STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7--NAVIGATING THE PID: PART V, RELEASE MORTALITY, REGIONAL MANAGEMENT, AND A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS

This final installment of my five-part series on the Public Information Document for Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (PID) will take a look at a few unrelated aspects of the PID, each of which is important, but none of which require a long enough discussion to warrant an entire edition of One Angler’s Voyage.  We’ll start with the one that has been getting the most attention:  recreational release mortality.

Dead is dead (Issue 7:  Recreational Release Mortality)

As most readers know, before beginning to draft the PID, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board created a so-called “Work Group,” and tasked it with making some broad recommendations about the issues that should be addressed in the proposed Amendment 7 to the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan.

The Work Group’s report was released ahead of the Management Board’s August 2020 meeting, and many striped bass anglers were probably surprised when it revealed that

“Multiple members of the [Work Group] indicated that recreational dead discards may be the single most important issue at this time, and addressing (or reducing discards) is [sic] the most important action that can be taken going forward.  Many [Work Group] members pointed to the fact that recreational discards accounted for just under 50% of the fishing mortality as basis for the critical need to address this issue.  Others noted that, particularly in states with primarily catch and release fisheries, the Board is running out of ways to control removals in the fishery.”

Let’s think about that paragraph for a minute, because it probably says a lot more about the mindset of some, perhaps even most, Work Group members than it does about the problems currently afflicting the striped bass stock.

First and foremost, we must never forget that the striped bass stock is now overfished.  Because of that, to me, and to most striped bass fishermen, “the single most important issue at this time,” and “the most important action that can be taken going forward” is rebuilding the female spawning stock biomass to the target level.

Reducing recreational release mortality is certainly one step toward achieving that goal.  But reducing recreational landings, reducing commercial landings, and reducing commercial discards, which collectively account for greater fishing mortality than recreational releases, would also greatly facilitate rebuilding.

Even if we just looked at landings, we see that recreational landings, which account for 42% of striped bass mortality, and commercial landings, which account for 8%, result in fully 50% of all striped bass killed, a bit more than can be blamed on recreational releases.  Based on that alone, it would seem that reducing striped bass landings should be at least as important an issue as reducing release mortality.

But that’s clearly not how the Management Board sees things.

Its original draft of Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, which was supposed to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, had only a 50% probability of achieving that goal.  And the Management Board was so fixated on maintaining landings at as high a level as possible, particularly in New Jersey and Maryland, that the version of Addendum VI that it finally adopted has a 58% probability of failure.

Yet somehow, according to the Work Group, recreational release mortality is the problem.  The higher level of mortality resulting from recreational and commercial landings apparently isn’t viewed as a problem at all.

Perhaps that’s why the Work Group came up with the puzzling statement that “in states with primarily catch and release fisheries, the Board is running out of ways to control removals.”

First of all, all states’ striped bass fisheries are primarily catch and release.  While the precise numbers change from year to year and from state to state, Marine Recreational Information Program data shows that for the years 2015-2019 (reliable 2020 data isn’t available thanks to COVID-19), anglers in every state released more than 80% of the bass that they caught.  The lowest release rate was, not surprisingly, in New Jersey, where anglers still returned 81% of their bass to the water.  The only other states with release rates under 90% were Maryland and New York, where only 89% of all striped bass states were let go.

Thus, trying to distinguish states with “primarily catch and release fisheries” from other jurisdictions is an effort to find a distinction that doesn’t really exist.  

Yes, catch and release may be more intensely practiced in New England, where release rates run from 95% (Massachusetts) to nearly 99% (Maine), but with the over-all release rate approximating 92%, all state recreational striped bass fisheries are primarily catch and release fisheries.

In fact, the estimated mortality rate of recreationally-released striped bass, 9%, is fairly low, lower than the release mortality rate for other recreationally-important species such as bluefish (15%), summer flounder (10%), scup (15%), or black sea bass (15%).  Yet, because anglers catch a lot of striped bass, and because the striped bass fishery is primarily a recreational, catch-and-release fishery, that 9%, spread out over millions of fish, eventually adds up to a big number.

But the fact that the number is big doesn’t mean that it’s bad.  One out of approximately every eleven striped bass released, one bass dies.  So does every bass that an angler puts in a cooler.  From a biological perspective, every dead striped bass is the same.

Dead fish don’t contribute to the spawning stock.  Whether they are intentionally killed and eaten, intentionally killed and eventually dumped after spending too long in the freezer, or die after being released, a dead bass is a dead bass.

Biologically, no death is somehow “better” than another.  

Yet to most fisheries managers, reducing mortality from the catch-and-release fishery, in order to increase permissible landings, is somehow a more important endeavor than reducing landings in order to provide greater abundance for the catch-and-release fishermen.  It is a pro-harvest bias that’s very apparent on the Management Board, but it makes little sense, for if the striped bass stock was managed for maximum economic return, it would be managed for the greatest abundance, not for the highest possible yields.

The relationship between abundance and recreational fishing effort, and so economic benefits from the fishery, is clear.  In 1985, when the stock was collapsed and rebuilding had just gotten underway, Atlantic Coast anglers took about 1.3 million directed striped bass trips.  Just one decade later, when the stock was declared rebuilt, that number increased tenfold, to 13 million trips.  Spawning stock biomass peaked in 2003, when 22 million directed striped bass trips were taken.  Abundance then began to decline, although there were still enough bass, particularly larger bass, around to keep angler interest high; recreational effort didn’t peak until 2008, with 26 million directed trips.

But after that, the decline in striped bass abundance disuaded anglers from fishing.  2012 trips fell to 2003 levels, and fell farther, to 17 million trips, in 2017.  That declined to a little under 16 million trips in 2019, when the stock was declared to be overfished.

In the context of managing for renewed abundance, and maximum economic benefit, rather than for yield, the Work Group’s comment that “the Board is running out of ways to control removals in the fishery” is patently untrue.  

