WHAT SHOULD THE PUBLIC EXPECT FROM FISHERIES MANAGERS?

Sometimes it seems that, no matter what they do and how hard they try, fisheries managers just can’t win.

If they try to properly manage as stock and provide for its long-term health, they are criticized by those in the fishing industry who seek to maintain short-term profits, even if the means that the fishery is likely to decline in future years.

If managers give in to such demands, and manage a fishery for short-term landings rather than long-term sustainability, they find themselves slammed by conservation-minded fishermen and various environmental organizations.

And if they try to steer a middling course, adopting regulations that aren’t stringent enough to rebuild a stock, but are restrictive enough to reduce both landings and fishermen’s incomes, they find themselves in everyone’s line of fire, drawing flak from fishermen who grow tired of the burden of regulations that grow incrementally tighter, but never seem to improve the health of the stock or allow bigger harvests, as well as by a conservation community that calls out failure upon failure, attributable to management measures that never achieve their aims.

So when you get right down to it, what should the public expect from fisheries managers?

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council may have come up with the answer.

I was reading its Public Hearing Document to the Bluefish Reallocation and Rebuilding Amendment the other day and, in its description of the social impacts of various bluefish management alternatives, came upon this remarkable statement:

“Alternative 4a is the status quo alternative under which no action would be taken to initiate a rebuilding plan and therefore the bluefish stock would remain in an overfished state.  It is likely that there would be negative social impacts from the no action alternative due to the negligence of the [Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council] to comply with its legal obligation to develop a rebuilding plan when the stock is overfished.  This would likely lead to an erosion of trust and confidence among stakeholders across user groups in the ability of the [Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council] to handle its responsibilities to ensure the equitable sustainability of the bluefish resource…  [emphasis added]”

It’s hard to describe what I felt when I read those words. 

Elation isn’t quite right; nor is satisfaction.  Instead, it was the sort of feeling you get after a long, frustrating debate that started heading towards nowhere a long time ago when, suddenly and unexpectedly, you  see a startled expression on the guy sitting on the other side of the table, that look of dawning awareness that wants you make you yell out “Finally!  Somebody gets it!”

Or, because maybe they knew it a long time ago but were hesitatant to admit it in public, something more like “Someone finally said it out loud!”

Because what the vast majority of the public wants from fishery managers is pretty simple:  They just want them to do their jobs.

That means managing fish to prevent overfishing and, if overfishing somehow occurs, it means putting an end to it without delay.  It means reacting to changing conditions within the ocean and within individual fish stocks, to keep them from becoming overfished and, if one becomes overfished, to restore it to health as quickly and as efficiently as reasonably possible.

I’m not going to say that everyone feels that way—there are some fishermen out there whose idea of long-term thinking extends out maybe two weeks, who seem incapable of focusing on consequences that might occur sometime beyond that, and there are certainly folks in the angling press who, in efforts to please their advertisers, encourage that sort of thing—but by and large, fishermen understand that without fish, they’re not going to have much to do, and they want fisheries managers to perform well enough to keep them on the water.

In that vein, it shouldn’t be surprising that it was the Mid-Atlantic Council which admitted that is the case.  

Ever since being rebuked by the court in Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley back in 2000, the Mid-Atlantic Council has generally been in the forefront of good fishery management (despite making a couple of questionable calls in 2019 and 2020); for many years, it was the only regional fishery management council that was not presiding over at least one stock that was either overfished or subject to overfishing.  While that is no longer true—in recent years, stock status updates revealed that both bluefish and Atlantic mackerel had become overfished, and that Atlantic mackerel was also experiencing overfishing—the Council is taking prompt and seemingly effective action to bring all of its managed stocks back to health.

Some fishermen might not agree with everything that the Mid-Atlantic Council has done; for example, the Bluefish Public Hearing Document reveals that

“the majority of commercial crew and hired captains reported that they believe the regulations in their primary fishery are too restrictive and fewer than half agree that the fines associated with breaking the rules are fair,”

but it’s rare to hear someone complain that the Council isn’t being a responsible steward of the resource, and fails to respond when a stock becomes overfished or is threatened by overfishing. Virtually no one would argue that the Mid-Atlantic Council was losing stakeholders’ “trust and confidence” in its ability to maintain sustainable fish stocks.

On the other hand, such complaints are frequently heard with respect to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and it’s easy to understand why. 

Right now, out of 251 federally-managed stocks where the fishing status is known, 49—just under 20 percent—are overfished.  The status of 209 stocks is unknown.  I you put all the numbers together, federal managers are responsible for 460 different stocks of fish.  202 of those stocks (about 44 percent) are not overfished, 49 (under 11 percent) are overfished, and the status of the rest (a little over 45 percent) is unknown.

The ASMFC’s record on maintaining and rebuilding fish stocks is a little different.  Of 16 stocks of known status that are managed solely by the ASMFC, eleven—nearly 69 percent—are listed as either “overfished” or “depleted.”  Of all 23 stocks managed solely by the ASMFC, just 5 (less than 22 percent) are not overfished or fully rebuilt, while 11 (nearly 48 percent) are overfished and the health of the other 7 (about 30 percent) is unknown.

