STOCKS AREN'T OVERFISHED, THE FISH JUST WENT OFFSHORE

Some things never change, and are constant wherever you go.

In the fisheries management arena, one of those constants is the oft-heard claim that fish stocks, despite undoubted signs of scarcity, are doing just fine.  Despite peer-reviewed stock assessments that show long-term overfishing, and reveal that a population is badly overfished, when the time comes to turn things around, there are always a legion of fishermen who oppose new regulations, and earnestly argue that fish aren’t less abundant, but just moved somewhere else, where people can't currently find them.

That’s been a common refrain in the northeast for as long as managers have been trying to rebuild fish stocks, but if it’s any consolation to anglers in New England and the mid-Atlantic, it’s not just a local phenomenon.  Most recently, the same “the fish are just fine” sort of comment cropped up in Louisiana, with respect to its speckled trout stock.

“Speckled trout,” to those not familiar with fish in the Gulf of Mexico, are more properly called “spotted seatrout,”—Cynoscion nebulosis, to be technically precise—and are a close relative of our northern weakfish.  In the United States, the species’ primary range extends from the Chesapeake Bay to southern Texas, although it’s not unheard-of for fish to be caught farther north, in Delaware and southern New Jersey.  Despite that broad range, speckled trout are essentially homebodies, and do not engage in long coastwise migrations; instead, they tend to move inshore when waters warm, then retreat to deeper water, or to the ocean, when inshore waters grow cold.

Thus, state regulations can have a big impact on speckled trout abundance.

And down in Louisiana, speckled trout aren’t abundant anymore.

That’s hardly a new revelation.  Back in 2016, I wrote a blog about the decline of speckled trout in both Louisiana and Mississippi, which quoted a Louisiana biologist who admitted that the state speckled trout regulations

“are designed to maximize angler yield while not putting the stock into a condition where we may see recruitment overfishing.”

But even as he said that, it appeared that Louisiana regulations were leading to growth overfishing, with very few of the oldest, largest and most fecund females managing to survive.  Things had reached the point where one fishing guide complained that

“On an average day, we’re throwing back between 50 and 150 fish [that fail to meet the state’s 12-inch minimum size].  My theory is that the fish aren’t getting a chance to grow up.  The minute they hit 12 inches, they’re getting killed.”

Three and a half years ago, the spawning potential of Louisiana’s speckled trout population had fallen to just 10 percent of that of an unfished stock, and well below the state’s spawning potential target of 18 percent.  Louisiana managers admitted that they

“walk a tightrope between getting full public use out of a renewable resource and harming a fishery at least in the short term.”

In other words, they manage speckled trout for an abundance of fish in folks’ coolers, instead of an abundance of fish in the Gulf, bays and bayous.  

They do that by maintaining a bag limit of 25 fish and a 12-inch minimum size (in a few areas of the state, the bag limit drops to 15 fish, only two of which may be more than 25 inches long).  

To provide some context, neighboring Mississippi has a 15-fish bag and 15-inch minimum size, while Texas, Louisiana’s neighbor to the west, only allows its anglers to keep 5 speckled trout per day, and not only has a 15-inch minimum size, but restricts recreational fisherman to just 1 fish per day measuring 25 inches or more.

Louisiana’s speckled trout regulations were—and remain—the most generous on the coast; while such generous regulations were good for filling coolers with trout, they were also very good for stripping trout from the water.  Now, the state has a real problem.

This summer, Louisiana fisheries managers announced that the speckled trout stock has been overfished since 2014, that overfishing has occurred in six of the past ten years, that both the spawning stock biomass and the number of female trout three or more years old are at the lowest levels on record, that recreational landings are the lowest in thirty years, and that fishing pressure continues to mount. 

In response, those managers are proposing a number of possible regulatory changes, which could include a smaller bag limit, higher minimum size, closed areas, closed seasons, and special, more restrictive regulations after severe winters, as speckled trout are susceptible to winter kill if the water gets too cold.  Managers warned that

“changes would need to be significant and likely controversial.”

So no one should be too surprised to learn that one Louisiana outdoor writer has recently asked

“Is overfishing really the cause of Louisiana’s speckled trout decline?”

and instead suggests that the population is fine, but that the fish have decided to go somewhere else.   At that point, he breaks into his own version of the same old song that we in the northeast have heard so many times, in relation to striped bass, bluefish and any other species of fish that falls on hard times.

