FISHERIES MANAGEMENT: THE LIMITS OF TRADITION AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

Fisheries management is a science, and a very challenging discipline.  Dr. Michael Armstrong, of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, once reportedly said that

“Managing a fishery is like managing a forest, except it’s always night and the trees move.”

The problem is compounded by stakeholders who regularly challenge the validity of fisheries science, claiming that their observations of local fisheries, and the opinions they develop as a result, have greater validity than the conclusions biologists draw for their review of objective data.  

Even if fishermen concede that the scientists might, by chance, be right, needed regulations are often opposed on the grounds that they threaten “traditional” fisheries.

It might be hard to find a better example of both phenomena than the New England cod fishery, which has been devastated by overfishing, but which still sees fishermen fighting fishery management efforts with claims that the cod stock is in better condition than scientists believe, and with assertions that regulations are destroying New England’s centuries-long fishing tradition.

A recent article in The Guardian, titled “Can New England’s cod fishery survive?” examines both of those assertions and puts them in a rational perspective.

It notes that both fishermen and fisheries managers admit that the cod fishery is in trouble, but that they see different causes for the problems.

Fishermen tend to blame fisheries managers, and the regulations that they impose, as the major obstacle to a healthy fishery.  As the New York Times reported a few years ago,

“Some fishermen say they are seeing more cod in the Gulf of Maine than they have in years.  Many in Gloucester have already reached their quota for the fishing year that started in May and are looking to buy the rights to catch more from others who have not yet reached their federal limit.  Recreational fishermen, who land more than 30 percent of the total Gulf of Maine cod catch, are reporting similar observations.

“’I’m telling you, it’s out there,’ said Russell Sherman, who started fishing for cod in 1971 and has just about reached his annual allocation of 25,000 pounds.  ‘We’ve had no problem locating codfish.”

The fishermen honestly believe what they say, but their perception is biased.  The New York Times piece went on to say

“’Fishermen will almost always tell you that, and it’s not that they’re lying,’ said Mark Kurlansky, whose 1997 book, ‘Cod:  A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World,’ documented how Canada’s once-abundant Atlantic cod were fished almost to extinction.  ‘Landing a lot of fish can mean the fish are very plentiful, or it can mean the fishermen are very efficient in scooping up every last one of them.’”

The recent article in The Guardian adds an additional, and perhaps subtler, insight that supports Mr. Kurlansky’s comment.  It quotes Dr. Micah Dean, a biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

“’By most measures, cod in the Gulf of Maine are at a low point.  Many of our fishermen will tell you that they aren’t seeing this decline, and have a difficult time believing the scientific perspective on the cod stock,’ he says.

“’But there are good reasons why fishermen have this perspective.  Regulations shape the way fishermen see the cod population.’

“For instance, he notes that a high-minimum mesh size for trawls and gillnets lets most small cod escape from fishermen’s nets, which he argues prevents them from witnessing the alarming lack of juvenile recruitment.

“’In addition, there’s an extensive system of areas closed to fishing, many of which were designed to protect spawning cod.  This prevents fishermen from observing the lack of larger adult cod returning to the spawning grounds.’

“’Ultimately,’ he says, ‘we shouldn’t expect fishermen and scientists to see the same things, given the way each group observes the population.”

In other words, perception makes a big difference in how fishermen see the world.  That’s not true just in the case of cod, but of all other species as well.

Going back to Mr. Kurlansky’s comments, people who have been in the fishing business for a while, and have managed to survive all of its challenges, tend to be very good fishermen.  Part of being a good fishermen is knowing where fish are likely to be under varying conditions, and then fishing there, rather than in places where fish are unlikely to be.

Thus, a good fisherman can often bring back decent catches even when fishing is slow, by targeting the few concentrations of fish that remain.

Scientists see the world in a very different way.  If you’re a scientist, trying to create a valid model assessing a fish population, the empty spaces matter, particularly if they’re in places where fish used to be.  The beginning of the striped bass collapse in the 1970s is a case in point. 

