STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7 BEGINS TO TAKE SHAPE

It takes a long time for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to amend a fishery management plan.  

Such amendments take a up a lot of staff time, call for at least two rounds of public hearings, and many hours of work by the relevant management board.  The proposed Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was initiated less than one year ago, and the fact that it could be completed as soon as next February shows a remarkable level of focus and determination on the part of everyone involved.

Although the Amendment is a long way from finished, it’s beginning to take on some shape.  The May meeting of the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board determined what wouldn’t be in it; the plan’s goals and objectives, biological reference points, and mandated rebuilding times will remain status quo.

Neither will the Amendment address regional management issues, or commercial allocations, although a separate management action addressing the latter is almost certainly in the cards.

So that much of Amendment 7 is pretty well cast in stone.

However, as I reported a month or so ago, the management triggers are still on the table, with bureaucrats more interested in “management stability” and “flexibility” pushing hard to create additional opportunities to delay taking needed management actions.  That’s something that we’ll have to watch very closely if we hope to rebuild the stock, and keep it from declining again.

As important as it is to get the management triggers right, and to prevent poorly-drafted triggers from undercutting the value of the biological reference points and frustrating the goals and objectives of the plan, the management triggers present a relatively simple issue:  Either the Management Board is required to act quickly and decisively when faced with a potential threat to the stock, or it is allowed to dither and delay.

Other issues present more difficult, and more nuanced, questions.  Because of that, the Striped Bass Plan Development Team has asked the Management Board to consider a number of questions related to recreational release mortality, conservation equivalency, and the recruitment-based management trigger.  Reading those questions provides some hints on what a draft Amendment 7 might look like, although the Management Board’s answers in August will tell us far more.

Recreational release mortality is the first topic addressed, and reading through the PDT questions, just like listening to the PDT meeting on the topic, makes itt clear that the PDT doesn’t really know how to go about addressing the issue.  A lot of that flows from the fact that the Management Board never really explained what the PDT was supposed to accomplish, particularly what magnitude of reductions should be achieved by PDT-designed options.  As the PDT memo notes,

“In the absence of a target for reducing effort (i.e., a percent reduction in the number of live releases), the PDT requests guidance on the range of days, months, or waves the Board would like to consider for coastwide or state-specific closures.  Without additional direction, the PDT can only focus on options for biological and ecological closures, such as seasonal closures for spawning areas and for peak temperature periods.”

While I would argue that any management action, including closed seasons, should only be taken “for biological and ecological” reasons, reality dictates that political and economic considerations are going to come into play as well.  Thus, we may very well see the draft Amendment 7 contain seasonal closures designed to reduce fishing effort in order to reduce release mortality.  

Whether those closures make it into the final document may well depend on whether stakeholders can again turn out the volume and quantity of comments in the next round of hearings that they did the first time around.

The PDT is also asking the Management Board what any closures should look like:

“Should the PDT focus on no-harvest closure options (catch-and-release fishing allowed) and/or no-targeting closure options?”

It notes that

“The PDT assumes maximum reduction of effort, and thus reduction in number of releases, would be achieved with no-targeting closures.  However, the PDT recognizes enforceability concerns and uncertainty around the level of compliance, so compliance would have to be assumed under a no-targeting closure.  With no-harvest closures, angler behavior might shift to catch-and-release fishing trips, thereby increasing the number of releases which is counter to the objective of reducing release mortality.  Additionally, there is no information on the difference in release mortality rates between catch-and-release trips versus trips harvesting striped bass.

“The most appropriate approach may depend on the reason for the closure; for example, implementing a no-targeting closure during high temperature periods when release mortality rates are increased.  Various scenarios and assumptions can be explored with MRIP effort data, likely with high PSEs, but factors like angler behavior are unpredictable and catch-and-release trips are not separable in MRIP.”

Those comments get to the heart of the release mortality issue, because it implicitly recognizes the central truth that release mortality and harvest mortality are inextricably linked, and nearly impossible to separate into neat silos.  

Someone who primarily fishes for recreation, but takes a bass home every now and again, will probably keep fishing during a no-harvest closure, if catch and release is still allowed, while a pure meat fisherman might quit—but it’s impossible to separate the two from the available data.  And it’s also impossible to know, should a non-targeting rule be put in place,  how many of those folks working the rips and the beaches, supposedly for bluefish, are actually fishing for bass.

Thus, the continuing effort to distinguish release mortality from harvest mortality still strikes me as a nearly impossible, and largely pointless, effort.  While I believe that shutting down the entire fishery during the hot depths of summer, when release mortality spikes, is a good idea in some places, in particular the Maryland portion of Chesapeake Bay (Virginia has already closed its summer Bay fishery), the other efforts to isolate release mortality from other removals seems to be little more than an exercise in spinning one’s wheels. 

