THE STAGE IS SET FOR FEDERAL FORAGE FISH LEGISLATION

 

All fish are not created equal.

Some are large, swift pelagic predators, that traverse entire ocean basins over the course of their lives.  Others, smaller but still of substantial size, hunt the cloudy and fertile waters of estuaries and barrier lagoons, or the clear seas that wash over coral reefs and run in the channels between tropical flats.  Still other, smaller fish, the marine equivalent of foxes and martens and weasels, seek their prey in the shallows, the surf, and in open water, some using stealth, some using speed to hunt down their food.

And then there are other fish that overwhelm all the others in sheer abundance, small fish that move through the water in vast shimmering shoals, feeding on plankton and tiny free-swimming creatures, and fed upon, in turn, by everything else that lives in the sea.  They are the forage fish, the small fish that, by dint of their numbers, weave the sea’s food web into a coherent whole.

Forage fishes’ importance to ocean ecosystems was long ignored by fisheries managers.  Those that also supported important commercial fisheries, such as Atlantic herring, Atlantic mackerel, northern anchovy, Pacific sardine and, more recently, Atlantic menhaden, have been subject to fishery management plans, but such plans generally addressed forage fish only in a single-species, single-fishery context.  That is, the management plans attempted to keep landings at or below maximum sustainable yield, so that the stock could remain healthy enough to maintain landings levels over the long term.

However, such management plans were always focused on harvest, and on leaving just enough forage fish in the sea to maintain a sustainable harvest.  They took no account of forage fishes’ roles in the ecosystem, nor of the needs of a host of marine predators that might range in size from smaller Spanish mackerel to humpback whales.  And for those forage species that didn’t support significant commercial fisheries, there was generally no protections offered at all.

Slowly, that began to change.  Just a few years ago, both the Pacific Fishery Management Council and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council adopted fishery management measures designed to protect previously unmanaged stocks of forage fish.

 Just last August, the Atlantic Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, in a unanimous vote, decided to adopt ecosystem reference points that, for the first time, would limit menhaden landings to a level that would leave enough fish in the water to support the needs of coastal ecosystems, and not just enough to support the long-term profits of the menhaden industry.  And if the ASMFC, just two months later, walked back that decision a bit by setting 2021/22 harvest at levels likely to exceed the ecosystem-based fishing mortality target, they’ve still moved the ball forward a bit, reducing landings by 10 percent, which is a better than average performance for the ASMFC.

But now, the stars may finally be aligning in a way that will see federal forage fish legislation passed in the 117^th Congress.

Some such legislation has already been introduced in the 116^th.

On April 10, 2019, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) introduced H.R. 2236, the Forage Fish Conservation Act.  That bill would have, among other things, required the Scientific and Statistical Committee of each regional fishery management council to provide such council with ongoing scientific advice on

“maintaining a sufficient abundance, diversity, and localized distribution of forage fish populations to support their role in marine ecosystems.”

H.R. 2236 would also have required each regional fishery management council to

“develop a list of unmanaged forage fish occurring in the area under its authority and prohibit the development of any new directed forage fish fishery until the Council has considered the best scientific information available and evaluated the potential impacts of forage fish harvest on existing fisheries, fishing communities, and the marine ecosystem; determined whether conservation and management of the forage fish fishery is needed; if a determination is made that conservation and management is needed, prepared and submitted to the Secretary [of Commerce] a fishery management plan or amendment…; and received final, approved regulations from the Secretary…  [internal numbering deleted]”

On December 17, 2020, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced a Senate version of the Forage Fish Conservation Act, which is substantially similar to H.R. 2236.

With the 116^th Congress effectively over, neither bill is going anywhere this year.  But the fact that Sen. Blumenthal elected to introduce a forage fish bill so late in the session is a clear indication that he intends to champion forage fishes’ cause in the 117^th Congress, meaning that forage fish legislation will almost certainly get a thorough hearing, and may well achieve passage within the next two years.

An even better sign that forage fish will be on the next Congress’ agenda is the inclusion of a forage fish section, that reads very similarly to H.R. 2236, in Rep. Jared Huffman’s (D-CA) recently-released discussion draft for reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.  When the Chair of the relevant House subcommittee includes forage fish language in his Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill, it’s pretty certain that such language is being seriously considered.

But passing forage fish legislation will not be a slam dunk.

One of the biggest issues will be defining just what a forage fish is.  As everyone knows, big fish eat smaller fish, and even fairly good-sized fish will probably be eaten by something larger.  To a mako shark, bluefish and skipjack tuna are forage.  Blue marlin view yellowfin tuna the same way.  And anyone who has spent enough time fishing for bluefish tuna in the northeast knows that white sharks hang around the bluefin schools, and think nothing of grabbing a 200- or 300-pound tuna attached to an angler’s line.

Both H.R. 2236 and Sen. Blumenthal’s bill try to bring some rationality to the discussion by noting that

“While most species function as prey of others at some life stage, especially when small and young, forage fish maintain this important trophic role throughout their life.”

The bills then define “forage fish” as

“any fish that, throughout its life cycle, is at a low trophic level; contributes significantly to the diets of other fish, marine mammals or birds; and serves as a conduit for energy transfer to a higher trophic level; or any other fish specified as a forage fish for purposes of this paragraph in a fishery management plan or amendment that is transmitted by a Council and approved by the Secretary…”

Even though that definition provides some limits on what may be deemed to be a forage fish, and even though the bills further define “low trophic level” by saying

“The term ‘low trophic level’ means a position in the marine food web in which the fish generally consume plankton,”

the idea of forage fish management makes some fishermen nervous, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where pollock is considered an important forage species for the endangered Steller sea lion (even though some researchers argue that pollock provide so little nutrition that eating large quantities of them will do the sea lions more harm than good), but also supports the largest commercial fishery, gauged by the weight and value of the processed product, in the United States.

That being the case, it’s easy to understand why fishermen wouldn’t want Pacific pollock to be deemed a “forage fish” and managed on the basis of how many can be eaten by Steller sea lions, and rather than how many can be turned into pre-frozen fish sandwiches, fish sticks and such.

The bills try to get around the issue by saying that

“Forage fish are generally small to intermediate-sized species, occurring in schools or dense aggregations, and function as a main pathway for energy to flow from phyto- and zooplankton to higher trophic level predators such as tuna, Alaska pollock, and other wildlife, in marine ecosystems, [emphasis added]”

thus making it clear that Alaska pollock feed on forage fish, and are not forage fish themselves.

Whether such language will be enough to make the pollock fishermen happy remains to be seen.

And pollock fishermen are only one of the industries likely to oppose any forage fish bill.  

On the East Coast, there are companies that have invested millions of dollars in the boats and gear needed to engage in high-volume, low value fisheries for species such as Atlantic herring, which saw over 100 million pounds landed in 2017, at a price of roughly 25 cents per pound.  It’s not likely that participants in that fishery, or in fisheries for other high volume/low value species such as Atlantic mackerel (roughly 15 million pounds at about the same price) will stand by quietly while a portion of what had been their catch is allocated away from the commercial fishery and instead used to support populations of bluefin tuna, striped bass, and humpback whales.

Similar pushback will undoubtedly come from the Pacific coast, where sardines, anchovies, herring, and mackerel support other large-scale fisheries.

Forage fish legislation won’t be passed without a fight.  

Yet it is a fight worth having, for if forage fish—the animals that pass energy between the highest and lowest trophic level species, and so knit the food web together—are managed only for harvest, and not for their ecosystem values as well, the resultant risk to large predators, and the fisheries that depend upon them, could be very real.