BLUEFISH MANAGEMENT: A TALE OF TWO FISHERIES

 Over the past few years, I’ve written quite a bit about bluefish management.

During that time, I’ve criticized proposals to shift recreational quota to the commercial sector.  I’ve argued for the recreational bluefish fishery to be managed for abundance rather than for landings.  And I’ve directed unkind words at both the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Bluefish Management Board for making decisions that always seem to favor high current landings rather than the long-term health of the stock.

But what I realized that I never have done is taken a real look at the fishery itself.  That’s a serious omission, because without understanding the nature of the fishery, it’s difficult to understand why some of the current management measures fall so wide of the mark.

Perhaps the first thing to understand is that the New England/mid-Atlantic bluefish fishery is unique because, of all the popular inshore recreational fisheries, it is one of the few that, in most states, is not governed by any sort of size limit.  

There are a few others.  

To the north, there are no recreational size limits for either Atlantic herring or Atlantic mackerel, but both of those species are essentially baitfish, that are subject to commercial harvest on an industrial scale, and support relatively small recreational fisheries.

Farther south, there are various panfish, such as puffers and northern kingfish, spot and Atlantic croaker, that can be landed without regard for size.  But the former two species are effectively unmanaged throughout their range, while the latter two are so small that imposing a size limit on the recreational fishery would border on the impractical.

Bluefish are different.  They are a relatively large fish, that can frequently exceed ten pounds in weight and, on not so rare occasions, might exceed 20.  The International Game Fish Association recognizes a 31-pound, 12-ounce bluefish, caught off North Carolina in 1972, as the all-tackle world record.  At the same time, young-of-the-year bluefish, known colloquially as snappers, typically flood inshore waters during late summer, where they are easily caught from shore, boat docks, and piers. 

The snappers support a fishery that is very different from the fishery for larger bluefish.  The snapper fishery is generally prosecuted from shore, although there is also a small-boat component.  The cost of entry is low; untold numbers of snappers have been caught with nothing more than a cane pole, hook, and length of line, along with some frozen bait. 

Because snappers are so readily accessible, the fishery attracts children, who often keep their fish, either marinating them in buckets of warm seawater or scraping their sun-stiffened bodies off the hot pavement of local docks at the end of the day.  

It also attracts older anglers who can no longer endure rough seas or extended outings, but can still sit in a folding chair and enjoy catching snappers from shore; such anglers may release all or part of their catch, but may also take some fish home for a tasty and low-cost meal.  The promise of inexpensive protein, and the fact that snappers can often be found along urban waterfronts, also make them a frequent target of lower-income folks and recent immigrants who typically fish for food.

But, although there are exceptions, snappers are not widely sought by serious anglers, unless they are on a family outing.

The fishery for big bluefish is very different. 

While quite a few larger bluefish are caught from shore, boat fishermen play a significant role in the fishery.  Although more than 50% of all bluefish caught from shore in 2019 were snappers—fish no more than 12 inches long—over 55% of bluefish caught from boats were larger than 14 inches in (fork) length.  While the large bluefish fishery does have a catch-and-keep component, many anglers tend to release larger fish, believing that the meat becomes strong tasting, to the point of being unpalatable.

The big bluefish fishery is, unlike the snapper fishery, largely a catch-and-release fishery; data used in the last benchmark stock assessment supports the notion that anglers tend to release their bigger bluefish, and keep the smaller ones.  The big bluefish fishery also tends to be more equipment intensive, requiring larger, more expensive rods and reels, and often involving relatively costly artificial lures.

Unfortunately, the differences between the snapper fishery and the large bluefish fishery don’t appear in management documents; there is a real risk that, because the snapper fishery is so popular along parts of the coast, snapper-related data distorts overall bluefish catch, effort, and landings data, which results in a significant misunderstanding of how the large bluefish fishery is prosecuted.  