It would be far easier, and probably far more effective, to place the emphasis on keeping overall fishing mortality at or below target, without spending such time trying to control where such mortality comes from.  Striped bass is primarily a recreational release fishery, and there is little reason to try to reshape it something that it is not.

The other problem with closed seasons, which the PDT recognized, is that a single coastwide closure—one proposal was December 15 through April 15—would have very different impacts in different states.  Here in New York, we’re already closed during that time, and fishermen up in New England would give a big yawn if you told them that they couldn’t fish for stripers during the winter and early spring.  But down south, off North Carolina and Virginia, and in the Chesapeake Bay, that sort of closure would have a much bigger impact.

The other option might be to require each state to close their current seasons for a period of time, to achieve a percentage reduction, but doing that starts looking very much like conservation equivalency, and would be subject to the same sort of shenanigans. 

Thus, although I believe that options for season closures will be a part of the draft Amendment 7, I’m not sure that they’ll make it into the final document, particularly because I expect some good changes relating to the use of conservation equivalency to be included.

Conservation equivalency abuses were one of the hotter topics addressed at last May’s Management Board meeting.  Dennis Abbott, the Legislative Proxy from New Hampshire, noted that conservation equivalency

“is the first item of the ten that we’re dealing with, that really gets to the meat and potatoes of why we have Amendment 7 in the works, and how we got to be overfished and overfishing occurring.

“A little history, in 2009 I was quoted widely that conservation equivalency, as I said was ‘death by 1000 cuts,” and that was in 2009.  There was some reaction to that, positive reaction to that.  But we continued on our merry way.  In 2012 I stated again, and I quote, ‘We have a canary in a coal mine that will probably fall off its perch pretty soon, and it deals with conservation equivalency.

“At that time, we didn’t take any action to limit our catch and change our regulations.  In 2020, I said that the ink wasn’t even dry on the latest addendum, when states had their CEs in the works.  It directly showed after these CEs or conservation equivalencies were approved, that we went from a proposed 18 percent savings with a 50 percent probability of success down to 15.

“In large part, I think that our application of conservation equivalency has surely been a part of how we got there…”   

Only New Jersey was opposed to addressing conservation equivalency in the draft Amendment 7, which is hardly surprising, as New Jersey has probably been the single biggest abuser of that process.  In fact, not long after Richie White, New Hampshire’s Governor’s Appointee, suggested that Amendment 7

“require a conservation equivalency proposal to provide 125 percent savings [compared to the coastwide measures], instead of the 100 percent presently required…

“require conservation equivalency proposals at thresholds of success , using a 75 percent probability of success,…[and provide that] conservation equivalency will not be allowed, if stock is overfished or overfishing is occurring…”

Joseph Cimino, New Jersey’s fishery manager, took exception, saying

“I have rarely seen an item more demonized than this.  I think it’s a shame.  You know we all struggle with MRIP estimates, there are point estimates to talk about, you know accountability in this way, I think is a little bit misguided.  It isn’t for the benefit of the stock.  Those states that don’t take CE have time and again by Board members here said they don’t need to take action…

“Where we’re pretending that 2020 measures will have the same stock conditions, the same environmental conditions, the same fishing pressure as 2017 on paper, to prove we’re going to need 125 percent reduction.  It’s just punitive, it’s not a consideration for the stock.  I don’t know why we keep going down this road…”

Cimino’s comments were rich with irony.

In many ways, he wasn’t wrong. 

All of the factors he mentioned—MRIP uncertainty, striped bass abundance, environmental conditions, and fishing pressure—do vary from year to year.  But he has no problem basing New Jersey’s conservation equivalency proposals, which somehow always allow that state’s anglers to kill more and/or smaller fish than everyone else on the coast, on past data, knowing that conditions will change and render the state’s supposedly conservation equivalent regulations not truly equivalent to the coastwide rules at all.

It’s only when someone suggests that data based on the same considerations be used to hold New Jersey accountable for its regulations’ shortcomings that things such as MRIP uncertainty and changing striped bass abundance become, in Cimino’s mind, a real problem.

What Cimino actually did was create a strong argument against the use of conservation equivalency, for the very reason that uncertain and constantly changing data makes any effort to craft truly conservation equivalent regulations an exercise in futility.

