FINFISH AQUACULTURE--ADDRESSING THE RISKS

 

Aquaculture has become a hot topic on the coast.

Here in the United States, farming various invertebrates—typically oysters, clams, and mussels—has become a well-established industry with little downside; it can even be seen as benign, as the farms introduce large numbers of filter-feeding mollusks into areas suffering from phytoplankton blooms, and so positively impact water quality.  Recent efforts to farm kelp are expected to bring similar benefits.

Unfortunately, finfish aquaculture has no such environmental upside, but does pose real risks when conducted in net pens or similar facilities. 

Aquaculture's best-publicized failure was probably the 2017 collapse of net pens that Cooke Aquaculture, a Canadian fish-farming conglomerate, maintained in inshore waters off the State of Washington.  As a result of such collapse, more than 250,000 non-native Atlantic salmon escaped into the waters of the Salish Sea, where they might have further imperiled already-threatened runs of native Pacific salmon.

An article distributed by the University of California—Davis noted that

“Farmed Atlantic salmon can carry viruses, bacteria and parasites such as sea lice that can infect wild salmon.  The release of thousands of salmon that were actively experiencing a disease outbreak could have huge ramifications for wild salmon…

“While we have not seen data on the health of disease status of the released Atlantic salmon, it was reported that they were treated for a bacterial infection called yellow mouth in July 2016 but were believed to be disease-free at the time they escaped.

“Without detailed disease testing data, it is difficult to know what the potential for disease transmission could be in this most recent release.  An evaluation of the risk of disease transmission from farmed Atlantic salmon to wild Pacific salmon conducted over a decade ago classified the risk as low due to existing disease testing protocols and the state’s prohibition on bringing new Atlantic salmon stocks or eggs into Washington (which limits new diseases from entering)…

“As to whether released farmed salmon will compete with native salmon for food and breeding or spawning space, studies have shown that while their performance and reproductive success in nature vary, farmed salmon are often outcompeted by wild salmon of similar size.

“…while released farmed Atlantic salmon will compete with wild salmon for food, many also don’t make the transition from being fed pellets in farms to catching and eating wild food.

“For those that do, though, stonefly nymphs found in the stomachs of Atlantic salmon caught in the Salmon River (Vancouver Island) suggest that escaped Atlantic salmon also can be predators in freshwater as well as in the ocean…

“On balance, though, the science looking at past net pen releases of Atlantic salmon in this region suggests that there can be negative impacts to native salmon including disease transmission, competition for food and breeding habitat, and the potential for long-term establishment of an introduced Atlantic salmon run…”

Fortunately, the Cooke Aquaculture net pen collapse does not appear to have resulted in any such negative impacts.  In fact, the only significant impact the collapse appears to have was an arguably positive one:  Legislation that bans the farming of non-native fish in Washington waters was passed in 2018; the ban will become effective when the last of the current aquaculture leases expires in 2025.

Elsewhere, native salmon runs have not been fortunate enough to escape the negative impacts of aquaculture and non-native species, with both escaped fish and introduced diseases causing harm to wild populations.

In northwestern Europe, pink salmon, a Pacific species introduced into the region by Russia during the latter half of the last century, are invading rivers as far away as Scotland and Iceland, and posing a potential threat to already-dwindling Atlantic salmon stocks.

It’s not completely clear how much damage the pinks have already done to native European salmonids, but biologists are concerned.  There’s not too much information publicly available from Russia, where the invasive salmon have been present the longest.  However, research published by a team of Russian scientists in 2015 found that

“pink salmon had a substantial negative effect on the recruitment and abundance of the freshwater pearl mussel (Margaritifera margaritifera) in two rivers in the White Sea basin.  This was likely caused by a concurring reduction in density of juvenile Atlantic salmon, which is the obligate host of mussel glochidia larvae in these rivers,”

which research suggests, but does not conclusively confirm, that pink salmon may have a negative impact on Atlantic salmon recruitment.

In Norway, where pink salmon straying from Russian rivers have established spawning populations, scientists are also worried.  A paper published in the open-access Springer Link in 2018 observed that

“Pink salmon is reported to be aggressive on the spawning sites, which may lead to negative interactions with Atlantic salmon and brown trout.  It has been documented that groups of pink salmon may attack Atlantic salmon that are at the spawning sites preparing for spawning.  The result is that the Atlantic salmon move to river sections less suitable for spawning.”

The same paper considered other potential negative impacts, ranging from rotting pink salmon carcasses leading to depleted oxygen levels in the rivers, and so reducing the survival of larvae of later spawning fish, to competition between pink salmon fry and that of other species, but could draw no conclusions from the limited information available.

Pink salmon spawning has also taken place in Scotland.  Although fishery managers there have not yet identified any self-perpetuating populations, the Scottish Environmental Agency is monitoring the situation closely, with one of its fisheries management team leaders stating that

“Wild Atlantic salmon stocks are already under great pressure from a variety of sources.  The introduction of novel parasites or diseases from invasive species, such as Pacific pink salmon, could potentially represent an additional risk to the viability of the species.

“We therefore want to better understand the immediate risk that pink salmon could represent to our important wild salmon stocks.”

Professor Eric Verspoor, the director of the Rivers and Lochs Institute at Inverness College, warned that

“It might be argued by some that another salmon species might be desirable in Scotland’s rivers.

“However, the potential for negative impacts on native species and the fact that they are the least desirable of the Pacific salmon from an angling and commercial fishery perspective suggest that there are unlikely to be any positives from their doing so.

“The fact that they are running up Scottish rivers is worrying as that suggests a spawning intention – the species normally spawns from July to October across its native range…

“It is a situation which should be closely monitored in respect of the threat it poses to Scotland’s native salmon, given the latter’s great socio-economic value and biological uniqueness.”