The Mid-Atlantic Council and Bluefish Management Board have adopted management measures based on the assumption that the bluefish released by anglers participating in the big-fish fishery are the same size as those that are retained by anglers in the snapper fishery, despite the real-world bias toward catch-and-keep in the snapper fishery and the bias toward catch-and-release in the large bluefish fishery.

Thus, the estimate of recreational release mortality is almost certainly too low, which means, in turn, that regulations based, in part, on such estimate may not be restrictive enough to keep overall fishing mortality below the fishing mortality target.

And that’s before we even get to the question of stock structure.

Bluefish are managed as a single stock, that ranges from Maine to Florida.  Such approach is supported by both genetic and tagging data.  However, the Atlantic coastal stock seems to be divided into three components.  One component migrates along the coast, with some individuals migrating from New England as far as Florida.  One component remains in the mid-Atlantic area, and doesn’t migrate much farther south than North Carolina.  A third component remains off Florida, migrating inshore and offshore.

The regional bluefish fisheries that target such sub-stocks also differ.  

In New England, bluefish 12 inches or less in length accounted for less than 8% of all shore-based landings in 2019; 14-inch (fork length) bluefish accounted for well over half of the landings there, while nearly 55% of the boat-caught fish were 16 inches (fork length) long or larger.  

In the mid-Atlantic, where the snapper fishery is very important, nearly 80% of all bluefish landed in 2019 were no more than 12 inches (fork length) long.  On the other hand, 58% of boat-caught fish were at least 14 inches in length.  

In the South Atlantic—the Carolinas to Florida—large bluefish are not a big part of the fishery.  While 12-inch or smaller snapper blues only comprised a little more than 40% of shore-based anglers’ landings, virtually all of the shore-caught fish were no more than 18 inches (fork length) long.  The fish caught from boats also trended smaller than elsewhere on the coast, with less than 30% more than 14 inches (fork length) in length.

By combining the regional fisheries into a single set of management measures, the Mid-Atlantic Council and Bluefish Management Board ignore regional differences in the fishery.  That’s important, for regulations that might be appropriate in the mid-Atlantic, for a sub-stock that rarely ranges south of Cape Hatteras, may not make sense for sub-stocks of fish that range from New England into the south Atlantic, or for those that never stray from the Florida coast.

While I referred to bluefish as a tale of two fisheries—snappers and adults—the true picture is much more complicated than that.  Recreational bluefish management is a tale of many fisheries:  of young-of-the-years and adults; of wide-ranging migrants and fish that never leave Florida waters; of a primarily catch-and-keep fishery for small fish, and a primarily catch-and-release fishery for adults.

The current management plan for bluefish, which tosses all of those fisheries into a single pot, and tries to come up with management measures that will work for all, is overly simplistic.  Because it ignores the differences between the fisheries, it adopts generalized, one-size-fits-all management measures that, in the end, don’t fit any of the diverse bluefish fisheries particularly well.

We can hope that they’ll work despite that reality.

But we should not be surprised if they don’t.

MANAGING GULF RED SNAPPER IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD

Regular readers of this blog know that I have often written about recreational fishing industry and anglers’ rights organizations' continuing efforts to disrupt science-based management of the recreational red snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico.  It’s something that’s been going on for a decade or so, and it doesn’t look like the disrupters are going to give up the fight at any time soon.

The problem, of course, is that science-based fishery management is based on data, and research, and established facts.  Anyone who wishes to disrupt such management is already at a significant disadvantage, because facts pretty well speak for themselves.  However, the disrupters down in the Gulf have come up with what they feel is a simple solution to such a problem, a solution that has served other people well, or not so well, elsewhere in the political sphere.

They merely present “alternative facts” that seem to contradict the scientific data, and move the argument in the direction that they want to go.

As the Slang Dictionary explains,

“Alternative facts have been called many things:  falsehoods, untruths, delusions.  A fact is something that actually exists—what we would call “reality” or “truth.”  An alternative is one of the choices in a set of given options; typically the options are opposites of each other.  So to talk about alternative facts is to talk about the opposite of reality (which is delusion), or the opposite of truth (which is untruth).”