It was clear from the Maryland juvenile striped bass survey that fewer young fish were entering the population.  The juvenile abundance index fell from a time series high of 30.52 in 1970 through about-average levels just over 11 in the next couple of years, then continued to decline through the 4s in the mid-‘70s before bottoming out at 1.22 in 1981.  Looking at those numbers, it was impossible not to see that the striped bass stock was headed for a crisis.

But very few fishermen were looking at those numbers.  They were cashing in on a bonanza of big striped bass spawned during the 1950s and ‘60s, fish so abundant that even inexperienced anglers had to do little more than swim a live menhaden or soak a chunk of dead bait in a reasonably “fishy” spot to connect with the largest striped bass of their lives.  

Experienced fishermen, both recreational and commercial, were doing far better than that.  Especially on Cape Cod and Block Island, where big fish were particularly abundant during that time, there were many anglers who refused to believe that the bass were facing any trouble at all. 

That's not atypical.  When biologists warn of a looming problem, fishermen’s first response is often skepticism.  

They’ll point to abundance in one or two places, and claim that all is well.  They'll argue that scientists are looking for fish in the wrong places, failing to understand that a valid survey must randomly sample the entire region, and not merely cherry pick a few "hot spots," as fishermen do.

At best, fishermen's views are based on subjective observations, and often include a big slice of confirmation bias that causes them to believe any information that supports their views, and reject any data that might force them to reconsider their favored position.  

We saw this in the black sea bass fishery, where fishermen were very willing to accept a stock assessment that indicated a biomass far in excess of the biomass target, and so, in their opinion, justified more liberal regulations, but rejected data that showed anglers’ landings already equaling or exceeding the recreational harvest limit, and so making such liberalization unfeasible.

Yet both sets of data came out of the same operational stock assessment, and the biomass estimate was based, in part, on recreational harvest; if that harvest was overestimated, then biomass would, of necessity, have to have been overestimated, too. 

But fishermen don’t think that way; they see abundance, so they want to land fish, and don’t often pay much attention to objective data that doesn’t confirm their observations.

While fishermen’s on-water observations can add color to systematically collected data, they will almost always be biased by the relatively limited spatial and temporal scope of a fisherman's activities, by fishermen’s tendency to fish where fish are most abundant, and by confirmation bias that leads fishermen to see what they want to see. 

Using such observations for anything more than fine-tuning management measures—say, beginning a season at a time when fish might bring a better price, or recreational demand is greater—or initiating new research will inevitably put fish stocks at risk.

When meaningful fishery management measures are imposed, and fishermen are unable to successfully challenge the science, their final fallback, which often finds a sympathetic ear among both politicians and the general public, is that regulations are destroying the fishing “tradition.”

Former Gloucester fisherman Sam Sanfilippo invokes such sentiments in his comments to The Guardian, when he says

“We’ve been regulated out of existence.  This used to be the biggest fishing community in the world.  Ice companies, wharves, fish dealers, truckers, supermarkets…All through high school, I was always a fisherman.  And here I am today:  recycler, bike seller, furniture-maker.

“I’m 50 years old and I don’t know what the hell I am.”

It’s a poignant statement, and it’s hard not to feel sympathetic to such fishermen’s fates.  A publication put out by Maine Sea Grant notes

“Fishermen indicated that fishing is part of their community’s social identity and this prevents them from giving up during hard times.  They find a source of resilience in the community’s history and dependence on fishing, and thus the importance of maintaining fishing traditions.”

Yet the problem remains that tradition is essentially backward-looking, and it’s hard to move successfully forward, into an increasingly complex and more populous world, when you’re constantly looking over your shoulder.  As Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson observed in the Guardian,

“there’s a painful thing that we have to realize:  traditions don’t scale.  That transition—where we have to give up some of our traditions because they don’t work any more—it’s painful.”

Yet it’s a pain that must be endured.  If fisheries, and the fishermen who depend on them, are to survive, fishermen and fisheries managers must stop looking at the past, and instead focus on the future.  

Recreating both commercial and recreational fisheries, and casting them into forms that are sustainable and robust enough to survive the challenges posed by climate change, science-based regulation, expanding populations and increasing demands on coastal resources, will be the only way that such activities will ultimately survive.

If either fishermen and managers fail to adapt to the times, fisheries will collapse.

For everyone, that would be the most painful event of all.