The Scottish government has labelled the pink salmon an invasive species; under Scottish law, it is illegal to fish for or possess them, which puts fishermen in an odd position, as the government also tells fishermen not to return such salmon to the water if accidentally caught, and to report such capture to the relevant District Salmon Fishery Board, and thus seemingly requires fishermen to violate the law, which law also states that if a fisherman

“had taken all reasonable steps and exercised due diligence to avoid committing [the offence]”

of accidentally catching and/or retaining a pink salmon, such actions “may be” a defense to any resulting charges.  However, the words "may be" seem to offer little comfort to Scottish anglers who inadvertently find themselves with a pink salmon in hand.

Still, given the potential threat that pink salmon could pose to Scottish Atlantic salmon and sea trout, its understandable that the government would want to do all that it can to assure that the invasive fish don’t gain a foothold in Scottish rivers.

Unfortunately, the threat posed by introduced and aquacultured fish isn’t limited to pink salmon, Europe, or competition in the spawning rivers.  Here in North America, aquacultured Atlantic salmon appear to have transmitted a virus to native chinook (also known as “king”) salmon stocks in British Columbia.

From what scientists could tell, such transmission has been going on for a very long time—probably more than thirty years.  But the disease that's callled Piscine orthoreovirus-1, or PRV-1, and causes heart and skeletal muscle inflammation in the farmed Atlantic salmon, manifests itself very differently in the wild chinooks, which incur fatal liver and kidney damage.   Since about 97% of all farmed Atlantic salmon in British Columbia contract the virus by the time that they are 18 months old, and since the virus is believed to have been introduced into British Columbian waters in 1989, after the farms imported infected eggs from Europe, wild chinook salmon have been extensively and continually exposed to PRV-1, which is spread when the farmed salmon’s feces are released into the water.

Scientists determined the timing and the origin of the virus in chinook salmon through the use of genetic sequencing.  Dr. Gideon Mordecai of the University of British Columbia, who led the study, said that

“Both are genomic and epidemiological methods independently came to the same conclusion, that salmon farms act as a source and amplifier of PRV transmission…

“The study’s genome sequencing clearly indicates that PRV is not native to [British Columbia] waters—it originated in the Atlantic Ocean and has been spread around the world through salmon aquaculture.”

In response to that finding, Dr. Andrew Bateman, of the Pacific Salmon Foundation, who was a co-author of the study, advised that

“The PRV findings, in particular, support calls to transition from open-net salmon farming towards farming technology that doesn’t allow disease transfer between farmed and wild salmon.”

Of course, salmon aren’t the only fish that suffer from viruses, nor are they the only fish which are raised in open-net pens.  Dr. Bateman’s advice has much wider application. 

Anglers here in the United States ought to be paying particular attention, because encouraging open-water aquaculture has become a national priority, and right now, it appears that fish farming in federal waters may be conducted with very little control.

Back in 2016, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued regulations for permitting and regulating aquaculture operations in the Gulf of Mexico.  A consortium of environmental, commercial fishing, recreational fishing, and food-safety groups brought suit to challenge such regulations, arguing that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act’s definition of “fishing” did not include aquaculture, and that NMFS lacked the authority to issue permits for offshore aquaculture operations. 

Last year, in the matter of Gulf Fishermen’s Association v. National Marine Fisheries Service, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed, finding that NMFS lacked any authority to permit and/or regulate offshore aquaculture facilities.

The decision had unintended consequences.

While the plaintiffs brought the action hoping to prevent the construction of offshore aquaculture facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, and probably elsewhere off the United States coast, the appellate court's decision did not further that goal.  Instead, it merely removed NMFS, the agency with the greatest expertise with respect to marine fish and related issues, from the permitting process, leaving all permitting up to agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, which would only have jurisdiction over the discharge of pollutants, and the Army Corps of Engineers, which promotes marine conservation in about the same way that the tobacco industry promotes respiratory health.  NMFS’ role is now limited to consultation on matters such as protected species interactions and impacts on essential fish habitat.

Right now, a proposed Florida pilot project run by the Hawaiian company Kampachi Farms is waiting for the permitting process to be completed.  Located about 45 miles off Sarasota, the pilot aquaculture facility would feature a pen 50 feet wide and 20 feet deep, the top of which would be just 20 feet beneath the ocean’s surface.

The Kampachi Farms pen is only designed to hold 20,000 Almaco jack, a local Gulf species.  However, Neil Anthony Sims, the head of Ocean Era Inc. (apparently, the owner of Kampachi Farms) has much larger ambitions, saying

“The goal of the project is to show to the Florida fishing and boating community that offshore aquaculture can be something that they can learn to love and embrace.

“Our goal here is to set up a very small-scale single cohort, one batch of fish, only 20,000 fish, which that’s [sic] about one percent of what the size of a commercial farm might be, and then grow those fish through to harvest size.  [emphasis added]”

Right now, there are quite a few people who don’t yet “love and embrace” the proposed project, and might be expected to have an even colder reaction to the sort of “commercial farm” that might keep 2,000,000 fish penned up in a small expanse of ocean.  One op-ed, written by an angler and professor at Florida Southwestern State College, which appeared in The [Cape Coral] News-Press, objected to an aquaculture facility

“smack dab in the middle of the red snapper and grouper grounds of recreational anglers in Southwest Florida and from all over the country,”

and expressed concern over

“20,000 almaco jack fish packed like cattle, in an oversized bait ball of synthetic feed, waste, and pharmaceuticals,”

fearing that it would

“alter the ecology and pollute and deform Florida’s natural, heretofore, uncorrupted west coast.”

His concerns were echoed by representatives of various environmental groups who, according to The News-Press, argued that

“Ocean Era’s facility will feed harmful algae blooms, present dangers to the genetics of native species if the fish escape and degrade the nearby ecosystem by polluting the Gulf with fish waste and pharmaceuticals.”