In the past, organizations seeking to maintain their credibility with policymakers and the public would have been hesitant about basing arguments on delusions or untruths, because such arguments would quickly undercut their standing with both constituencies.  But such concerns may no longer be too important, for over the past five years or so, we have seen expertise and truth discounted in many private and even some government circles, in favor of the sort of compelling delusions that prevail in what some have called a post-truth world.

Professor Julian Birkinshaw, writing for Forbes magazine, described the post-truth world as a world

“where alternative facts and fake news compete on an equal footing with peer-reviewed research and formerly authoritative sources.”

He explained that

“The post-truth era has emerged because of several long-cycle trends that affect how we make sense of the world around us.  The phenomenon even has a name—agnotology, the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt.  And it comes in a variety of flavors, from the relatively benign (persuading people through ‘spin’ or the selective use of facts) to the deliberately malicious (willful peddling of objectively incorrect information).”

Another source notes that

“Post-truth differs from traditional contesting and falsifying of facts by relegating facts and expert opinions to be of secondary importance relative to appeal to emotion.”

I was reminded of these things, and their relation to the Gulf’s recreational red snapper fishery, when I read a recent article in the online publication FishingWire.  It was written by Ted Venker, who is the National Conservation Director for the Coastal Conservation Association.  Given the positions that both the author and the organization he represents frequently take, the use of “Conservation” in both the job title and the organization’s name may, in themselves, be manifestations of the post-truth era, as the article itself most certainly is.

The title of the piece itself, “The Fishery that Won’t Stay Saved,” as well as the introductory paragraphs that invoke scenes from an animated film, reek of the sort of counterfactual emotional appeal that defines the post-truth era.

The theme that animates the entire article, and gives rise to its title, probably transcends mere post-truth and rises to the level of Orwellian double-speak,

“language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words,”

for when Venker speaks about a “saved” fishery, he is referring to a red snapper fishery where federal management measures designed to constrain recreational landings to a science-based annual catch limit are replaced by measures that allow a higher recreational kill.  Promoting a management philosophy that is eerily reminiscent of an infamous Vietnam War era quote, Venker argues we need to destroy more red snapper in order to save the fishery.

The article heads downhill from there.

Venker complains of

“federal mismanagement that resulted in recreational seasons as short as three days,”

but what he conveniently fails to mention is why the federal seasons had become so attenuated.  Venker completely ignores the fact that the 3-day federal season, in the year it occurred, was a counterbalance to longer state red snapper seasons that were established after state chapters of the Coastal Conservation Association encouraged their states to go out of compliance with the federal season. 

Because Gulf red snapper are managed as a single stock, the additional fish caught during the extended state seasons were counted against the recreational catch limit, and the only way to prevent overfishing was to shorten the federal season to compensate for the much higher landings that occurred in state waters.

But Venker doesn’t mention that part, even though his own organization substantially contributed to the states’ decisions to go out of compliance with the federal rules.  In his post-truth world, he would have you believe that it was all the feds’ fault.

In a similar act of incomplete disclosure, Venker claims that

“Congress had grown suspicious of a fishery in which seasons were continually being shortened but the fishery seemed healthier than ever.  So in 2016, Congress appropriated $10 million for an unprecedented independent study to determine the true population of red snapper in the Gulf once and for all,”

but fails to point out that it was comments by his own organization, and by the fishing industry lobbying group, the Center for Sportfishing Policy (to which CCA belongs), that created some legislators' suspicions in the first place.  Nor does he mention that the same legislators who supported the $10 million appropriation received significant political contributions from the Center.

It turns out that the population study, nicknamed the Great Red Snapper Count, did find more red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico than previous studies did—about three times as many, in fact.  But when describing the impacts of the study, Venker dives into not just post-truth reporting, but alternative facts as well.

And he kicks it all off with another episode of doublespeak, saying that once the results of the Count were in,

“the states and Congress appear to have saved the day.  But the federal agency managed to pull red snapper back into jeopardy again.”