Removals could be reduced by narrowing the current 28- to 35-inch slot; if a 30- to 35-inch slot were in place for 2021, it would have offered more protection to the upcoming 2015 year class, and certainly reduced landings.  A 35-inch minimum size, rejected in Addendum VI, would also probably reduce removals.  So would seasons, although they would also limit angler effort, and should be seen as a last resort.

But the bottom line is that managers still have multiple options for further limiting removals, if that’s what they decide to do.

As sportsmen and conservationists, we have an obligation to try to minimize release mortality.  Good release practices, the use of adequate tackle, and not using J-hooks when fishing with bait are all means to achieve that goal.  However, the most important issue in striped bass management today is rebuilding the stock, and to do that, fishing mortality from all sources, including but not limited to recreational release mortality, must be reduced, to or below the target level.  But recreational fishing mortality poses no more threat to the bass than does recreational and commercial landings.

A bridge too far (Issue 5:  Regional Management)

The PID asks

“Should separate regional management programs be pursued for the Chesapeake Bay and the ocean region, which includes the Delaware Bay/Hudson River stock complex?”

The most recent benchmarks stock assessment answers that question with a resounding "No!", saying

“the [peer review panel] concluded that the two stock model was not acceptable to serve as a basis for fishery management advice.’

It’s not that managing striped bass on a stock-by-stock basis is impossible, or a bad idea, or will never be done.  Biologists recently completed a comprehensive DNA study on the composition of the striped bass population, and identified six genetically distinct groups of fish between Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence and North Carolina.  The basis for regional management is being developed.

However, scientists still lack a reliable, peer-reviewed population model that will allow them to manage striped bass regionally.  Perhaps such a model will be developed in time for the next benchmark assessment, which we’ll probably see in 2025.  Perhaps it will take a little longer to put one together. 

Right now we just don’t know.

But what we do know is that no such model currently exists. 

Thus, the management measures contained in Amendment 7 should not be allowed to outrun the best available science.  Once a reliable regional stock assessment model has been designed and passes peer review, the Management Board might consider regional management.  Until the science underlying a regional management approach has been developed, reviewed and found adequate, regional management should not be considered viable, and a regional management approach should not be a part of Amendment 7.

Final thoughts on the PID

The Management Board’s sole reason for being is to conserve and manage the striped bass stock.  Thus, maintaining the long-term health and sustainability of that stock must be the Management Board's overriding priority, and eclips all other concerns.

Prioritizing management stability and flexibility is not consistent with the Management Board’s primary obligation to the public and to the striped bass resource. 

While management stability is a desirable objective, it must yield to concerns about the health of the stock; efforts to maintain stability must never compromise, to any degree, the sustainability of the resource.  The marine environment is inherently unstable, and in a constant state of flux.  The Management Board must at all times stand ready to adjust management measures in response to such changing conditions and the changing needs of the striped bass.

In all cases, the resource must come first.

Because it doesn't, in any way, benefit the striped bass resource, “flexibility,” which serves as a euphemism for inaction and/or undermining the effectiveness of needed management measures, is anathema to good striped bass management.  

Contrasting the success of the notoriously “inflexible” federal fishery management system with the ASMFC’s long track record of failure, overfishing, and overfished stocks provides more than ample evidence that flexibility is a bad idea.

As it moves forward with Amendment 7, the Management Board must achieve one task above all:  Rebuild the female spawning stock biomass to the current target level, and do so within no more than ten years.

Doing anything else would amount to nothing less than a dereliction of the Management Board’s duties to the public and the resource, and would represent just one more failure to be laid at the door of the ASMFC.

STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7--NAVIGATING THE PID: PART IV, CONSERVATION EQUIVALENCY AND ANGLER ACCOUNTABILITY

In the last three editions of One Angler’s Voyage, I dealt with what might generally be considered the biological aspects of the Public Information Document for Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.  Today, I’ll address two blatantly political aspects of the PID:  Issue 6, Management Program Equivalency (Conservation Equivalency) and Issue 8, Recreational Accountability.

I’m grouping the two topics together, because both are political issues that can best be summed up as ways that individual states, and an individual sector, can escape the full burden of their conservation responsibilities under the management plan, and push those burdens onto the shoulders of other states, or onto the striped bass stock itself.

Let’s start with conservation equivalency, the practice of allowing states to adopt regulations that differ from those adopted by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, but theoretically have the same conservation impacts on the managed stock.

The ASMFC’s most recent position on the use of conservation can be found in its publication Conservation Equivalency:  Policy and Technical Guidance Document, which tells us that “conservation equivalency” includes

“Actions taken by a state which differ from the specific requirements of the [fishery management plan], but which achieve the same quantified level of conservation for the resource under management.  One example can be, various combinations of size limits, gear restrictions, and season length can be demonstrated to achieve the same targeted level of fishing mortality.  The appropriate Management Board/Section will determine conservation equivalency.  [emphasis added]”

In theory, that sounds reasonable.  But the same publication also tells us that

“In practice, the ASMFC frequently uses the term “conservation equivalency” in different ways depending on the language included in the plan.”

That difference between theory and practice has already hurt the striped bass.  While both the ASMFC’s Charter and its guidance document refer to conservation equivalency measures that “achieve the same quantifiable level of conservation for the resource under management,” the PID reveals the other face of conservation equivalency which arises, “in practice,” when conservation equivalency isn’t used to achieve the same level of conservation for the resource through alternative management measures, but instead uses alternative regulations to seek the same level of harvest reduction for all states’ fishermen.

When it employs conservation equivalency in that manner, the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board weakens the overall effectiveness of its own management measures, and makes it less likely that such measures will adequately address the problems faced by the striped bass.  We saw that in the recent adoption of Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan which, because of conservation equivalency proposals adopted by New Jersey and Maryland, has only a 42 percent probability of achieving its management goal; such a high likelihood of failure would be legally impermissible for federal fishery managers, but isn’t given a second thought at the ASMFC.