Ocean Era, of course, disagrees, but in April, an EPA administrative judge acceded to such concerns by delaying action on the required pollution discharge permits.  Final action is expected this Tuesday, June 1.

Should the permits be granted, it is likely that other would-be offshore aquaculture operations will soon be seeking permits for other facilities, some of which will probably seek to culture species that, unlike Almaco jacks, are not native to the area.  Should such facilities be developed, it will probably only be a matter of time until the same problems currently facing salmon aquaculture—pollution, the escape of invasive, non-native species, and the transmission of disease to wild fish stocks—will erupt in the ocean as well.

At the same time, people want to eat fish, and as the population expands, wild stocks will probably be unable to supply their needs.  Well over a century ago, the market hunters who once supplied elk, deer, and waterfowl, along with such other now-extinct species as passenger pigeons and Eskimo curlew, to urban markets were replaced by meat produced on terrestrial farms.  It is only reasonable to expect seafood to follow the same path.

And, in the end, following exactly the same path is probably the right answer.  For the ideal aquaculture operation should exist not in the open ocean, but on terrestrial farms, where water can be cleaned and recycled, and fish can be raised without any fear of them escaping, of polluting local waterways, or of spreading disease to wild populations.

The basic technology already exists, and some land-based operations are already producing product.  Land-based operations don’t have the same parasite and disease problems found in net pen facilities.  They don’t have escapes, and they don’t pollute.  At the same time, the technology is not yet mature, so some problems remain.  And land-based fish farms are more energy-intensive than those that depend on the sun and ocean currents to regulate temperature and circulate the water in the pens.

Land-based farms are also—at least for now—more expensive to run, and produce a more costly product.

Balanced against such costs is the question:  What price are we willing to pay for healthy and abundant wild stocks of fish.  Because, as experience already shows, wild stocks will always be at risk when fish pens are nearby.

ASMFC BEGINS THE REAL WORK OF DRAFTING STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT

 This morning, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Plan Development Team met to begin the hard work of refining the options to be included in the draft Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which is scheduled to be unveiled at the ASMFC’s October meeting.

The discussions only addressed the four issues that the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board voted to include in the draft amendment:  Management Triggers, Conservation Equivalency, Recreational Release Mortality, and Protecting the 2015 Year Class.  Such discussions were fairly wide-ranging, and sought to consider multiple options. 

As I listened to the talks, I thought about how lucky we—and the striped bass—were that so many important issues, such as rebuilding times, plan goals and objectives, and biological reference points were already removed from the draft amendment, because it was clear that, although a number of good ideas were put on this morning’s table, the PDT was still clinging to some of the old paradigms that have poorly served the striped bass in the past.

If we should have learned anything from history, it is that striped bass—and ultimately the striped bass fishery—benefits when decisive and meaningful management actions are taken, and is harmed when managers waffle.  And we should have learned that many Management Board members will try to waffle, and not take decisive action, if given the chance to do so.

That being the case, the provisions ultimately included in Amendment 7 need to be clear and unambiguous, and set forth in language that doesn’t give the Management Board significant opportunities to exercise its discretion.  Unless “flexibility” is excised from the management plan, every opportunity to pursue “flexible” solutions will be used to weaken, delay, and/or completely avoid needed actions.

For a glaring example of that, we only need to look back on the November 2011 Management Board meeting when, despite a stock assessment update warning that overfishing would occur within six years, the Management Board declared striped bass to be a “green light” fishery, and rode that declaration all the way past the biomass threshold, and into overfished territory.

Will management trigger discussions misfire?

Thus, the first discussion, which addressed Management Triggers, left me feeling more than a little concerned.

There are currently five such triggers.  Management Trigger 1 requires fishing mortality to be reduced to target within one year, if overfishing occurs.  Trigger 2 requires the stock to be rebuilt in no more than 10 years if it becomes overfished.

Management Triggers 3 and 4 are analogues of Triggers 1 and 2, but deal with less critical situations.  The former is tripped if fishing mortality exceeds the target—but not the threshold—level for two consecutive years, and female spawning stock biomass is below its target in one of those years; in such case, the Management Board has one year to reduce fishing mortality to target.  The latter is tripped when spawning stock biomass drops below target—but not threshold—for two consecutive years, and fishing mortality exceeds target in at least one of those years.

When you look at the way those triggers are structured, one thing becomes clear:  If the Management Board does its job, then absent some truly extraordinary circumstances, triggers 1 and 2 should never be tripped, because early intervention initiated pursuant to trigger 3 and/or 4 should remedy any problem well before it develops into the sort of crisis situation contemplated by triggers 1 and 2.

Thus, if Amendment 7 modifies the management triggers at all, it should do so in a way that would require prompt action when a threat to the stock first arises.  If, despite such action, things get so bad that triggers 1 or 2 are tripped, Amendment 7 should assure that immediate action is taken to prevent a bad situation from evolving into something much worse.

But that’s not where the PDT seemed to be going.  Instead, today they considered options that would promote delay.  It seems that the traditional ASMFC pro-harvest bias, and the related belief that it is far worse to take management actions that, in the end, might not have been needed than it is to not take badly needed actions until a bad situation deteriorates even farther, still appear to prevail.

The PDT seemed to look favorably on options that involved some sort of rolling average of fishing mortality and/or spawning stock biomass, or that would delay taking management action until the impacts of a previous management measure could be determined.  With respect to fishing mortality-based triggers, some expressed concern about the “variability” inherent in recreational data, and questioned the wisdom of taking action based on a single year’s data from the Marine Recreational Information Program.

Such arguments might appear to be reasonable, but could lead the management process astray, particularly  if they delayed action after Management Triggers 1 and/or 2 were tripped, and the threat to the bass stock was already dire. 