How, one might ask, did federal fishery managers put red snapper back into jeopardy?  The answer, according to Venker, is by not allowing anglers to kill as many red snapper as CCA would like.

Yes, you read that correctly.  According to Venker, federal fishery managers put red snapper “back into jeopardy” by killing fewer of them.

Anybody remember that definition of doublespeak, “language that deliberately…reverses the meaning of words?”

After that, he serves up some alternative facts, suggesting that states “abandoned a broken [federal] system [for calculating recreational red snapper landings], built a better one, but are required to return to the broken system,” when the reality is that the state landings surveys are actually a part of the federal Marine Recreational Information Program, and designed in part by federal managers.  As noted on one National Marine Fisheries Service web page,

“supplemental and specialized surveys are used alongside MRIP general surveys to collect data for select fisheries or during select fishing seasons.  Pairing our general surveys—which provide annual catch estimates for all species encountered—with specialized surveys allows us to develop more comprehensive recreational fisheries statistics.”

Florida’s Gulf Reef Fish Survey, Alabama’s Snapper Check, Mississippi’s Tails ‘n Scales, and Louisiana’s LA Creel—all state-based surveys used to calculate red snapper landings—are listed among the specialized surveys employed by NMFS. 

The truth is that such state-specific surveys are part of MRIP, and were approved by NMFS before being fully implemented.  Because such state-specific surveys use methodologies that differ from that used by the general MRIP survey, their results will have to be harmonized with MRIP—a process known as “calibration”—before they can be used for management work.  Once that calibration occurs, it is expected to show that recreational landings were higher than the state surveys show, and that more restrictive regulations will be needed.

Fisheries scientists have understood the need for recalibration for a few years, but Venker, attempting to spur an emotional response, tries to turn what is merely good science into some sort of management scandal.

All, of course, so that anglers can kill more red snapper, and thus, somehow, “save” them.

Finally, he casts aspersions on the competence of the biologists on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (“the same group of academicians and scientists who have presided over red snapper science for years and even decades in some cases”) for not substantially increasing the recreational red snapper quota in response to “work by the new group of scientists that revealed an additional 800 million pounds of red snapper that the SSC had somehow missed.”

In doing so, he wrongly attributes previous stock assessments to the Gulf Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, when they wereactually conducted through NMFS’ Southeast Regional Office’s SEDAR (SoutheastData Assessment and Review) process.  And his language wrongfully suggests that previous assessments’ lower estimates came from a lack of competence rather than a lack of money to conduct a survey of the entire Gulf, which was actually the case.  As NMFS explains,

“the preliminary abundance estimates produced by the study are consistent with those of the 2018 Gulf red snapper stock assessment conducted by NOAA Fisheries for natural and artificial structures, or high relief areas.  The commercial and recreational red snapper fisheries predominantly operate on those high relief areas.

“What’s new is this study better estimates the red snapper living in the low relief/bottom habitat, such as sand or mud.  Those areas are very extensive, but have low fish per area so are not where the fishery typically operates.  In fact, the study suggests that most of the Gulf red snapper is located in these low relief areas.  This confirms what some scientists, managers, and fishermen have long suspected, but did not have the means to prove until now.  [emphasis added]”

But such simple truths carry little emotional impact, so from Venker’s standpoint, it is far better to make his case by suggesting alternative facts that better support the point that he’s trying to make.

Such are the sort of things that fishery managers, as well as fishermen trying to truly understand the process, often have to deal with in this post-truth world.   Yet a few things will always prove true:

Truth stands on its own, without the need for embellishment.  Anyone who tries to hide or embroider the truth is not to be trusted.

Cold facts are always a better guide than hot emotions.  When someone tries to push emotional buttons, they and the facts are most probably standing on different sides of the issue.

Doublespeak is a tool of the con man, alternative facts the tools of a liar.  Both deserve to be shunned.

Even in a post-truth world, the truth can prevail, if people are only willing to give it a little help.