First, of course, he takes the obligatory shots at responsible management and the conservation community, saying

“I predicted this day was coming in a column that I wrote for The Times-Picayune less than three years ago, and as I stated then, the regulation tightening is more politically motivated than biological.  Some extreme environmental groups HATE the fact that Louisiana’s regulations are so liberal and have been fighting hard behind the scenes to get them changed.”

It seems that wherever you happen to be, some fishermen, writers, and industry reps, who question the need for regulations, will try to impeach the integrity of managers and the management process, while also trying to paint anyone with conservation concerns as an “extreme environmentalist” and so compromise their credibility.  

Unnamed “extreme environmental groups” are one of the favorite boogeymen of the anti-regulation crowd, who love to invoke the shadowy threats that such groups purportedly pose, but aren't so fond of identifying the "extreme" groups in question, perhaps—just perhaps—because they don’t even exist in a relevant fisheries context.

Reading a little farther, one learns that the reason that speckled trout seem scarce in Lousisiana relates to heavy rains in the Mississippi basin, which led to legitimately catastrophic flooding on the Louisiana coast last year.  The writer argues that

“freshwater is GREAT for trout populations in general.  Juvenile specks thrive in the stuff, but when the fish get to be sexually mature, which is right about the time they reach harvestable size, they seek salty water to spawn.  If everything close to the coast is too fresh, they keep going until they find what they need.

“That’s particularly true of the really big sows that we all love to catch.  As a speckled trout ages, its osmoregulatory system degrades, and its ability to tolerate freshwater decreases.

“That necessarily means that the fish are farther out and more difficult to locate, so angler success is lower.  What’s also true is that there aren’t as many in the areas that biologists sample with gill nets.  So anglers are bringing fewer fish to the docks and scientists are netting fewer, so there appears to be a problem that may not actually exist.”

On it’s face, it’s not a completely implausible argument.  There has been a lot of rain in the Mississippi Basin over the past decade or so, and 2019 was an extremely severe flood year.  

But that doesn't "necessarily" mean that the fish moved offshore in response.  Such a conclusion rests on the questionable assumption that "the fish," and particularly "the really big sows" exist.  The writer in question supplied zero data in support of that assumption.  He's more or less just wishing and hoping that it might be true.

On the other hand, Louisiana fisheries managers, who are just as aware of local rainfall patterns as such writer, and have reams of data at their fingertips as well, don't seem to be blaming the missing speckled trout on rainfall.  They seem to think that there’s a real problem, and are basing that view on facts and hard data, and not on mere speculation. 

In view of the data that they have on hand, it seems more than a little far-fatched to suggest that Lousisiana fisheries managers are “politically motivated” to tighten regulations, due to pressure from some yet-unnamed “extreme environmental groups.” 

Bu there's a difference between an idea that's far-fetched and one that is out out of the ordinary.  

In the mid-Atlantic, we're hearing similar comments now that bluefish have been deemed overfished, as members of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Bluefish Advisory Panel claim that the stock’s health is fine, but the bluefish

“were…further offshore and not available to anglers that typically target them.”

And at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, an ill-informed federal legislature has castigated members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Advisory panel for following the scientific advice in a recent benchmark stock assessment which found that bass were both overfished and experiencing overfishing; writing

“…the ASMFC used flawed data that measures the Atlantic Striped Bass stock based on the entire eastern seaboard, yet failed to account for Atlantic Striped Bass outside of the 3-mile fishing area, assuming fish abide by arbitrary bureaucratic boundaries…”

There is a pattern here.

When people catch too many fish, whatever the species, fish begin to get scarce.  Responsible fisheries managers conduct stock assessments and, if the stock is found to be overfished, adopt regulations to fix the problem.

But some people in the fishing community want regulations to constrain their catch.  So instead of supporting the science, they make up stories to support their position that fish are abundant, but have just moved offshore, where no one can find them.

The stock assessments, and the resulting regulations, are supported by data and based on peer-reviewed science.

The stories that fish moved offshore are supported by other stories--if they're supported at all.

The best way to resolve such conflict is to follow the science, put restrictions in place, and see whether the fish “move back inshore” in a couple of years.

In such event, I strongly suspect that they will.