Massachusetts biologist Nichola Meserve acknowledged that issue when she asked whether her colleagues were considering changes to all of the fishing mortality- and biomass-related management triggers, or only to 3 and 4; she was advised by others that, for now, triggers 1 and 2 would be included in the discussions, although that might change later on.

That’s not a good thing for, as I noted earlier, triggers 3 and 4 have a very different function than triggers 1 and 2.

Triggers 3 and 4 are designed to nip a problem in the bud, before the bass face a serious problem.  But if triggers 1 or 2 are tripped, the bass are already in trouble, and face a problem that must be addressed right now.  Thus, if the spawning stock biomass drops a little below target for a couple of years, while fishing mortality gets a just a little too high—the current Trigger 4 scenario—perhaps it makes sense to wait another year or two to confirm that fishing mortality really is excessive.

But if the stock drops below the biomass threshold—if the stock is already overfished—the time for waiting is over, and the time for action has come.

Trigger 4 may be the only trigger where some modification—perhaps looking at whether the biomass is trending up or down—is justified.  Even Management Trigger 3 is a little different, as it already defers action until fishing mortality exceeds target for two consecutive years, which should be enough to address the variability issue, and justify management action.

Once we get to Management Triggers 1 and 2, any delay in taking action is unacceptable; if those triggers are tripped, it means that the moderate management actions taken pursuant to Management Trigger 3 and/or 4 have failed, and more radical actions are called for.  Amending either trigger to allow managers to defer taking action in such situation would only provide further evidence demonstrating why the federal fishery management system, which legally obligates managers to prevent overfishing and promptly rebuild overfished stocks, is superior to the system that prevails at the ASMFC, and why the ASMFC system is badly in need of reform.

In addition to the four fishing mortality- and biomass-based triggers, the PDT also addressed Management Trigger 5, which deals with low recruitment.  Currently, in order to trip that trigger, the juvenile abundance index must be in the lower 25% of all recruitment values for three consecutive years, a requirement so stringent that the trigger has never been tripped.  In its discussion, the PDT considered a number of possible options that might prove to be more effective triggers but, in the end, will seek the Technical Committee’s advice on possible changes, which is undoubtedly the right thing to do.

Progress on conservation equivalency

After that, the PDT went on to discuss options for conservation equivalency.

From a conservation standpoint, that discussion went quite a bit better than the discussion of management triggers.  There seemed to be general agreement among all who spoke that the Management Board’s current approach to conservation equivalency was inappropriate and needs to be reformed. 

There was a thorough discussion of whether the use of conservation equivalency should be limited to times when the stock is in generally good health, and is not overfished, experiencing overfishing, or undergoing rebuilding; however, one PDT member raised the question of whether, in a rebuilding situation, any prohibition of conservation equivalent measures would continue after the stock was no longer overfished, even if spawning stock biomass still fell short of its target.

Max Appelman, who represents the National Marine Fisheries Service and used to be the ASMFC’s Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for striped bass, referred to some states’ “abuse” of the conservation equivalency process, and noted that conservation equivalency didn’t become a hot issue until such abuse became manifest during the adoption of Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan.  He seemed to support limiting conservation equivalency to situations where there is a biological reason for adopting equivalent regulations, saying “That’s what this [concept of conservation equivalency] is all about,” and added that conservation equivalency is “Less about stakeholder wants and needs.”

Restricting conservation equivalency to such situations would certainly limit its use, and probably also substantially limit its abuse.  Still, one PDT member seemed to want to reopen Pandora’s Box, arguing that socio-economic concerns and the need for “fair and equitable access” should also be grounds for conservation equivalency, even though socio-economic arguments can be crafted to fit just about any situation.

The most disappointing aspect of the conservation equivalency discussion was the PDT’s seeming reluctance to impose accountability on states that adopted failed conservation equivalency measures.  Once again, PDT members seemed uncomfortable with using a single year of MRIP data for accountability purposes although, in that regard, Toni Kearns, the Director of ASMFC’s Interstate Fisheries Management Progaram asked the key question:   Why not use MRIP to hold states accountable, if their conservation equivalency proposals were also based on MRIP data?

Such reluctance to impose accountability was coupled with a reluctance to require a minimum probability of success for conservation equivalency measures.  The biggest obstacle to doing so is management uncertainty; angler effort and the spatial distribution of bass changes from year to year, and such changes also impact both state and coastwide landings.  Such uncertainty can’t be quantified in a way that would allow a probability of success to be calculated.

Thus, it makes sense to create a buffer designed to offset management uncertainty.  For example, if the coastwide measures adopted by the Management Board would reduce a state’s landings by 40%, such state might be required to propose conservation equivalent measures that would achieve, say, 125% of such reduction (in this example, 50% rather than 40%), to allow for management uncertainty.  Some members of the PDT seemed to like that idea, and found it workable. 

As with the management triggers, the Technical Committee will be consulted on conservation equivalency options.

Release mortality in a recreational fishery

And then the PDT moved on to the issue of recreational release mortality.

it recognized that release mortality was a challenging issue to address, but still failed to recognize, despite many comments alluding to it during the recent hearing process, the essential character of the recreational striped bass fishery.

While many anglers will take a bass or two home over the course of a year, the recreational fishery is, primarily, just that:  recreational.  It is about venturing out on the water, and trying to catch striped bass.  The recreational striped bass fishery is not a subsistence fishery.  It is not even a “meat” fishery, in the sense that the summer flounder or scup fisheries are.  It is a recreational fishery, and to fully exploit its potential, catch and release must play a big part.

Thus, it makes no sense to separate recreational release mortality from other forms of recreational fishing mortality; instead, managers must focus on reducing recreational fishing mortality as a whole.  As Max Appelman noted, recreational releases’ contribution to overall fishing mortality has remained relatively consistent from year to year.  That’s because recreational fishermen derive most of their enjoyment from the mere act of striped bass fishing, not in killing fish to take home.  In recent years, over 90% of all bass caught were released.  By releasing so many fish, the striped bass anglers themselves have shaped their fishery, and in doing so have informed managers as to how their fishery ought to be managed.

