"ALTERNATIVE" FISHERIES MANAGEMENT MEASURES: A NEW APPROACH?

The Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic regional fishery management councils have announced their intent to convene a Joint Council Workgroup on Section 102:  Fishery Management Measures of the Modernizing Recreational Fishery Management Act of 2018.

For those with short memories, or who somehow escaped all of the “Modern Fish Act” propaganda that was being slung around by the angling industry, boating industry and their “anglers’ rights” cronies a few years ago, the idea of “alternative management” was originally based on abandoning the current method of managing recreational fisheries in federal waters. 

Proponents of such alternative management wished to replace the current management system, which employs science-based annual catch limits, holds anglers accountable when they overfish, and has helped end overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks on every coast of the United States, with a system similar to that employed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which is based on “soft” fishing mortality targets (that may or may not reflect the scientific advice), does not hold anglers accountable if they overfish, does not require the timely rebuilding of overfished stocks, has never rebuilt and then maintained at healthy levels even a single stock under its sole jurisdiction, and has resulted in nearly twice as many stocks under ASMFC’s sole management being considered overfished/depleted compared to those that are considered rebuilt/sustainable.

The alternative management manifesto first appeared in A Vision for Managing America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries, a report penned by a so-called “Commission on Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Management” that was hand-picked by the fishing and boatbuilding industries, chaired by a pair of industry insiders and issued under the aegis of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

Such report argued that

“The [National Marine Fisheries Service] should manage recreational fisheries based on long-term harvest rates, not strictly on poundage-based quotas.  This strategy has been successfully used by fisheries managers in the Atlantic striped bass fishery, which is the most sought-after recreational saltwater fishery the nation.  By managing the recreational sector based on harvest rate as opposed to a poundage-based quota, managers have been able to provide predictability in regulations while also sustaining a healthy population.”

Unfortunately, such alternative management, based on long-term harvest rates and not annual quotas, just doesn’t work.  

The best evidence of that may be that striped bass management, held out as perhaps the best example of alternative management measures, has failed.  A recent benchmark stock assessment has found that striped bass are now both overfished and experiencing overfishing.

When the Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act passed in the waning days of the 115^th Congress, it did contain language explicitly granting NMFS and the regional fishery management councils

“authority to use fishery management measures in a recreational fishery (or the recreational component of a mixed-use fishery) in developing a fishery management plan, plan amendment, or proposed regulations, such as extraction rates, fishing mortality targets, harvest control rules, or traditional or cultural practices of native communities in such fishery or fishery component.”

However, there were enough wise heads in Congress, and particularly in the Senate, to assure that the final version of that Act also contained language that read

“Nothing in this Act shall be construed as modifying the requirements of sections 301(a), 302(h)(6), 303(a)(15), or 304(e) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (16 U.S.C. 1851(a), 1852(h)(6), 1853(a)(15), and 1854(e)), or the equal application of such requirements and other standards and requirements under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (16 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.) to commercial, charter, and recreational fisheries, including each component of mixed-use fisheries.”

Thanks to that final provision, Magnuson-Stevens’ prohibition on overfishing, as well as its requirements that annual catch limits be established for each managed fishery, that fishermen be held accountable for exceeding such annual catch limits, and that overfished stocks be rebuilt within a time certain were all preserved, even as applied to recreational fisheries.

Thus, it’s going to be interesting to see where the Joint Council Workgroup goes.

It’s possible to argue that there’s no need to go anywhere at all.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has issued guidelines intended to assist regional fishery management councils meet their obligations under National Standard 1, which reads

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.”

While such guidelines do not have the force of law, they are still a very good determinant of what a regional fishery management council may or may not do when constructing a management measure.  And when you take a look at those guidelines, you find that they already permit the use of control rules, fishing mortality targets, indicator species (when managing a stock complex rather than an individual stock), and other “alternative” management measures, provided, however, that the management measures used must provide “measurable and objective” data that will permit NMFS to determine whether overfishing is occurring.