As veteran Management Board member, and long-time conservation advocate, Dennis Abbott, the legislative proxy from New Hampshire, observed at the Management Board’s August 2019 meeting,

“Many anglers through the years have expressed to me and others the strong displeasure with varying regulations.

“Its disparity is principally due to the generous application of conservation equivalency.  I may be wrong, but I don’t know of any conservation equivalency application that isn’t really intended to increase mortality of striped bass.  In my many years in the State Legislature, I always held the belief that when one is advantaged someone else is going to be disadvantaged.

“We’re here today in part because some of us have been advantaged, and we’re all here to pay the piper…  [emphasis added]”

Conservation equivalency, when used for political and/or socioeconomic, rather than biological, reasons, can only hurt the striped bass stock.  But even when used as it was originally intended, to allow states to adopt alternative regulations that supposedly have the same conservation impact as those adopted by the Management Board, it is a flawed concept.

A big reason for that can be attributed to the ASMFC’s attachment to one of the three “themes” of the PID, management stability, in a natural environment where the only true constant is change.  

Conservation equivalent regulations try to freeze time, assuming that the striped bass population will look the same in the future as it did in the year upon which the supposedly “equivalent” regulations were based.

To see why that doesn't work in the real world, we can look at a real-world example, Maryland recreational regulations in 2015. 

Pursuant to Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, Maryland anglers were expected to reduce their striped bass fishing mortality by 20.5 percent, compared to 2012.  Maryland anglers primarily fish on little striped bass, with most of their harvest composed of immature fish that haven’t yet had a chance to contribute to the spawning stock.  In 2012, the Maryland size limit was 18 inches, and the fork length of the vast majority of the fish landed fell between 17 and 21 inches.  That would be roughly equivalent to 3- and 4-year old bass, from the 2008 and 2009 year classes.

Both of those year classes were below average.  The Maryland juvenile abundance index for 2008 was 3.20, and for 2009 it was 7.87, both well below the long-term average of 11.7.  So in constructing its conservation equivalency program, Maryland adopted a 20-inch minimum size, which would theoretically reduce its landings by 20.5 percent compared to 2012.

But the Chesapeake Bay striped bass population in 2015, when the new conservation-equivalent rules took effect, looked nothing like it did in 2012.

There had been a big year class produced in 2011; the Maryland juvenile abundance index was 34.58, three times the long-term average.  By 2015, those 2011 bass were four years old; that was reflected in Maryland’s landings, which were dominated by 20- to 22-inch (fork length) fish.  Because of the flood of 2011 bass into the fishery, Maryland not only failed to reduce recreational landings to approximately 570,000 bass, as contemplated by Addendum IV, but instead increased such landings substantially, to 1.1 million fish in 2015, 1.5 million in 2016, 1.1 million in 2017, 1.0 million in 2018, and a little under 0.8 million in 2019, the last year when Addendum IV was in force.

Not only did Maryland never achieve the reductions contemplated by Addendum IV, but length frequencies show that much of the harvest during the peak years came from excessive removals of the 2011 year class, the same year class that Addendum IV was intended to protect.

But the Management Board, consistent in its desire for “management stability,” did nothing to reduce Maryland’s landings.

That brings us to conservation equivalency’s companion topic:  recreational accountability.

While most the striped bass management plan places hard quotas on the commercial fishery, and even requires pound-for-pound paybacks when those quotas are exceeded, it places no such constraints on the recreational sector.  As the Maryland example demonstrates, anglers are managed only by a “soft” fishing mortality target, and face no consequences for exceeding such target, even if such overharvest continues for years.

That doesn’t help to maintain fish stocks at sustainable levels, particularly in the case of stocks which, like striped bass, see the overwhelming majority of fishing mortality generated by the recreational sector.  It undoubtedly contributes to the fact that, in sharp contrast to federal fishery managers, the ASMFC has failed to successfully rebuild a single stock of fish that is under its sole jurisdiction, and then maintain such stock at sustainable levels over the long term.

There are many keys to federal fishery managers’ success, all of which are probably contrary to the PID’s themes of “management stability” and “flexibility.”  Pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, federal fisheries managers must base their actions on the best available science, prevent overfishing, promptly rebuild overfished stocks, set annual catch limits for each managed species, and hold fishermen accountable when those limits are exceeded.

So long as the ASMFC and its Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board are more concerned with management stability and flexibility, and in addressing the short-term socioeconomic concerns of a handful of stakeholders, than it is with rebuilding fish stocks and maintaining sustainability in the long term, its track record of failure will probably extend far into the future.

Thus, it’s refreshing to see that the PID raises the issue of recreational accountability, and asks

“Should the Board consider implementing [a recreational harvest limit] for recreational striped bass management?”

If we really want to maintain the long-term health and stability of the striped bass stock in the long term, the answer to that question is yes.  But, as always, the devil is in the details, with the states most addicted to conservation equivalency most opposed to being held accountable when their supposedly “equivalent” regulations don’t work.

The biggest obstacle to recreational accountability is the inherent level of uncertainty in the Marine Recreational Information Program; there is always some level of error in any survey, and MRIP is no exception.  Even a manager such as Rhode Island’s Jason McNamee, who generally favors the concept of recreational accountability, has expressed concerns about how such error ought to be treated, saying at the Management Board’s February 2020 meeting that

“I really like the concept, but this is not a trivial decision…what we’re talking about, in the case of striped bass, is accountability to a statistical sampling program, specifically MRIP.  I think that would be an extremely difficult situation to put a state in, and that would be to hold them accountable to a point estimate from a statistical survey.”

However, given that MRIP's level of uncertainty, expressed as "percent standard error" or "PSE," is generally tied to the number of anglers sampled—the more samples, the lower the level of error—the problem of holding states accountable to MRIP point estimates is one that can be addressed.