 

WARMING WATERS, SHIFTING STOCKS, AND NO GOOD SOLUTIONS

My wife and I were in the mood for fresh fish, so last Wednesday, we climbed into the boat and headed out through Fire Island Inlet.

I pulled back the throttles maybe 20 miles out, where we found a swarm of dolphin—mahi-mahi—hanging around an offshore buoy.  We started casting bucktails and poppers, and it wasn’t too long before we had enough fish, ranging from small “chicken dolphin” to the (very) low double digits, in the fish box to guarantee that our fresh fish drought was over, but also to provide another half-dozen packages of vacuum-packed fillets to serve as a frozen reserve against future slow times.

It was the sort of trip that happens countless times every day off Florida and the other southeastern states, and that has been happening there since anglers first started taking their boats offshore.  But we were fishing out of Long Island, New York, not Florida.  Up here, anglers looking to take home some fish have historically targeted fluke (summer flounder), scup or, more recently, black sea bass; those who liked somewhat oilier fare might add bluefish to their list.

Making directed trips for dolphin, as the most likely way to put fish in the freezer is, for Long Island, something fairly new.

We always had a few dolphin around, but when I started fishing offshore forty or so years ago, they were never something that you could count on.

You might have one grab a lure intended for tuna while trolling out in the canyons, or maybe closer inshore if an eddy of warm, blue water broke off from the Gulf Stream and moved onto the continental shelf.  You might come across a log or a board while fishing offshore that had a few dolphin sheltering in its shade, or you might be surprised when a larger dolphin picked a bait up in the chum slick while you were drifting for sharks.

Back then, when dolphin were caught, they tended to be happy accidents, targets of opportunity that you caught once in a while, but never intentionally targeted.

Recently, that has changed.  Dolphin had been growing ever more abundant over the past couple of decades.  Maybe a dozen or so years ago, they finally reached the tipping point, where an angler heading offshore any time between mid-July and mid-September could reasonably expect to run into dolphin, and could target them with a very good chance of success.

For the climate is certainly changing, the ocean is warming, and fish stocks are shifting as a result.

Some of the shifts, like that of the dolphin, seem to be beneficial.  Fish are more available to the north, with no apparent reduction of their numbers in southern waters (or, at least, no reduction due to climate shifts; there are signs that fishing activity may be reducing dolphin numbers off the southeastern U.S.).  

Black sea bass seems to be another win-win situation. Recruitment seems to be driven by water temperatures at the edge of the continental shelf, where the young fish spend their first winter; in recent years, warming winter water temperatures seem to be responsible for the spike in black sea bass abundance off southern New England.  At the same time, different stocks of black sea bass extend from New England into the Gulf of Mexico, and there is no sign that the species is abandoning southern waters.

But other climate-related shifts aren’t so benign.

When I was a boy, I fished for winter flounder year-round; although fishing was best in the spring and the fall, I could always find a few fish even during the dog days of August.  Now, warming waters seem to be pushing flounder out of the southern portion of their range; even as far north as Rhode Island, the population is only a very small fraction of what it was a few decades ago.  There is well-grounded speculation that other coldwater species, such as cod and pollock, are also moving north in response to increasing ocean temperatures.

Climate change wreaked some of its worst havoc on the southern New England stock of American lobster.  Over ten years ago, the biologists of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Lobster Technical Committee released a report titled “Recruitment Failure in the Southern New England Lobster Stock,” which observed,

“Overwhelming environmental and biological changes coupled with continued fishing greatly reduce the likelihood of [the southern New England stock] rebuilding.  There has been a widespread increase in the area and duration of water temperatures above 20^oC throughout [southern New England] inshore waters.  Long term trends in the inshore portion of [southern New England] show a pronounced warming period since 1999.  Prolonged exposure to water temperature above 20^oC causes respiratory and immune system stress, increased incidence of shell disease, acidosis and suppression of immune defenses in lobster…Loss of optimal shallow habitat areas is causing the stock to contract spatially into deeper water…  [citations omitted]”

The Technical Committee viewed the state of the southern New England stock to be dire enough to justify a 5-year closure of the fishery, although the American Lobster Management Board opted not to take such action.

