ANOTHER REASON WE NEED ABUNDANT FISH STOCKS

Fishing is a lot more enjoyable when there’s fish in the water.

That’s why, more than once, I and many others have writtenabout the need to manage recreationally important fish for abundance, and notmerely for the highest practical level of landings.  It seems a self-evident premise, and one that would be very hard to contest with a straight face, but over the years there have been people who've tried. 

Without exception, the naysayers have either belonged to those in the for-hire fishing community who still operate their business on last century’s paradigm of bringing as many dead fish as possible back to the dock, or they represent organizations or publications that receive significant membership or advertising revenues from such businesses. 

A typical example can be found on the website of The Fisherman magazine, which reported on a hearing held by the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife about a year ago.  The relevant part of the article read

“Abundance or access?  That became the gray area in the ensuing half-hour debate between those who wish to leave [the] Magnuson[-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act] as is, and those who believe that fluke, sea bass and red snapper in particular showcase the inherent problems with the way the federal fisheries law is written.

“In representing the upstart American Saltwater Guides Association, New York fly and light tackle guide, Capt. John McMurray, spoke for 5 minutes about the benefit of more conservative management of species like fluke and sea bass, and the need to ‘keep more fish in the water’ for increased abundance.

“According to McMurray, the ‘abundance’ of popular species such as summer flounder has resulted in improved access for anglers because fish can now be caught ‘with some consistency close to shore, in the bays, and even from the beaches and docks.’

“New Jersey’s Nick Cicero of the Folsom Corporation, a wholesale distributor and manufacturer of fishing tackle, followed with 5 minutes of testimony related to the local fishing community at home where he said, ‘Statistically, we’re losing anglers and recreational fishing businesses too.’

“A member of the board of directors of the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA), an advisor on the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) and a former professional captain himself, Cicero pointed to the 40% increase in fluke quota for 2019 where anglers saw ‘a zero net gain’ as prime example of the problem with Magnuson.

“’The true intent of Magnuson is clearly not being met,’ Cicero said in his testimony, adding ‘we’re no longer managing for sustainability, we’re managing for abundance and preservation, and it’s killing our recreational fishing community.’”

The House hearing was held, and the article written, in early May 2019, when anglers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic were looking forward to a new season, albeit a season that, in some ways wasn’t looking too promising. 

A benchmark stock assessment for striped bass and summer flounder had just been released.  It found that striped bass were both overfished and experiencing overfishing, conclusions that came as no surprise to striped bass anglers, who had been complaining about declining abundance, making fewer trips in response, for a few years.

The assessment found the summer flounder stock to be healthy and, as noted by Cicero at the House hearing, allowed a substantial increase in quota as a result.  But what Cicero didn’t say was that the assessment also found that recreational fishermen substantially overfished their allocation in 2018; thus, anglers received “a zero net gain” in landings in 2019, compared to the previous year, because of their earlier excess.  Had the flounder been less abundant, and had the quota not been increased, 2019 regulations would have been substantially tightened, to get recreational landings back under control.

Cicero also didn’t mention that the assessment noted that recruitment of new fish into the spawning stock had been below average since 2010, which caused a steady decline in the biomass and in angler interest.

For the past couple of years, anglers had also been complaining about an apparent decline in the number of bluefish; an operational stock assessment released in August 2019 showed that they, too, had become overfished.

A lack of abundance was already affecting our fishing last season.  Compared to 2015, summer flounder landings had fallen by 40 percent, striped bass landings by 30 percent and bluefish landings by about 6 percent.  And that was before COVID-19, when we were free to travel when and where we wanted, by foot, boat or car.  Marinas and launching ramps were open up and down the coast; party and charter boats sailed every day and on most nights.

Last year, people could go where the fish were, whether that meant running up to the Cape Cod Canal or out to Block Island for stripers, searching the coast for schools of blues, or running out to offshore wrecks, the shoals off Nantucket or the Rhode Island wind farm for big summer flounder.

This year, COVID-19 has severely limited our mobility.  With marinas shut down in some states, fishing and boating limited in others, and much of the for-hire fleet tied up at their docks, most anglers aren’t going to be able to follow the fish.  Instead, they’re going to have to rely on fish coming to them, in the inlets, in the bays and estuaries, and near the ocean beaches.

This is when the need for abundance becomes manifest.  

This is when Capt. John McMurray’s testimony, although scorned by that Fisherman writer, is shown to be true.  

Right now, when we can’t travel far, and perhaps can’t get out on the water at all, we need the kind of abundance that allows fish to be caught “with some consistency close to shore, in the bays, and even from the beaches and docks.”

Because if we aren’t able to catch them there, then until this crisis ends, most of us won’t be able to catch them at all.

Folks with more than a little gray in their hair will recall a time when, at this time of year, they could catch winter flounder without setting foot in a boat.  Although the boatmen did better, you could catch quite a few flounder from just about any pier, bulkhead or strip of shore that abutted an inshore waterway located between New Jersey and Maine.  Data from 1981 shows East Coast anglers taking home nearly 11.8 million shore-caught winter flounder that year.  Last year, that figure had dropped to less than 15,000, all caught in Maine, and even that estimate is so imprecise that it is effectively meaningless.

That’s one opportunity lost.

Fifty years ago, tautog (a/k/a “blackfish”) were readily caught from shore when they entered the shallows to spawn, and then spread out along rocky coastlines where they spent the summer.  But three of the four stocks of tautog are now overfished.  In response to such severely reduced abundance, some states, including New York, have closed or severely limited their summer seasons. 

That’s another fish lost to fishermen stuck on the shore during May and June.

And then there are striped bass and bluefish, the surfcasters’ standbys.  Sharp decreases in the abundance of both has severely reduced the encounter rate; in places where bluefish traditionally raided menhaden bunched up in the harbors just about every day, months can now pass without significant action.  Inshore striped bass blitzes, once a fixture of the fall striper coast, have grown rare in recent years.

Some people pooh-pooh such comments, and claim that there are plenty of bass and blues offshore.  But there’s no point even entering into that debate, because it ignores one basic fact:  The most important thing about real abundance is that when it occurs, fish expand their range.  

Maybe most of the bass and bluefish are further offshore (although I don’t believe that is true).  But even if that is the case, when fish are abundant, some of those fish will wander and, as Capt. McMurray averred, those wanderers will show up “with some consistency close to shore, in the bays, and even from the beaches and docks.”

With both stocks overfished, they are likely to be bunched up in small pockets of local abundance, and largely absent everywhere else.  With travel restricted, that means that most people, along most of the coast, are likely to see very few blues or bass this year.

Contrary to what the Fisherman piece would have you believe, anglers and fisheries managers don’t have to choose between abundance or access.  The truth, which The Fisherman tried to deny, is that abundance better ensures access for everyone.

Of course, when I say that, I’m defining “access” as the ability to get near and possibly catch a fish, while The Fisherman was defining “access” as the ability not only to catch a fish, but to kill it and keep it.

Yet even using that definition, The Fisherman’s premise is wrong.  Especially in times like these, abundance will be the key to catching fish. 

And you can’t keep a fish, take it home, or eat it, if you don’t catch it first.  

Abundance still matters.