When striped bass harvest data is collected for the combined Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, the PSE for the last five pre-COVID years—2015-2019—ranges from 6.8 to 9.9, which is certainly low enough for accountability purposes.  Such accountability, for the states that adhere to the Management Board’s recommended management measures and didn’t seek state-specific conservation equivalency, should be collective.  That is, compliance with the fishing mortality target would be calculated on a coastwide, and not on a state-by-state basis. 

Under such an arrangement, if anglers exceeded the coastwide fishing mortality target, then the Management Board would be expected to adopt more restrictive coastwide regulations to get such mortality under control; regulations would not be changed on a state-by-state basis.  

While such an approach would seem to fly in the face of the PID's theme of “management stability,” both stability and the required level of conservation could be achieved by setting, in addition to a recreational harvest limit, a recreational harvest target as well.  Based on the PSEs described above, a target, set 10 percent below the recreational harvest limit would prevent uncertainty from impacting regulations, while still protecting the bass from excessive harvest.

The approach would be different for states that opt for conservation equivalency, for they should be held accountable at the state level where the uncertainty in the MRIP data is substantially greater.  The PSE for New Jersey, one of the biggest beneficiaries of conservation-equivalent measures, during the period 2015-2019 ran between 14.0 and 25.6.  It’s understandable why New Jersey would not want to be held accountable for landings based on those numbers.

Yet such a position comes with a substantial share of hypocricy, as New Jersey has no problem seeking conservation-equivalent regulations based on such uncertain estimates.  Pursuant to Addendum VI, conservation equivalency was based on landings in 2017, when New Jersey's PSE was a whopping 24.9.  

I have not yet heard the state make a cogent argument as to why such uncertain MRIP estimates might appropriately be used to grant it a special advantage, compared to other states in the fishery, but are not appropriate for holding New Jersey accountableif its landings exceed the predicted level.

States opting for conservation equivalency should also be held accountable if their “conservation equivalent” regulations prove, in practice, not equivalent at all.

Thus, with respect to Issue 6, Management Program Equivalency, Amendment 7 should require that any proposed conservation equivalent measure “achieve the same quantifiable level of conservation for the resource under management,” and not merely address the differing impact of coastwide measures on individual states.  Conservation equivalency should only be used to address biological issues (e.g., the size of fish available in nursery areas such as the Hudson and Delaware rivers, and the Chesapeake Bay) rather than a state’s preference for a different bag limit, size limit, or season.

With respect to Issue 8, Recreational Accountability, a recreational harvest limit and, ideally, a recreational harvest target, should be established in the management plan, and anglers should be held accountable for exceeding such limits.  States that adopt the recommended coastwide management measures should be held accountable on a collective, coastwide basis, not individually.  However, states that deem their MRIP estimates accurate enough to serve as the basis for conservation equivalent measures should be held accountable, at the state level, should those measures fail to achieve the intended level of conservation for the striped bass resource.

Such an approach would end the current anarchic approach to conservation management, which allows states to adopt measures that weaken the overall impact of the fishery management plan, and suffer no consequences when such measures prove to be inadequate.

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In the next edition of One Angler’s Voyage, I’ll wander a short distance away from biology and politics, and address a philosophical issue:  Should Amendment 7 specifically address recreational release mortality and, if so, how should that be done?

 

 

 

 

 

STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7--NAVIGATING THE PID: PART III, MANAGEMENT TRIGGERS AND REBUILDING TIMELINES

In the last two editions of One Angler’s Voyage, I discussed a couple of issues raised by the Public Information Document for Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (PID), the proper Goals and Objectives for the striped bass management plan, and the biological reference points needed to achieve them.

In today’s blog, we’ll look at the third face of that issue:  When fishing mortality begins rising too high, and/or the spawning stock biomass falls too low, how should managers respond?

I’m going to begin that inquiry with an observation:  Fish can do well without fishermen, but fishermen, and fishing industries, can’t survive without fish.  

Maintaining the long-term health and sustainability of the striped bass stock ought to be the first priority of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Committee’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board.  While the Management Board can reasonably try to avoid unnecessarily inconveniencing the recreational and commercial fishing industries, it should never compromise the needs of the striped bass stock in its efforts to do so.

Fishery managers must always remember that Mother Nature doesn’t—and can’t—compromise.  The striped bass’ biological needs are just that—needs—and the stock cannot thrive if those needs aren’t met.

A management strategy that slows, but does not halt, the decline of the stock, in order to accommodate the short-term economic concerns of stakeholders, is a strategy that is destined to fail in the long term.  Stocks can’t be overfished back to health.  The failure to rebuild a stock when rebuilding is called for, in order to placate the fishing industry, only sets up both the stock and the stock-dependent industry for hard times the next time the bass faces adverse conditions on the spawning grounds and/or in the sea.

With that in mind, let’s look at the management triggers.  The current triggers, contained in Amendment 6 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, address three different issues:  fishing mortality, female spawning stock biomass, and the recruitment of new fish into the population. 

Of the three, fishing mortality is by far the most important, in part because controlling fishing mortality is directly related to maintaining the spawning stock biomass at acceptable levels, and in part because it is the only one of the three factors that the Management Board can directly control.

The last benchmark stock assessment notes that if female spawning stock biomass is to be maintained at its target level, fishing mortality must be constrained to its target level as well.  Yet, while fishing at or below the target fishing mortality level might be necessary to achieve the biomass target, that’s not the whole story.  Striped bass abundance is dependent upon two completely unrelated factors.  One is the number of fish being removed from the stock; that’s where fishing mortality comes in.  The other is the number of new fishing recruited into the stock, and fishing mortality doesn't affect that at all.

Many anglers think that if the spawning stock biomass is high, the number of juvenile bass produced by those females each year will be high, too.  That’s not how things work.  There is no clear relationship between the size of the spawning stock and spawning success.  

