THE MARINE RECREATIONAL INFORMATION PROGRAM IN THE MID-ATLANTIC

The Marine Recreational Information Program, better known as MRIP, is many salt water fishermen’s favorite whipping boy.  It’s a matter of killing the messenger:  MRIP data often tells anglers things that they don’t want to know, and thus it is deemed to be bad.

MRIP has also inherited the stigma of its predecessor, the infamous Marine Recreational Fishing Statistical Survey, or “MRFSS,” which really was a flawed program, that had its flaws only made worse by the way in which it was used.

MRFSS was originally designed to reveal broad trends in coastal recreational fisheries.  And it did a pretty fair job of revealing long-term, coastwide trends in recreational effort and landings of various species, despite the many biases that, scientists learned to their dismay, were inherent in that survey’s design.

But it was completely unsuited for state-by-state quota management of recreational fisheries, and when it was used for that—because managers lacked any better tool—its shortcomings quickly became obvious.  A 2006 National Academy of Sciences study report, Review of Recreational Fisheries Survey Methods, advised that

“Both the telephone and access components of [MRFSS] have serious flaws in design or implementation and use inadequate analysis methods that need to be addressed immediately.”

Those who called the MRFSS “fatally flawed” had some technical justification for their comments.

However, MRIP is an entirely different animal, that was thoughtfully created from the ground up to address the flaws cited in the 2006 study.  When the National Academy took a look at MRIP a few years ago, its comments were generally favorable. 

Its report, Review of the Marine Recreational Information Program, which was released early in 2017, stated that

“Work to redesign the National Marine Fisheries Service’s recreational fishery survey program (now called the Marine Recreational Information Program) has yielded impressive progress over the past decade in providing more reliable data to fishery managers.  Major improvements to the statistical soundness of the survey designs were achieved by reducing sources of bias and increasing sampling efficiency as well as through increased coordination with partners and engagement of professional consultants.”

“…The methodologies associated with the current Fishing Effort Survey, including the address-based sampling mail survey design, are major improvements from the original Coastal Household Telephone Survey that employed random-digit dialing to contact anglers.  [emphasis added]”

“…The new Access Point Angler Intercept Survey design (used to interview anglers and record their catch) is a substantial improvement on the MRFSS intercept survey methodologies.”

So it looks as if the folks at the National Academy—in this case, eight PhD-level scientists and statisticians, along with a high-level specialist from the Pacific Fishery Management Council—believe that the MRIP survey is, if not perfect, a solid fishery management tool.

And that’s an important thing to know if you have anything to do with fish governed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, where recent operational stock assessments of bluefish and black sea bass relied heavily on MRIP estimates; a third operational assessment for scup was less reliant on MRIP, but the 2020 scup fishery will nonetheless be impacted by MRIP results.

In all three cases, updated MRIP data, driven by the new mail-based Fishing Effort Survey, which the National Academy found to constitute “major improvements from the old Coastal Households Telephone Survey,” revealed that anglers are fishing more, and catching far more fish, than previously believed.

That revelation should be seen as good news, because it provides fishery managers with better data on which to base their decisions.  When included in fishery scientists’ virtual population analyses, it also shows that fish are more abundant than previously believed, and that they can sustain higher landings levels than those that had been governing the fisheries.

However, many in the angling industry have been dismayed by the new data, because it also shows that recreational landings have often been far above sustainable harvest levels, and that cutbacks may be required.

As a result, many in the industry have been quick to condemn the new MRIP estimates.  Some said that they had no faith in the revised recreational landings estimates, and reportedly called them

“inaccurate and fundamentally flawed,”

descriptions that might have applied to MRFSS, but not to the new MRIP numbers.

Others said that the data was

“unbelievable.”

Many also said that they had

“no trust”

in the revised estimates; apparently, without giving any consideration to the statistical principles and testing underlying the changes, they merely argued that the data wasn’t trustworthy because if estimates could be revised once, they can be revised again.

Without exception, the criticisms of the revised MRIP data was neither sophisticated nor based on any sort of statistics or science.  That isn’t too surprising, since unlike the National Academy members who endorsed the current MRIP approach, the critics were not statisticians, and none had earned PhDs or other advanced degrees.  It’s pretty safe to say that the education of some—perhaps most—of them ended at high school, and that they couldn’t create—or analyze—a statistical model if their life depended on it (something that is true for most of us, although most of us are wise enough to admit to our ignorance and depend on people with the skill and knowledge to get the job done).

For the most part, the critics were people who were either a part of, or otherwise represented, the recreational fishing industry, who recognized that the new MRIP data could have a negative impact on short-term profits.

And that was more than enough to render such estimates bad—at least in their view—for neither science nor sophistication would help their bank accounts grow over the next couple of years.

From the standpoint of current income, the revised MRIP numbers brought mostly bad news.