When the number of overfished stocks under the ASMFC’s management outnumbers the healthy ones by a ratio of more than 2:1, it’s not hard to understand why the public might deem the ASMFC negligent in its failure to rebuild more stocks, and lose trust and confidence in its ability to perform its duties as the primary steward of coastal fisheries.

And it doesn’t stop there.

As of December 31, 2020, the regional fishery management councils have rebuilt 47 once-overfished stocks, a little over 10 percent of all of the stocks that it manages.  The ASMFC, on the other hand, has never once successfully rebuilt an overfished stock, and then maintained that stock at sustainable levels.

It came the closest with the striped bass, which itsuccessfully rebuilt in the closing years of the last century.  However, it has since allowed that stock to become overfished, and subject to overfishing, again.

Given that simple fact, it’s hardly surprising that striped bass fishermen are probably the stakeholders who have the least trust and confidence in the ASMFC’s ability to manage coastal fisheries, and believe that the ASMFC has been negligent, and perhaps even grossly negligent, in its management of the striped bass resource.

And the ASMFC keeps taking actions to further reinforce such beliefs.

In November 2011, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board refused to take action in response to a stock assessment update which advised that the stock would become overfished by 2017.  Management Board members argued that the stock was still above the spawning stock biomass target, and that the fishing mortality target had not yet been exceeded.  They noted that the triggers for management action, contained in the management plan, hadn’t be tripped, and strongly implied that should those triggers be tripped, action would be taken.

But when the time came, the same group of managers did not keep their word.

The 2013 benchmark stock assessment indicated that spawning stock biomass had fallen below its target, and remained there for a few years, while fishing mortality had risen above target during the same period.  That combination of events tripped two management triggers, one requiring fishing mortality to be returned to target within one year, and one requiring that a 10-year rebuilding plan be put in place.

Only the former action was taken; no rebuilding plan was ever adopted.  The seeming excuse was a comment from the then-fishery management plan coordinator Michael Waine that there was too much uncertainty involved in projecting stock rebuilding over a 10-year period—even though federal managers successfully adopt 10-year rebuilding plans on a regular basis.

So the Management Board’s promise to the public was broken; the stock was not rebuilt, but instead was allowed to decline further.

And even the modest actions that were taken didn’t have the intended effect; when anglers in Maryland failed to reduce fishing mortality by 20.5 percent, as the Management Board intended, but instead increased it by more than 50 percent, the Management Board let it happen, and did nothing to protect the bass.  As a result, the big 2011 year class, which managers were depending on to rebuild the stock, suffered excessive fishing mortality before the females ever had a chance to mature and spawn for their first time.

And then, after the 2019 benchmark stock assessment revealed thatthe Management Board had allowed the striped bass to become overfished andsubject to overfishing once again, what did that Management Board do?

Less than it did in 2014.

Once again, two management triggers were tripped, one requiring that fishing mortality be reduced, one requiring that the stock be rebuilt.  Once again, the Management Board acted to reduce fishing mortality, and ignored its obligation to rebuild.

But this time, the Management Board didn’t even adopt management measures that were likely to work, but instead approved measures with a 58 percent probability of failure.

And the Management Board looked at what it had done, and decided that it was good.

Which, of course, is the problem.  Because at this point, the Management Board is so disconnected from its obligation to the public that it has embarked on a new amendment to the management plan, which has, as its priorities, maintaining regulatory consistency and providing management flexibility, so that the Management Board can do even less to rebuild the stock than it has done in the past.

It is also considering lowering the rebuilding target, making it easier to declare the striped bass stock “recovered” not too far down the road, adopting a new normal that would permanently reduce striped bass abundance, and allow the Management Board to declare its idea of success without working too hard to achieve it.

So it’s not too surprising that, at the last Management Board meeting, one New England fishery manager noted that stakeholders were “losing faith” in the ASMFC’s ability to manage striped bass.

After the ASMFC has failed to respond to a decline in the striped bass stock, failed to honor commitments for management action that are explicitly stated in its own striped bass management plan, failed to require states to adhere to agreed-upon management actions, allowed the striped bass to become overfished once again and, two years after that fact was revealed in a benchmark stock assessment, has still not made rebuilding the stock it’s most important priority—or, from what it has said and done so far, any priority at all—is it hard to believe that stakeholders have lost faith?

The ASMFC has done everything that the Mid-Atlantic Council’s Bluefish Hearing Document suggests that fisheries managers should avoid.

It has been negligent in its stewardship of the striped bass stock, in its failure to rebuild, and in its failure to even begin stock rebuilding.  It has lost the trust and confidence of stakeholders that it is able to live up to its responsibilities to maintain a sustainable striped bass stock.  It has done nothing in the past few years to suggest that it even wants to abandon its current track record of failure.

So what should the public expect from fisheries managers?

The public should expect, and demand, that they do their job to maintain healthy and sustainable stocks of fish, which are, in the end, a public resource and not the private domain of any particular sector of the fishery, or even the fishery as a whole.

If managers do just that much, the public should not, and probably would not, complain.