Based on such guidelines, it’s easy to argue that section 102 of the Modern Fish Act didn’t really change anything at all.  

But perhaps it's better to argue that the phrase "alternative management measures" encompasses a far broader range of concepts than just fishing mortality targets and control rules.

When it meets on May 18, the Joint Council Workgroup won’t only be looking at the law.  They’ll also look at the transcript of a Council Coordinating Committee meeting that was held last November, where alternative management was discussed, and at discussionsheld at the 2018 Recreational Fishing Summit.  Both of those sources include a much more expansive discussion of the "alternative management" issue; in both cases, it wasn’t annual catch limits or accountability that people objected to.  Instead, they questioned things like the lack of timely data that might let managers be more responsive to changing fishery conditions, and to a one-size-fits-all approach that focuses management efforts on maximizing landings, and ignores the value of fish left in the sea.

Chris Horton, from the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, described it this way in his comments to the Council Coordinating Committee:

“And for…a predominantly recreational fishery, even if you’re managing to [maximum sustainable yield], more towards MSY, with hard-poundage quotas, if there was some way that you could adjust the [annual catch limit] based on a predetermined framework so that you had some measure, some index of abundance come into population like discards or release data on any given year and all of a sudden you see this bump come up because there’s so many more fish come in the fishery that we missed, is there a way to adjust the [annual catch limit] based on, again, another framework for that following year to respond to what you’re seeing on the water rather than waiting for the next dock [sic] assessment to go out because anglers are going to be catching more fish.

“Is managing to something like that going to require different data sets beyond what MRIP provides, no doubt.  Absolutely will…”

Trying to figure out what sort of data that might be, as opposed to figure out how to derive some a new way to manage recreational landings, would probably be a good direction for the Joint Council Workgroup to take.

One data source that constantly comes up is electronic reporting by anglers, but when that issue came up at the Council Coordinating Committee, Mr. Horton responded

“Right now, we really don’t trust recreational anglers, just honestly, and a lot of areas don’t necessarily trust Federal fisheries management.

“And I know some of them think, and I’ve had this discussion that went on, well, if we don’t report, well then it doesn’t show that we’re catching as many fish and we’ll be able to fish longer…”

The same issue came up at the Recreational Summit, and received the same general response, although what most fishermen don’t realize is that by not reporting their catch, they’re actually making the stock look like it might be headed for trouble, and paving the way for more restrictive regulations.

Another issue that was raised at both the Council Coordinating Committee and at the Recreational Summit was managing recreational fish not merely for harvest, but for the opportunities provided by fish left in the water.  Again quoting Mr. Horton,

“Some examples of [Optimum Yield] to the extreme could probably be found with Kingfish in the Gulf of Mexico and Bluefish in the Atlantic.  Where we’re leaving a lot of fish in the water, yes.  And there’s talk about shifting some of that quota back over to the commercial side because the rec side is not catching them.  But I can assure you that there is a lot of value to leaving those fish in the water…

“…I mean, what’s the value of those kingfish we leave in the water.  We’ll argue that there’s absolutely significant value to that.  That we will fill our boats, and we will buy tackle and we will go try to catch those fish that are still left in the water.  And again, not necessarily to harvest, but to have that option to harvest if we want…”

If the Joint Council Workgroup wants to investigate managing for abundance, for keeping more fish in the water rather than putting more fish on the dock, they’d be spending time on something worthwhile.

Thus, there are reasons to believe that the new effort to consider “alternative” management measures may prove to be far more valuable than the original effort, initiated by the "Vision" report, that would have merely allowed anglers to avoid poundage-based catch limits and extend rebuilding times. 

Over time, the concept of “alternative management measures” has evolved away from merely shifting the conservation burden off anglers' shoulders, and toward an effort to develop better streams of data, and to manage at least some recreational species for abundance rather than yield.

If that’s where the Joint Council Workgroup decides to head, it has a chance of prodicing a real breakthrough in recreational fisheries management.  Let us hope that it does.