But that wasn't acknowledged at the PDT meeting.  Instead, the focus was only on reduciung release mortality, whether through gear-related measures such as banning gaffs or treble hooks, or through effort controls intended to reduce the number of recreational striped bass trips, and so reduce angler interactions with the striped bass.  

While the gear controls might be worth looking at, and there is merit in some of the proposed effort controls, such as prohibiting fishing when water temperatures lead to excessive release mortality, and prohibiting fishing in spawning areas (personally, I would be very happy to see angling in Raritan Bay outlawed until May 15, to protect the big female bass that stage there before ascending the Hudson River), there was also another line of comments that, if followed to its logical conclusion, would seek to impose seasonal closures on striped bass anglers.

Mr. Appelman opined that it would be difficult to rebuild the fishery when “50% of the mortality is unmanaged,” a sentiment that he expressed more than once.

Yet, if the striped bass fishery is managed as a recreational release fishery, the issue of “unmanaged” release mortality goes away, for managers would then be looking at a fishery in which 90% of the mortality—that is, recreational release mortality combined with recreational landings—could be managed very easily, by using reductions in landings to offset a constant, or even a slightly increasing, level of release mortality.   

For reducing overall fishing mortality is the only thing that matters; the bass don’t care why or how they die, even if some people dwell on the issue.

Again, this is one of those discussions that is colored by the ASMFC’s traditional pro-harvest bias, which makes it difficult for the PDT to accept the idea that recreational release mortality is neither better nor worse than recreational landings, particularly when managing striped bass largely for catch and release might be the best way to both rebuild the striped bass and generate the highest level of social and economic benefits from the fishery, while at the same time maintaining the fishery’s essential nature.

To protect—or not protect—the 2015s

Finally, the PDT addressed the 2015s.

By that time, the meeting was nearing its end, so the discussion of what many anglers consider the most important issue of all, protecting the 2015 year class, wasn’t given much time.

Some PDT members seemed to believe that, by the time Amendment 7 became effective, it would be too late to take meaningful action to protect the 2015s in any meaningful way.  That may, in fact, be true although, as some PDT members noted, there may be other year classes out there that could contribute to the rebuilding if also given adequate protection.  (Two candidates might be the 2017 and 2018 year classes, which had Maryland juvenile abundance indices of 13.19 and 14.78, respectively, just slightly above the long-term average of 11.6.)

The PDT also never discussed whether it would be possible to require states to protect the 2015s no later than May or June 2022, even if the other provisions of Amendment 7 didn’t become effective until 2023.

The idea of adopting protections that only affected certain year classes seemed to concern a few PDT members, while the tactic that successfully rebuilt the striped bass after the last collapse—protecting at least 95% of the females in a particular year class until they could spawn at least once—didn’t seem to appeal to many of the PDT members, largely because it would involve annual changes to striped bass regulations (although adopting a 35-inch minimum size would probably get the job done with only a single regulatory revision).

Simon Brown, a Maryland biologist, suggested that it might be more important to protect the overall year class structure, rather than specific year classes.  While there’s probably merit in that approach, it  doesn’t address the question of how to rebuild the stock by 2029 without the 2015s (and perhaps without a meaningful assist from the 2017s and 2018s, too).

Again, with respect to this issue, the PDT will probably have to wait until it sees what advice the Technical Committee might provide.

The bottom line

While the first PDT meeting on Amendment 7 produced a few good ideas and quite a few other ideas that weren’t quite as promising, no final decisions have yet been made with respect to the contents of the draft Amendment 7.  Nothing has been scribed in stone.  Only a few tentative suggestions have been made so far.

Emilie Franke, the Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, is going to appoint teams of PDT members to address each of the four issues, and put some preliminary thoughts and options together.  Those options will then be reviewed and discussed by the PDT, run by the Management Board at its August meeting, and then further refined for inclusion in the draft Amendment 7 that will be debated by the Board in October, and eventually sent out for public hearing.

That means there is a long time, and plenty of opportunity, for the PDT to get things right.  And we need to remember that, among all of the proposals that will be put forth in the final draft amendment, status quo will always be among the options. 

Those of us concerned with striped bass management will have to stay on top of things, and take what opportunities we have to keep the PDT, the Management Board and, in particular, our own states’ representatives to the Management Board on the straight and narrow path.

We can be assured that the states that wanted to undercut effective, conservative striped bass management, states like New Jersey and Maryland, will try to use the draft Amendment 7 process to limit their losses and undo some of the progress made at the May 5 Management Board meeting when, despite all of their efforts, the striped bass scored a big win.

And we can be assured that the representatives of other states, in New England and elsewhere on the coast, who stood strong for striped bass conservation on May 5 will do what they can to keep the momentum from that May meeting going.

There’s no guarantee of how the process will end, but if conservation advocates remain vigilant, stay in touch with like-minded folks on the Management Board, and turn out in numbers when the next round of hearings is held, there is a fair chance that Amendment 7 will be, if not perfect, then at least a document that will put the striped bass in a better place than tne one it is in today.

 

 

 

SOLID WIN FOR STRIPED BASS AT THE ASMFC

On Wednesday, May 5, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board (Management Board) met to discuss the comments that it received on the issues presented in the Public Information Document For Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (PID).

 

The Management Board held eleven webinar/hearings throughout the month of March, seeking stakeholder comment on such issues, and also accepted written comments during that time. Those providing comments overwhelmingly favored conservative management of the striped bass resource, and urged the Management Board to promptly rebuild the striped bass stock, which has become overfished.

 

Despite such comments, many long-time striped bass fishermen and conservation advocates had low expectations for the meeting.