Biologists measure such stock-recruit relationship with a parameter they call “steepness,” which is

“a ratio of 2 recruitment levels:  the recruitment obtained when the spawning stock is at 20% of its [unfished] level, and the recruitment at the [unfished] level.”

The higher the number obtained by dividing the number of fish recruited into a stock fished down to just 20 percent of its unfished level by the number of fish recruited into an unfished stock, the less that spawning success is dependent upon the size of the spawning stock.

The model used to produce the most recent benchmark stock assessment for bass used a steepness value of 1, which assumes that there is no stock-recruitment relationship at all.

Normally, that would be good news, because it would mean that striped bass were a very resilient species, that could be quickly rebuilt even if spawning stock biomass fell to very low numbers.  Unfortunately, in the case of striped bass, that resilience is tempered, and even controlled, by another, external factor:  Weather.

In my last blog, I quoted Dr. Michael Armstrong, Assistant Director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, who noted during an American Sportfishing Association-sponsored webinar last July, that

“Recruitment is striped bass is highly variable…When you have a series of lows…we start seeing spawning stock biomass eroding, and that’s exactly what has caused the [current] erosion of spawning stock biomass, it’s these poor year classes.  It’s primarily not fishing, it’s primarily environmental causes.  And the primary cause is…the water regime in Chesapeake Bay.  When you have flood springs, you get bad recruitment.  When you get really dry springs, you get bad recruitment.  When you get nice cool, wettish springs, you get big year classes…”

Then he uttered the words that ought to control the entire management trigger discussion:

“We have to husband the big year classes along the best we can.  The only way to do that is to keep [fishing mortality] low.  [emphasis added]”

And the best way to do that is to adopt more restrictive management measures as soon as fishing mortality gets too high.

Two of the current management triggers attempt to do just that.  Management trigger 1, which kicks in when the stock becomes subject to overfishing, says

“If the Management Board determines that the fishing mortality threshold is exceeded in any year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to reduce the fishing mortality rate to a level that is at or below the target within one year.”

Taking quick action to avoid overfishing makes sense, because fishing above the threshold target level doesn’t only mean that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the biomass at or below the target level.  It means that the stock is likely to fall below the biomass threshold, and become overfished at some point in the future, if no action is taken.

And the Management Board should never allow the stock to become overfished again.

But if it is doing its job diligently and well, the Management Board should never allow overfishing to occur. 

Sometimes, inevitably, some combination of factors—perhaps a strong year class of fish, perhaps unexpectedly good weather, perhaps something different—will result in more people fishing, or the bass being easier to catch, and cause fishing mortality to rise above the target over the course of a season.  That should be expected, and not be a cause for concern.

But if fishing mortality doesn’t drop back to or below the target in the following year, there could be something inherently wrong with the management process.  That’s where management trigger 3 kicks in:

“If the Management Board determines that the fishing mortality target is exceeded in two consecutive years and the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target within either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to reduce the fishing mortality rate to a level that is at or below the target within one year.”

Again, it’s a prudent measure.

If fishing mortality gets a little too high when the stock is above the biomass target, no real harm is done, and the Management Board can safely defer action.  But if fishing mortality is still too high after the biomass falls below target, then that fishing mortality is driving down abundance, and needs to be addressed before the biomass declines to the point where the Management Board, perhaps hampered by adverse conditions on the spawning grounds, will have real difficulty rebuilding it without resorting to very restrictive measures.

It’s always easier to fix a problem when it first appears, rather than waiting until things approach crisis levels before taking action.

Of course, not every Management Board member agrees.  The “Work Group” report that preceded the creation of the PID noted that

“Some stakeholders support the 1-year requirement for change while others believe that it promotes ‘knee-jerk’ reactions that might not always be necessary.  [emphasis added]”

That’s interesting language, which says a lot about why the Management Board, and more generally, the ASMFC, has such a poor record of maintaining fish stocks at healthy and sustainable levels. 

It inherently admits that imposing additional management measures are often needed, but also reflects the views, held by too many Management Board members, that it is worse to impose restrictions that “might not always be necessary” than it is to fail to adopt restrictions that are needed to maintain the health of the striped bass stock.  In their view, it is better to delay action in order to avoid the occasional, unnecessary restriction, even if that increases the risk to the fish that they are obligated to manage and conserve.

That bias, which favors continued harvest in the face of uncertainty, and underlies the PID’s emphasis on “management stability” and “flexibility,” has hampered fisheries management at the ASMFC for many years.

Board delay, continued overfishing, and a few years of poor recruitment could leave the striped bass stock in a pretty bad place.  A quick response to excessive fishing mortality is the only way to help assure the abundance of the stock—even if it doesn’t provide for “management stability.”  Thus, management triggers 1 and 2 should remain unchanged.

Things get a little trickier when we start talking about spawning stock biomass.  

Amendment 6 contains two management triggers that deal with that, too, and both are similar to the triggers that address fishing mortality.  One requires a rebuilding plan, not to exceed ten years in duration, if the stock becomes overfished; the other requires that the same rebuilding plan be put in place if spawning stock biomass falls below target for two consecutive years, and fishing mortality rises above target in either year.

Here’s the problem:  While the Management Board clearly should intervene when spawning stock biomass declines, its ability to rebuild that biomass will always be limited by the number of young bass recruiting into the stock.  A mason can’t rebuild a wall without bricks; a fishery manager can’t rebuld a stock without fish.

The farther the stock declines, the harder it will be to rebuild if, due to adverse conditions in the spawning rivers, recruitment remains low (if spawning conditions are good, on the other hand, the lack of a stock-recruitment relationship should allow for a quick and successful recovery).

That means that the Management Board ought to do everything in its power to keep the stock from becoming overfished.  If the stock does become overfished, as it is right now, it is only because the Management Board failed to intervene in time, and didn’t adequately reduce fishing mortality while there was still a chance to effectively do so.  Management stability would have prevailed over management success.

