clearly demonstrating a need for a larger quota, while the commercial sector is unable to catch its entire quota.  

Or perhaps “unable” is the wrong word; “unwilling” would be closer to the truth.  Because the truth is, the supply of scup far outstrips the demand, and if the commercial fleet brought more scup to market, the price would drop through the floor. 

Even at current harvest levels, the fish demand a relatively low price.   According to the National Marine Fisheries Service website, in 2017, here in New York, black sea bass sold for an average ex vessel price of $3.67 per pound, and summer flounder for $4.88; scup, on the other hand, brought just 72 cents.  

At that price, the commercial demand for scup isn’t likely to grow much at any time soon.

So a reallocation of the unused commercial scup allocation to the recreational sector would very much fit the requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act’s National Standard 4, which requires that allocations that assign harvest privileges among fishermen are

“fair and equitable to all such fishermen.”

It’s hard to imagine anything more fair and equitable than allocating fish away from fishermen who don’t catch them—and don’t seem to want to—and allocating them to fishermen who will (it should be noted here that the scup fishery, whether recreational or commercial, is essentially a “meat” fishery, where fish are caught primarily for consumption; allocation considerations can be very different in the case of recreational fisheries such as bluefish and striped bass, where the catch, not the consumption, of fish is the primary purpose of most anglers).

But there is another argument that favors reallocation, and it goes beyond simple fairness, to the very text of the fishery management plans.

The commercial/recreational allocations weren’t just snatched out of the air.  They were determined with reference to “base years,” a period of time before allocations were set, and before any quotas were established for the fisheries.  By looking back at such base years, managers could determine the natural proportion of fish caught by each sector, before any restrictions on landings could warp that relationship.

The commercial/recreational allocation for scup was established in 1996, and was based on catch (not landings) during the years 1988-1992.  At the time, managers believed that, during those years, commercial fishermen caught 78 percent of the scup, while anglers caught the remaining 22 percent.

Now, the revised recreational catch estimates tell us that wasn’t true, and that anglers actually caught 35 percent of the scup during those years.  If the respective commercial and recreational catch during those base years are truly the determinant used to set allocations, the recreational scup allocation should be increased to 35%.

It seems that history and equity both demand that the scup allocation be revisited—and that a reallocation be adopted to make the current recreational management issue go away.

A similar historical situation exists, if to a lesser degree, with summer flounder and black sea bass.

The summer flounder allocation, which is currently 40 percent recreational and 60 percent commercial, is based on landings in the years 1981-1989; applying the revised recreational landings estimates to those years would result in the recreational share being increased to 45 percent.  The current 51 percent recreational share of the black sea bass fishery was based on landings during the years 1983-1992; it increases to a 55 percent share if the revised recreational figures are used.

The new omnibus amendment will determine whether adopting the revised recreational catch and landings estimates, or perhaps adopting some other revised allocation, is the right thing to do.  Anglers familiar with how reallocation efforts usually turn out might doubt that this effort will yield any different results, but at this point, I think that there are reasons for hope.

Michael Luisi, a fisheries manager from Maryland who chairs both the Mid-Atlantic Council and the ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board, said that he considers the amendment

“a high priority,”

while Michael Pentony, NMFS’ Regional Administrator, announced that

“We view this as an urgent issue.”

So there is plenty of reason to believe that reallocation could happen and that it could happen relatively soon.

Of course, “soon,” when it comes to any government action, still takes a while.  The best estimates are that an omnibus allocation amendment could be produced, if all goes well, in about two years.

Still, given that it would be addressing allocations that date back two or three decades, two years isn’t that long to wait.  

In the meantime, we can hope that the Regional Office will come up with something to address the scup problems before we start fishing next year.

I’m going to be optimistic, and bet that they’ll get it done.

Yes, I know that sort of optimism runs against my basic nature.  So does getting involved in allocation fights.

But sometimes, breaking out of your usual rut can be justified.

I think, and very much hope, that this is one of those times.