The Management Board had historically been reluctant to restrict striped bass landings, even when faced with threats to the health of the stock. Prior to drafting the PID, it had created a “Work Group” to consider the issues that might be included in the proposed Amendment 7. To many stakeholders’ dismay, the Work Group’s final report did not focus on the need to rebuild and maintain a healthy striped bass stock. Instead, it proposed three “themes” of management, stability, flexibility, and regulatory consistency, which seemed to promote continued inaction rather than more effective management.

 

The Work Group report also suggested that the current spawning stock biomass target might be too high, and that the Management Board might wish to lower it to a level that would permit higher landings, even if such landings would increase long-term risk to the stock. Based on such suggestion, the PID contained language stating that “the current reference points may be unattainable given current objectives for fishery performance.”

 

Work Group members opined that the biggest issue facing striped bass wasn’t overfishing, or recent poor recruitment, but the number of bass that died after being released by recreational fishermen.

Thus, anglers could be excused if they expected the worst as the meeting began.

Yet, as the Management Board was called to order, things took an unexpected turn. Patrick Keliher, the current Chair of the ASMFC, addressed the Board before deliberations began. He said, in part, that “While we’re not at the point we were in 1984, the downward trend in the stock is evident in the assessment. For many of the Commission’s species, we are no longer in a position to hold hope that things will revert to what they have previously been if we just hold static. The change is happening too fast and action needs to be taken.”

With that said, and after a brief discussion of issues unrelated to the PID, the Management Board began to decide which issues ought to be included in the first draft of Amendment 7.

Regional Disagreements

It quickly became clear that the Management Board was divided into two camps, with the New England states, joined by New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia heeding the stakeholders’ call for strong conservation and management measures, while a smaller group, composed of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, either sought or, at least, was willing to consider changes to the management plan that would lead to larger harvests but a permanently diminished stock.

Thus, Dennis Abbott, the Legislative Proxy from New Hampshire, noted that “I don’t think in all my years I have ever saw [sic] comments presented so thoroughly and so well thought out,” while representatives from other jurisdictions, which sought to undermine the strong public support for striped bass conservation, tried to impeach the stakeholders’ comments.

Marty Gary, representing the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, spoke of “folks that struggled” with the hearings’ webinar format, asserted that there are people who are more comfortable speaking in person, and claimed that, as a result, “There are some underrepresented sectors” in the comments received by the Management Board. Tom Fote, the Governor’s Appointee from New Jersey, made similar remarks, saying that while those who spoke at the webinar/hearings had strong feelings, people who felt differently might not have spoken. He also noted that those commenting on the PID appeared to trend younger than those who usually speak at in-person hearings, and surmised that by holding the hearings online, the Management Board may have deterred some people from speaking.

However, neither Mr. Gary nor Mr. Fote tried to explain why those uncomfortable with the webinar format couldn’t have submitted their comments in writing, although perhaps it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. The 3,000 written comments received by the Management Board far outnumbered the 177 comments provided at the webinars, but whether stakeholders commented in writing or at the hearings, nearly all strongly supported striped bass conservation.

Apparently recognizing that stakeholder comment, as well as the opinions of most of the Management Board, was stacked against his position, Michael Luisi, a Maryland fishery manager, attempted to delay meaningful action, saying that “I would prefer at this time, based on the comment, that we think more about consequences to the commercial, recreational, and for-hire fisheries,” and recommended that none of the PID’s issues be removed from consideration in the draft Amendment 7.

His gambit failed. The majority of the Management Board knew that the overwhelming majority of public comment supported conservation, and they knew that the striped bass stock was facing a real threat. Michael Armstrong, a Massachusetts fishery manager, clearly addressed those issues, saying “As I read this document and what’s happening with the fishery, we have to be laser-focused on rebuilding [spawning stock biomass].”

The Voting Begins

The PID addressed nine separate issues and also provided an opportunity for stakeholders to raise other issues that the PID might have overlooked. Of those nine issues, four were particularly important: the overriding goals and objectives of the management plan, the biological reference points used to gauge the health of the striped bass stock, the triggers that would require management action if a threat to the stock emerged, and the time within which a depleted stock must be rebuilt.

The goals and objectives, at least in theory, dictated what provisions ought to be included in the rest of the management plan. The current management goal is “To perpetuate, through cooperative interstate fishery management, migratory stocks of striped bass; to allow commercial and recreational fisheries consistent with the long-term maintenance of a broad age structure, a self-sustaining spawning stock; and also to provide for the restoration and maintenance of their essential habitat.”

The objectives supporting such goal include maintaining female spawning stock biomass at or above the biomass target, keeping fishing mortality low enough to “maintain an age structure that provides adequate spawning potential to sustain long-term abundance,” and maintaining a significant number of older, larger fish in the population; a number of other, largely administrative objectives were also included.

Those goals and objectives, if achieved, would lead to a healthy and resilient striped bass population. Over 98% of those commenting asked that they not be changed. The Management Board, by a vote of 10 to 6, agreed that change would not be addressed in the draft Amendment 7.

A motion to remove any consideration of new biological reference points, used to gauge the health of the stock, from Amendment 7 faced a somewhat longer debate. The biomass and fishing mortality reference points currently used are so-called “empirical” reference points, that are derived from observation, and not calculated by a population model. They’re based on the female spawning stock biomass in 1995, when the striped bass stock had just recovered from an earlier collapse, and was deemed to be in good health.

Some Management Board members objected that the biomass target was too high, and was too difficult to achieve. Another argued that the Management Board shouldn’t preclude the possibility that a model-based reference points could still be derived in time to include them in Amendment 7. But of all the issues in the PID, biological reference points received the most public comment and the greatest support, with well over 99% of the comments opposing any change.