Even in a period of poor recruitment, the striped bass stock can be rebuilt within ten years, if the Management Board summons the will to do so.  Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was adopted in late 1985, in the depths of the striped bass collapse, when recruitment was at or near historic lows.  In 1995—just 10 years later—the stock was declared completely rebuilt, although it’s worth noting that such rebuilding was only to what we’d now consider the biomass threshold, not the target.

Yet it’s important to note that even to get there, the Management Board had to resort to very restrictive measures, which gave near-full protection to the “large” (today, we’d deem it below average) 1982 year class, and every year class that came after.  Amendment 3 contemplated removing no more than 5 percent of the protected year classes from the population each year, a fishing mortality rate of just 0.051; the current fishing mortality rate target of 0.197 allows more than three times as many—roughly 17 percent—of striped bass to be removed from the stock each year.

So nipping a stock decline when it first manifests itself, rather than letting things get worse for a few years, can help stakeholders avoid a lot of future pain.

That’s why management trigger 4, which requires rebuilding when spawning stock biomass falls below target in consecutive years, and fishing mortality rises above target as well, makes sense.  It provides for an early, easier fix, instead of a long, difficult, and painful slog back from an overfished condition.

So when talking about current management triggers 2 and 4, both make sense, and both ought to remain as they are.

That gets us to the most difficult issue, management trigger 5, which addresses recruitment failure.  It reads

“The Management Board shall annually examine trends in all required Juvenile Abundance Index surveys.  If any JAI shows recruitment failure (i.e., JAI is lower than 75% of all other values in the dataset) for three consecutive years, then the Management Board will review the cause of the recruitment failure (i.e., fishing mortality, environmental conditions, disease, etc.) and determine the appropriate management action.  The Management Board shall be the final arbiter in all management decisions.”

Here, in management trigger 5, we find someting that probably does need to change.  If we look at the Maryland striped bass juvenile abundance index, we find that such index would have to be below 4.24 for three consecutive years before the trigger is tripped.  That only happened once in the 64-year history of the index, during the years 1983-1986, when the stock was just beginning to claw itself out of its prior collapse.

And that shows the weakness of management trigger 5; it would only have been tripped in 1985, after Amendment 3 had been adopted.  If it had been in place back in the 1970s, it would not have prevented the stock collapse, just as it didn’t prevent the stock from becoming overfished today.  The question is, what would make it better? 

Perhaps if it triggered when a three-year rolling average, rather than three consecutive years’ indices, fell below the twenty-fifth percentile, it would be more effective. 

If that were the case, the trigger would have been tripped (again, if it had been in effect) in 1981, when a three-year average of just 2.40 might have started rebuilding just a little earlier, and perhaps protected more of the critical 1982 year class.  It’s far from impossible that, if such rolling average was in effect, management trigger 5 would also be tripped at the end of this year, as the Maryland JAI was dismal enough in 2019 and 2020—3.37 and 2.48, respectively—than anything lower than a still sub-par 6.8 for 2021 would be low enough to require action.

And requiring action, of course, should be another change.  As currently written, management trigger 5 does not require management action, even if recruitment failure occurs.  Allowing a Management Board that is wedded to the concept of “management stability” to be “be the final arbiter in all management decisions” virtually guarantees that nothing will be done.

Thus, with respect to management trigger 5, change is needed.  A rolling average that falls below the 25^th percentile of the relevant juvenile abundance index would be a step in the right direction, as would language that requires Management Board action.  I’ll leave the precise wording of the needed changes to the scientists and statistical experts, who actually know how to calculate such things. 

But change, of some sort, is required, the sort of change that forces managers to respond to declining recruitment trends, and compels them to act before declining recruitment translates itself into a depleted spawning stock.

That leaves only one issue:  How long should the Management Board have to rebuild the spawning stock?

Management triggers 2 and 4 both say that if either one is tripped,

“the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass that is at or above the target within the timeframe established in Section 2.6.2 [of Amendment 6]”

That section says that if rebuilding is required

“the Management Board will determine the rebuilding schedule at that time.  The only limitation imposed under Amendment 6 is that the rebuilding schedule is not to exceed 10 years.”

So is 10 years an appropriate rebuilding period?  The PID asks

“What is more important, rebuilding the stock quickly, or mitigating the impact to fisheries?  In other words, do you prefer significant changes to rebuild the stock quickly, or smaller incremental over time to gradually rebuild the stock.”

Those questions were inadvertently answered by MichaelWaine, the ASMFC’s former Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for striped bass,in August 2014, when he (in my opinion, very wrongly) sought to convince theManagement Board to ignore their clear obligation under management trigger 4,and not initiate a rebuilding plan for the striped bass stock.

The bass are suffering the consequences of that advice today.  But what Waine said still remains relevant.  It was

“Management trigger 2 [sic] in Amendment 6 says that you need to rebuild the [spawning stock biomass] back to its target over a specified timeframe that should not exceed ten years.  I think that there is sort of a combination of things happening.  The board is acting to reduce [fishing mortality].  Through that action we see the projections showing that [spawning stock biomass] will start increasing towards its target, but we’re uncomfortable with projecting out far enough to tell you when it will reach its target because the further on the projections we go the more uncertainty that is involved.  [emphasis added]” 

In some ways, Waine wasn’t wrong.  The degree of uncertainty does increase over time, and it’s much more difficult to predict where the spawning stock biomass is going to be ten years from now than it is to predict where it will be in just two or three years.  That’s why “management stability” is such a dangerous concept—if the Management Board sets regulations that don’t seem to work, it should be willing to make course corrections when and as needed, to counter the effects of past uncertainty, and not maintain ineffective measures in the name of stability.