The most benign outcome, from that perspective, came with summer flounder, where the new MRIP figures were included in a benchmark stock assessment released early this year.  When new recreational catch estimates were added to the other data in that benchmark assessment, managers understood that the summer flounder stock was larger than previously believed, and that the target and threshold fishing mortality rates could be increased without harming the stock.  

At the same time, because anglers had been landing far more summer flounder than managers had believed, recreational regulations couldn’t be relaxed, even though the recreational harvest limit was substantially increased; landings and stock size were already in balance.

As a result, the recreational harvest limit already adopted for next season will remain in place.  According to MRIP data just released today, 2019 summer flounder landings between March and August—a period that reflects most of the landings coastwide—are just slightly below landings for 2018, so the chance of regulations remaining unchanged next year is also fairly high.

That’s probably not the case for bluefish, black sea bass or scup.

As things stand now, black sea bass might see the least change going into next year.  The operational assessment indicated that the stock is currently very abundant—at around 240% of the target level—but that the population is declining, and recent recruitment of new fish into the stock hasn’t been high enough to reverse that trend at any time soon.  Still, the findings of the operational assessment will allow a substantial increase in the 2020 recreational harvest limit. 

Unfortunately, that increase won't be large enough to bring the harvest limit in balance with the new estimate of recreational landings; if 2019 regulations equal those of 2018, 2020 regulations will have to be tightened enough to reduce those landings by 30%.  So far—through the end of August—2019 black sea bass landings are about 92% of last year’s landings, so much will depend on what happens in September and October, when most of the remaining recreational harvest is usually landed.  

If landings during those months equal those during the same periond in 2018, when such landings were proportionately larger than they are in most years, anglers will still be looking at substantial cuts.  If September/October landings fall back to a more typical share of the annual harvest, the cutbacks might not be too bad—assuming that landings remain low for the rest of 2019.  Unusually high harvest during November/December, as supposedly happened in 2016 and 2017, could completely upend that picture.

The recreational scup fishery shares many of the same features as does the black sea bass fishery—a very healthy but declining stock, and recreational landings that are predicted to be higher than the 2020 recreational harvest limit—but it also has its own quirks.  

Those quirks include an allocation slantedsharply toward the commercial sector, which never lands anything close to itsentire quota, meaning that, if the National Marine Fisheries Service can find away to transfer unused commercial quota to the recreational side, anglers’increased landings provide no problems at all—but if no transfer is made, based on 2018 landings, anglers are looking at something like a 50-percent-plus reduction in harvest, and some truly restrictive rules that aren’t really justified by the health of the stock. 

Given that, so far, 2019 scup landings seem to be running ahead of landings in 2018, without any quota transfer, the 2020 cuts—and the 2020 landings—could be even more severe than predicted.

But even given the scup situation, it’s bluefish that will probably be hit the hardest.  The operational assessment found them to be overfished; if any solace could be found at all, it could be found in the fact that anglers didn’t overfish in 2018, as they had in previous years.  But that seems to be a one-year phenomenon, for so far in 2019, anglers have landed about 50% more bluefish than they did last year.  Thus, unless landings tank for the rest of 2019, we’re likely to see some very restrictive regulations emerge from the joint Mid-Atlantic Council/ASMFC Bluefish Management Board meeting in December.

Given that, it’s understandable why there’s a lot of wishful thinking going on, by people who desperately want the new MRIP estimates to be wrong. 

But science and statistics are not on their side.  And wishful thinking does not constitute a coherent fishery management policy.

In the long run, they might be thankful for that.  Because as I wrote a week ago, the recreational catch estimates were recalculated back to 1981, a period that includes the years used to determine the recreational/commercial allocation of a number of important Mid-Atlantic species.  The Mid-Atlantic Council and ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board has embarked on a new amendment which might end up changing current allocations to match what recreational and commercial fishermen were actually catching during the years when allocations were set.

That means that the same MRIP numbers that some members of the recreational community are cursing now may end up giving them more fish—in the case of scup, significantly more fish—than they are allowed to catch today.

Which led to an interesting dance at the last Council meeting, when at least one Council member who has made a second career out of condemning MRFSS and later MRIP had to find a way to support the reallocation amendment, and ended up making statements that while he could never support a management action—including reallocation—based solely on MRIP, he supported amendment.

Which at this point, although perhaps not in the future, is based solely on MRIP.

That leads to the most important point.

Data that is collected in a statistically valid matter—as the National Academy tells us the MRIP data is—can be neither good nor bad.  It is simply data, and part of the puzzle that fishery mangers put together every time they need to determine the health of a stock, or the need for new management measures.

Sometimes that data will bring good news.  Sometimes the news will be bad.

But killing the messenger, and impugning MRIP when it brings bad news, is never the right response.  At least not unless there is statistically valid, peer-reviewed data that is at least as compelling as that reviewed in the 2017 National Academy report.

The right response is to do what the data suggests is needed for the long-term health of fish stocks.

Anything else is not merely the wrong response, it is the irresponsible one.