Again, that stakeholder comment was heard. Maine fishery manager Megan Ware noted that the public wanted the Commission to “strengthen its commitment” to effective striped bass management, and that it expected the Management Board to drop fishing mortality to achieve the spawning stock biomass target, and not reduce the spawning stock biomass target to accord with the current fishing mortality level. She disagreed with comments that the public didn’t understand the consequences of maintaining the current reference points, saying that she found stakeholders to be “very well informed.”

The motion on reference points passed, again by 10 to 6.

Management triggers didn’t fare quite as well.

Capt. John McMurray, Legislative Proxy from New York, moved that the draft Amendment 7 only consider changes to the management trigger that addresses poor spawning success. Currently, that trigger suggests management action only when the juvenile abundance index for any of the major spawning areas (Hudson River, Delaware River, Chesapeake Bay, Roanoke River/Albemarle Sound) falls below its 25th percentile for three consecutive years. Capt. McMurray argued that was an ineffective standard, and that managers should be required to act before spawning success deteriorates that far.

His motion was met with some support, but many Management Board members also wanted to revisit the triggers that called for action when spawning stock biomass fell too low or fishing mortality rose too high, and in the end, on a 13 to 2 vote, agreed to do so.

That doesn’t mean that the management triggers will, in the end, be changed, but it does mean that changes will be considered in the draft Amendment 7. The danger is that the Management Board will decide to adopt management triggers that allow delay, perhaps requiring multiple years of excessive fishing mortality or inadequate biomass, before action needs to be taken. It’s also possible that more effective triggers will be adopted. But this is one issue that stakeholders will need to watch closely when the draft Amendment 7 is released in August.

A Pleasant Surprise

Fortunately, the requirement to rebuild an overfished stock within 10 years will not be changed. In moving to remove the issue from consideration in the draft Amendment, Dr. Justin Davis, Connecticut’s fishery manager, noted that the Management Board had received a “clear signal from the public.” He observed that there was no support at all for lengthening the rebuilding time, although some stakeholders believed that such time should be shortened. He also said that 10 years was an appropriate rebuilding timeline, given the striped bass’ biology.

In supporting Dr. Davis’ comments, Capt. McMurray stated that “We made a promise to the public with Amendment 6 [which created the 10-year rebuilding deadline], and I think we should keep it.”

 

And that’s when the biggest surprise of the meeting occurred. Ms. Ware from Maine rose to amend Dr. Davis’ motion, which would “include an option for measures to protect the 2015 year class in Amendment 7,” even though such measures were not specifically included in the PID. In doing so, she cited strong stakeholder concerns, generally poor spawning success over the past five years, and the fact that the relatively abundant 2015 year class would probably draw more anglers into the fishery.

Ms. Ware’s amendment drew immediate support, although some noted that it was somewhat unusual to amend a motion to remove an issue from consideration by adding language that would add a different issue to the draft Amendment 7. It also drew some opposition, with both Mr. Fote of New Jersey and Mr. Luisi of Maryland speaking against it. Their objections were quickly rebutted by Massachusetts’ Michael Armstrong, who observed that outside of the 2015 year class, and a “not bad” 2014 year class in the Hudson River, there were few fish available to rebuild the stock. He said that “We have to start doing Draconian things to get this stock back.”

The majority of the Management Board agreed, and the motion to retain the current rebuilding period, while investigating measures to protect the 2015s, passed by a wide margin, with only New Jersey opposed.

Other Issues Considered

Other subsidiary issues were also considered. Of those, the most important was probably conservation equivalency, the policy which allows states to adopt management measures that differ from those preferred by the Management Board, so long as they provide the same conservation benefit.

While that sounds good in theory, in practice, states typically try to use conservation equivalency to escape their full share of the conservation burden, and provide their fishermen with a larger harvest than they would enjoy under the Management Board’s preferred rules. Such use tends to degrade the effectiveness of management actions, and make them less likely to succeed.

 

Stakeholder comment was critical of the way conservation equivalency had historically been used, as were the comments of many Management Board members. New Hampshire’s Dennis Abbott said that the motion to include conservation equivalency options in the draft Amendment 7 was “the first item that gets to the meat and potatoes of why we have Amendment 7 and why we’re not reaching our objectives.” He called for “substantial changes” in how conservation equivalency was used.

So did the Management Board which, in a near-unanimous vote that saw only New Jersey opposed, agreed to consider changes to its conservation equivalency policy in the draft Amendment.

In other actions, the Management Board agreed to consider additional ways to reduce recreational release mortality in the draft Amendment, and to omit any consideration of regional approaches to striped bass management, recreational accountability measures, and changes to the commercial allocation, although the latter issue will be examined in a separate management action.

The final result was a draft Amendment 7 that should have real potential to improve the way striped bass are managed. Virtually all of the issues included in the PID, that might have posed a threat to the health of the stock, have been removed; only the reconsideration of management triggers provides any cause for any concern.

On the other hand, the stock can only benefit if measures to protect the 2015 year class, reform the way conservation equivalency is used, and reduce recreational release mortality become a part of the final Amendment 7.

There is still a long way to go before that amendment is completed. But this time, it appears that the Management Board is on the right path.

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This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/

 

UNITED STATES MUST RECLAIM LEADERSHIP ROLE IN SHARK CONSERVATION

Tomorrow, May 21, the Advisory Committee to the U.S. Section to ICCAT’s Species Working Groups will meet to discuss issues likely to arise the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

Despite the Commission’s name, its purview extends well beyond tuna, to “tuna-like fishes,” which has  been construed to mean what we normally think of as the “highly migratory species”:  tuna, billfish, swordfish, and sharks.  And one of the most important issues on this year’s agenda is a shark issue; more particularly, it is the question of how to halt the decline, and begin the rebuilding, of the North Atlantic stock of shortfin makos.

Over the past few years, the United States hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory when it comes to mako shark conservation. 