The good news is that the PDT seems to be leaning toward Mr. White’s side of the table.  Its memo to the Management Board advised that

“From the PDT’s perspective, the other front-end measures being developed for CE proposals (e.g., restrictions on when CE can be used, requiring an uncertainty buffer, setting data standards) are a more effective tool to improve the performance of CE in the striped bass fishery.”

Unfortunately, it also noted that

“the PDT recommends the removal of CE accountability options from Draft Amendment 7,”

largely for technical reasons that make calculating state conservation equivalency performance, compared to coastwide management measures, very difficult if not impossible given existing tools.

Even with that deletion, it appears that some very robust proposals to rein in, and perhaps even to eliminate, the use of conservation equivalency will appear in the draft Amendment 7.

The issue of improving the recruitment management trigger also turns on technical issues, so it is probably appropriate that the issue was addressed in a memo from the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee to the Management Board.

Once again, it’s a question of figuring out what the Management Board wants to do.  As the Technical Committee observed,

“If the intent of the trigger is to identify true recruitment failure, i.e., a prolonged period of very low recruitment events as seen during the 1970s and 1980s, then the current trigger would perform adequately.  However, if the Board wants to identify periods of below average recruitment that are not necessarily at historically low levels in order to be precautionary with future management, the trigger should be revised.”

Given that the latter situation—a management trigger that trips when the kind of low recruitment we’ve seen over most of the past 15 years—was what the public comment was focused on, it’s good to see that the Technical Committee provided a number of options to the Management Board.

While the current recruitment trigger only trips when a juvenile abundance index doesn’t rise above the 25^th percentile of its time series for three consecutive years, the Technical Committee suggested that the Management Board might change that standard to only require two consecutive years of 25^th percentile-or-less recruitment, or possibly such recruitment for three out of five years, or maybe a three year average, which would allow the trigger to trip even if recruitment was marginally higher in one of such years.

It also suggested that the reference period could be changed.  Instead of using the entire time series, which included the very low recruitment that occurred during the collapse years in the 1970s and ‘80s, the reference period might be updated to include only the period 1995-2012, when the stock was recovered and relatively healthy, or 1992-2006, when the Maryland juvenile abundance index indicated a period of high recruitment.  That would lead to the recruitment trigger tripping more often.

Whatever options are ultimately chosen, it seems very likely that the draft Amendment 7, and very possibly the final Amendment as well, will include a revised recruitment trigger.

Of course, the fact that there could be a new recruitment trigger doesn’t mean that it will actually trigger any management action.  The Technical Committee acknowledged that,saying

“Currently, no management response is specified for the recruitment trigger; the Board decides on the appropriate response when the trigger is tripped…

“Juvenile abundance indices and model recruitment estimates provide information on the near-term productivity of the stock.  A run of several years poor recruitment results in fewer fish entering the exploitable population and the spawning stock biomass, and levels of removals that were suitable during average or above average recruitment regimes may not be sustainable in the future.  If the Board wants to be proactive about responding to periods of lower recruitment, the Board could redefine the [fishing mortality] target or the rebuilding framework to be more precautionary.”

Unfortunately, “proactive” and “precautionary” have never been words associated with the Management Board; “dilatory” and “risk tolerant” would come much closer to the mark.  Given the Management Board’s choice of “management stability” and “flexibility” as “guiding themes” for Amendment 7, it’s highly unlikely that a recruitment trigger that requires the Management Board to actually get off its collective duff and actually do something proactive if it is tripped will be part of the package.

Still, we can hope.

So, as we gaze into the future, what do we see as the shape of Amendment 7?

The framework of the Amendment will look very familiar, with the same reference points, goals and objectives, and rebuilding time as the current Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.  

Some parts of Amendment 7 may be streamlined a bit, if the proposed restrictions on the use of conservation equivalency make it into the document, as I suspect that they will.  At the same time, other parts of the Amendment may be made more unwieldy by the addition of clumsy efforts to reduce recreational release mortality, and possible changes to management triggers that allow the Management Board to sit on its hands for two or three years—and perhaps more—when faced with threats to the stock.  Possible changes to the recruitment trigger may beef the Amendment up slightly, but it’s far too early to be sure that will happen.

What we’re looking at now is an Amendment 7 that will be nowhere as bad as we feared it would be just one year ago, but that could still include some serious flaws.  

Yet time still remains on our side.  The draft Amendment won’t be sent to the public before the October Management Board meeting, so there is still plenty of time to see that the Management Board gets things right.

If the Management Board ends up getting things wrong, we will still have the next round of public hearings to set it on the right path.  It probably won’t be easy, but we already did it once ahead of the May meeting; if we remain focused and determined, we should be able to do it again.

On the other hand, if we lose focus, things could still turn out badly, so we need to remain prepared.