But where Waine went wrong was first, and most obviously, in assuming that the actions taken in 2014 would initiate rebuilding—in fact, the stock continued downhill—and then in using uncertainty as an excuse for ignoring the 10-year rebuilding deadline in Amendment 6, instead of as a reason for setting a goal, and then making mid-course corrections to assure that such goal was achieved.

As mentioned earlier, history has demonstrated that even a collapsed striped bass stock can be rebuilt within 10 years.  Yes, there is uncertainty about how to get it done by that deadline, but assuming that the Management Board is willing to elevate the needs of the bass above its desire for ineffective, but stable, regulations, there's nothing that new regulations can't cure.

Think about it.  If uncertainty m akes it difficult to develop a 10-year rebuilding plan, why should anyone believe that it would be easier to rebuild the stock in 15 or even 20 years, when uncertainty would be further compounded by time?

Human nature also needs to be considered.  When presented with a firm deadline, people can usually figure out how to get a job done, even if it might be unpleasant to do so.  But when faced with a choice of making a decision to rebuild a stock, and in doing so, suffer the vitriol spouted by temporarily inconvenienced stakeholders, or putting off the hard and unpleasant decisions off for another day, fisheries managers—particularly at the ASMFC—will almost always choose the latter course.

Consider the actions of the ASMFC's Tautog Management Board.  It knew that tautog were overfished in 1996, and had a pretty good idea how to fix the problem back then.  But because doing so would cause a lot of political pushback, it hemmed and hawed and tried to find a way to put off needed measures for more than 20 years.  Nothing resembling an effective tautog management plan was adopted until 2017—fully 21 years after the problem was first recognized—and even that plan will allow for overfishing in Long Island Sound until 2029.  No rebuilding timeline has yet been established.

It would take an optimist—or a fool—to believe that striped bass would fare any better if the 10-year rebuilding deadline was replaced with a longer rebuilding timeline—or with no deadline at all.

Thus, with respect to rebuilding, the 10-year deadline must be retained.

In the end, the right answer to all of the issues—both the management triggers and the rebuilding timeline—boil down to the needs of the fish, and to the foibles of fishery managers.  Prompt responses to problems with the stock will keep small issues from evolving into crises; taking away mangers’ ability to delay taking action will better assure that meaningful actions are taken.

And actions that help maintain striped bass abundance will, in the end, be best not only for the fish, but for fishermen and the fishing industry.

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On Thursday, One Angler’s Voyage will move on to the next important issues in the PID—conservation equivalency and accountability.  Unlike the topics discussed so far, those are issues where significant changes to the management plans are not only justified, but sorely needed.

STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7--NAVIGATING THE PID: PART II, BIOLOGICAL REFERENCE POINTS

 

In the last edition of One Angler’s Voyage, I provided a brief overview of the Public Information Document for Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (PID), along with a discussion of the Goal and Objectives that ought to guide the new amendment.

In today’s blog, we’ll look at biological reference points, and why choosing the right reference points is critically important to the long-term health of the striped bass stock.

Let’s start by addressing one statement that occurs on page 7 of the PID, which never should have made it into the document.  It says

“the current reference points may be unattainable given the current objectives for fishery performance.”

You need to understand, before reading any farther, that such statement was made without any scientific or other factual support; it is merely an editorial comment that made its way into the PID at the behest of John Clark, a Delaware fishery manager, who is doing everything that he can to increase Delaware’s commercial striped bass quota. 

The reference points used to manage the striped bass fishery are “empirical” reference points derived from observations of the striped bass stock at different points of time; for whatever reason, the stock assessment model has been unable to calculate appropriate biological reference points for the striped bass.  

The most recent benchmark stock assessment reveals that

“The reference points currently used for management are based on the 1995 estimate of female [spawning stock biomass].  The 1995 female [spawning stock biomass] is used as the SSB threshold because many stock characteristics (such as an expanded age structure) were reached by this year and the stock was declared recovered.”

That benchmark assessment, which represents the best available scientific information about the striped bass stock, also says that

“To estimate the [fishing mortality] threshold, population projections were made using a constant [fishing mortality rate] and changing the value until the [spawning stock biomass] threshold value was achieved…

“For this assessment…[the spawning stock biomass] threshold was estimated at 91,436 [metric tons] (202 million pounds), with [a spawning stock biomass] target of 114,295 [metric tons] (252 million pounds).  The [fishing mortality] threshold was estimated at 0.240, and the [fishing mortality] target was estimated at 0.197.”

In other words, what the science tells us—contrary to the language in the PID—is that the current reference points are obtainable.  But to rebuild female spawning stock biomass to the biomass target, the Management Board must first reduce fishing mortality to the fishing mortality target and keep it there long enough for the stock to rebuild.

That’s something that the Management Board has never been willing to do.

But never doubt that the only reason that the current reference points might appear to be “unattainable” is because the Management Board has, to date, lacked the moral courage and political will to do what’s required pursuant to the explicit language of the striped bass management plan.

Language in the PID that talks about “management stability” and “flexibility” is merely an effort to condone the Management Board’s failure to maintain the health of the striped bass stock.

That observation is very relevant to the PID’s Issue 2, Biological Reference Points, as there are number of Management Board members who are seeking to escape the burdens of rebuilding the stock by reducing the biomass target; they want to increase landings in the short term, even if such landings would place the long-term health of the stock in greater jeopardy.  To accommodate such Management Board members, the PID says that

“other empirical-based reference points could be considered, such as the estimate of [spawning stock biomass] in a year other than 1995 as the [spawning stock biomass] threshold…For example, the [Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee] discussed 1993 as a possible alternative proxy year because the [spawning stock biomass] was lower than in 1995 but still produced a strong year class.”