In 2017, a new stock assessment released by ICCAT caught many fishery managers by surprise when it found that shortfin makos in the North Atlantic were both overfished and experiencing overfishing.  The stock assessment team employed three different population models and all came to the same conclusion; although they disagreed somewhat in the magnitude of the overfishing that occurred in 2015, they agreed that it was substantial, with harvest ranging between 193% and 438% of the sustainable level.

Such assessment advised that

“For the North Atlantic stock…catches would need to be reduced to 1,000 [metric tons] or lower to prevent further population declines.  However, taking into consideration the timetable for stock rebuilding based on this approach, it should be noted that for a [total allowable catch] of 1,000 [metric tons] the probability of [ending overfishing and fully rebuilding the stock] is estimated to be only 25% by the year 2040.

“The Group indicated that releasing animals brought to the vessel alive could be a potentially effective measure to reduce fishing mortality as studies indicate post-release survival is likely to be about 70%...However, at this time the Group does not have enough information to assess if the adoption of live releases alone will be enough to reduce landings to 1,000 [metric tons] or less and stop further stock decline.  [emphasis added]”

In other words, in order to stop the stock’s decline, all makos that at come to the boat alive should be released—and even then, there’s no guarantee that would get the job done.

Unfortunately, that stock assessment came out during the Trump Administration, which viewed natural resources as things to be monetized, not conserved, and during the reign of a Secretary of Commerce who believed that all fisheries should be prosecuted for maximum sustainable yield. As a result, the United States opposed the prospect of releasing every live mako, even though such proposal was supported by the best scientific information available.  Instead, the United States ended up supporting a compromise agreement that

“focuses on measures to reduce fishing mortality and efforts to further strengthen data collection, while protecting opportunities for U.S. recreational and commercial fishermen to retain small amounts of shortfin mako sharks.”

In accordance with such agreement, the United States issued emergency regulations which allowed pelagic longliners (but no other commercial vessels) to retain any makos that were dead when brought to the boat, and established an 83-inch (fork length) minimum size limit for anglers. 

Even those too-weak measures didn’t stand up for long. 

On March 3, 2019, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a final regulation that allowed all commercial shark fishermen, and not merely pelagic longliners with video monitoring equipment on board, to retain any mako that was dead when brought to the boat; since video monitoring was not required in the other fisheries, regulators would have to rely on the fishermen’s word that they didn’t retain any makos that came to the boat while still alive.

On the recreational side, the new regulations dropped the minimum size for male makos from 83 to 71 inches; the 83-inch minimum for females was retained.  While the minimum size provides some value with respect to males, as 50 percent of them are mature at 71 inches, the 83-inch minimum for females is far too small; females don’t even begin to mature until about 106 inches long, with 50 percent mature at a fork length of 110 inches and a weight of about 600 pounds.

Allowing anglers to kill 83-inch female makos means that almost all of the fish harvested won’t have a chance to reproduce even once.

In 2019, the ICCAT stock assessment was updated, and the news was worse than it was two years before.  The update advised that

“All three models projected that spawning stock fecundity (SSF), defined as the number of pups produced in each year, will continue to decline until approximately 2035 even with no fishing, because the cohorts that have been depleted in the past will age into the mature population over the next few decades (the median age at maturity is 21 years).  For [two of the models], a [total allowable catch] of between 800 – 900 [metric tons], including dead discards, resulted in >50% probability of [ending overfishing and fully rebuilding the stock] by 2070.  [The third model], which assumed a low-productivity stock-recruitment relationship, found that only [a total allowable catch] of between 0 and 100 [metric tons] (including dead discards) resulted in [ending overfishing and rebuilding the stock] by 2070.  The group emphasized that fishing mortality rates had to be well below [the fishing mortality rate that would produce maximum sustainably yield] to see any rebuilding.  [emphasis added]”

Faced with the knowledge that the combined landings and dead discards would have to be cut to no more than 900 metric tons, and perhaps to something approaching zero, in order to have half a chance of rebuilding the stock within 50 years, the United States ICCAT delegation, undoubtedly advised by higher-ups in Washington, yawned and went into the meeting seeking

“A one-year extension of current management measures [which, among other things, allowed anglers to retain shortfin makos] for North Atlantic shortfin mako shark while the Commission works toward adoption of a comprehensive rebuilding program.”

With that priority in mind, the U.S. joined with the European Union and Curacao to oppose a measure to ban all retention of shortfin makos, a measure supported even by nations such as Japan, China, and Taiwan, which have often proved hostile to needed conservation actions.  The attorney for one environmental group, who was present at the meeting, noted that

“Of the three ICCAT proposals to limit the catch of mako sharks, the U.S. proposal was the only one that would allow killing of makos that made it to the boat alive.”

Last year, the United States and European Union joined forces to defeat such proposal again.

But things have changed a little since then. 

Last November’s election ushered in a new presidential administration, so the White House is no longer focused on squeezing the last dollar from everything that walks, swims, flies, grows, or lies under the Earth. 

On April 15, the NMFS issued a so-called “90-day finding” in response to a petition seeking to list shortfin makos pursuant to the Endangered Species Act.  It stated that

“We find that the petition presents substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted.  Therefore, we are initiating a status review of the species to determine whether listing under the ESA is warranted.”

While such finding doesn’t mean that shortfin makos will ultimately be declared to be either threatened or endangered, it does indicate that the shark population is not in good shape, and that additional protections may well be needed.

The question remains:  When the time comes to again address shortfin mako issues at ICCAT, will representatives of the Biden Administration reclaim the United States’ recently abandoned role as a leader in highly migratory species conservation? 

Or will it follow in the Trump Administration’s footsteps, seek to squeeze the last drops of blood from an already-crumbling stone, and continue to oppose a ban on all mako retention?

From rumors that I’m hearing, there isn't too much reason for optimism, although enough vocal support from concerned citizens might still bring this administration around.