Citing 1993 as an alternative proxy year “because the SSB was lower than in 1995 but still produced a strong year class” is a red herring of the first order.  Striped bass spawning success isn’t directly linked to the size of the female spawning stock biomass.  That biomass peaked in 2003, when the Maryland striped bass juvenile abundance survey returned a young-of-the-year index of 25.75, which was well above average, but not much different from the 1989 index of 25.20, despite the fact that, in 1989, a much smaller striped bass stock was still clawing its way back from its collapse in the decade before.  1993 did produce a strong year class—the Maryland index was 39.76 that year--that was more than four times larger than the below-average 9.27 produced by the fully-recovered spawning stock in 1995.

Trying to correlate the size of any given year class of striped bass with the size of the spawning stock at the time is an exercise in futility.  Unless the spawning stock biomass has fallen so low that it is physically incapable of producing a large year class, spawning stock size does not predict spawning success.  A small spawning stock can still produce a large year class, as it did in 1989.  And a large spawning stock can, and often does, produce below-average spawns, as was the case in 2006—just three years after the biomass peaked—when the Maryland index was a dismal 4.25.

What really matters are the environmental conditions in the spawning rivers, which are dictated by the weather each year.  Cold winters and wet springs tend to produce successful spawns and large year classes of juvenile striped bass, while warm winters and dry springs lead to poor spawning success and small year classes of juvenile fish.

As Dr. Michael Armstrong, Assistant Director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, noted during an American Sportfishing Association-sponsored webinar last July,

“Recruitment is striped bass is highly variable…When you have a series of lows…we start seeing spawning stock biomass eroding, and that’s exactly what has caused the [current] erosion of spawning stock biomass, it’s these poor year classes.  It’s primarily not fishing, it’s primarily environmental causes.  And the primary cause is…the water regime in Chesapeake Bay.  When you have flood springs, you get bad recruitment.  When you get really dry springs, you get bad recruitment.  When you get nice cool, wettish springs, you get big year classes…”

The problem, of course, is that no one can predict, a year or even years in advance, what the environmental conditions in the Chesapeake’s tributaries will be when it’s time for the striped bass to spawn.  If the conditions are good for an extended period of years, striped bass abundance can remain high for a while.  But if the conditions are poor for a number of years in a row, as they were for most of the years between 2004 and 2010, striped bass abundance can plummet; the fact that striped bass spawning stock biomass peaked in 2003 didn’t prevent it from declining sharply in later years.  There is always uncertainty about when the next strong year class will be produced.

Thus, there is only one way to maintain a healthy striped bass stock.  As Dr. Armstrong also noted,

“We have to husband the big year classes along the best we can.  The only way to do that is to keep [fishing mortality] low.”

That being the case, it only makes sense to maintain the current biological reference points.  Lowering the biomass threshold to 1993 levels, as suggested in the PID, is contrary to that goal, and the fishing mortality reference point associated with such a 1993 threshold and target would be higher than the fishing mortality reference point being used today.

There is also another reason for maintaining the current reference points.  A higher fishing mortality target that would be associated with a lower spawning stock biomass target would tend to truncate the age and size structure of the spawning stock, and that, in turn, increases the risk to the striped bass. 

That’s something people often don’t think about; it’s somewhat intuitive to assume that if fishing mortality is increased, that increase will have an equal impact on every year class in the population, but that’s not how things actually work.  Higher fishing mortality rates have their greatest impact on the older age classes; when such rates increase, the population tends to lose its fish, and reduce the number of year classes in the spawning stock.

That’s not a good thing.

Twenty years ago, biologist David H. Secor, who is well-known for his work with striped bass, published a paper in the ICES Journal of Marine Science that addressed the issue.  In that paper, Dr. Secor noted that

“reduction in year-class diversity renders a population more vulnerable to recruitment failures.”

He also observed that, with respect to striped bass spawned in the Chesapeake Bay,

“Lowest year-class strengths were observed during periods when age structure [of the spawning stock] was severely truncated.”

That’s apparently due to the fact that female striped bass of different ages spawn at different times, with the older, larger fish generally being the first to spawn.  When there are many different year classes of bass represented in the spawning stock, it makes it more likely that, even in years with generally unfavorable spawning conditions, at least some striped bass will time their spawn to coincide with a period when spawning conditions are somewhat better, and thus prevent spawning failure.

When the age structure of the spawning stock is truncated, the stock loses much of its spawning time diversity; the fish are all about the same age, spawn at about the same time, and fail to produce many juveniles if, at that time, they encounter hostile spawning conditions.

Finally, having older fish in the population provides a buffer against long periods of below-average spawns.  Dr. Secor points out that, even after the striped bass stock collapsed in the late 1970s, it managed to produce a fairly successful spawn in 1982; that 1982 year class later become the foundation for the  stock’s recovery. He notes that

“most egg production in 1982 was attributable to striped bass >10 years in age.  Old remnant females produced during the 1960s were a hedge against a long period of recruitment overfishing that occurred during the 1970s.  Striped bass epitomize periodic strategists, spreading risk of failed replacement through variability in spawning behavior over many spawning seasons.  This life history tactic indicates that a truncated age distribution would result in stock abundance being more closely linked to annual changes in year-class strength.  [emphasis added]”

To put that in a PID context, if the reference points are changed, and a lower spawning stock target and higher fishing mortality target are adopted, and the age structure of the spawning stock becomes more truncated as a result, the stock will become more vulnerable to extended periods of below-average recruitment such as we saw throughout most of the 1970s and 1980s, and saw again, just a few years ago, in the period 2004-2010.

Thus, maintaining the current biological reference points is the best way to avoid truncating the age and size structure of the spawning stock, and by doing so, ensure the continued resiliency of the striped bass stock, and minimize its vulnerability to periods of low recruitment.

In response to Issue 2 of the PID, the current biological reference points should not be changed.

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In the next edition of One Angler’s Voyage, we’ll look at the issues of management triggers, intended to compel the Management Board to act when spawning stock biomass falls too low or fishing mortality rises too high, and how to rebuild the spawning stock.