Which gets us to the core question:  When faced with clear evidence of shifting stocks, and of the impacts of climate change on both fish stocks and fishermen, what are fishery managers willing to do to address such situations?

So far, the answer has been “Nothing much.”

In the case of southern New England lobster, the American Lobster Management Board asked a panel of three internationally-recognized experts to peer review the Technical Committee’s report.  After two of the three panelists effectively endorsed the Committee’s suggested 5-year moratorium, and the third panelist opined that such moratorium wasn’t necessary so long as fishing effort was immediately reduced by 50 to 75 percent, the Management Board decided that it was more important to try to preserve the lobster industry than it was to preserve the lobster itself, so it merely tried to reduce landings by 10 percent, and let the lobsters figure out how to deal with the warming seas on their own.

In the case of various finfish, a recent article in Hakai magazine noted that

“While those with smaller trawlers usually remained in their traditional grounds…those with larger vessels (over about 20 meters) would sometimes embark on longer voyages from their home ports to follow their target fish to new waters…

“…regulations may be incentivizing these long voyages.  Each port has a quota for a specific fish that is based on past harvest levels, with higher catch histories resulting in higher quotas.  This can mean a ready market for landing catches—even if the species is no longer abundant in nearby waters…some captains have become itinerant in response to these incentives.  Rather than returning to their home port to land their catch, they will travel to different ports along the coast where they can best exploit quota allocations.”

The logical response would be for the regional fishery management councils to reallocate quotas in a way that reflects the current spatial distribution of fish.  However, both fishermen and fishery managers are chronically backward-looking; they insist on trying to conform today’s fisheries to patterns of catch, fish distribution, and landings that existed several decades in the past, instead of trying to shape today’s fisheries in a way that will make sense in the future.

Thus, in the mid-Atlantic, we saw a recent summer flounder stock assessment report that

“summer flounder are shifting northeast over time, and this shift has continued in recent years…the shift northward is evident even in small fish.  Indeed, recruits seem to be shifting northward at a faster rate than spawners, suggesting that they are not merely tracking the expansion of spawners northward.  There are apparent changes in spatial distribution of summer flounder over the last four decades with a general shift northward and eastward…”

It would seem to make sense for the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to abandon the current allocation among the states, which is based on where the fish were in the 1980s, for a new allocation based on where the fish are now, or even on where the fish are likely to be in the future.  But when the Council tried to do just that, its efforts were stonewalled by representatives from the lower mid-Atlantic, who no longer had many summer flounder off their shores, but still held plenty of quota that they had no intention of giving up.  The general tenor of their arguments was summed up by one fisherman who said,

“Managers shouldn’t take what people have, and give it to other states,”

regardless of whether the people who have such quota have to sail 500 miles to catch it, while fishermen in the “other states,” who have summer flounder right outside their ports, lack the quota needed to land it.

Part of the problem is that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs all fishing in federal waters, lacks any meaningful standards for how allocation and reallocation decisions ought to be made.  A discussion draft of a Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill, that started making the rounds last December, would have created a “Shifting Stocks Task Force,” composed of 10 persons who were

“Federal employees, State employees, Tribal and Indigenous representatives, academics, or independent experts, [who] shall have strong scientific or technical credentials and experience, and shall not include members of the Regional Fishery Management Councils.  [emphasis added]”

Such Task Force would be charged with developing

“in consultation with the Administrator [of the National Marine Fisheries Service] and the Regional Fishery Management Councils, science-based decision-making criteria to make allocation determinations that minimize the risk of overfishing and maximize stock and ecosystem resilience to the effects of climate change, are consistent with the national standards [for fishery conservation and management], the other provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act..., regulations implementing recommendations by international organizations in which the United States participates (including to closed areas, quotas, and size limits), and any other applicable law.”

Establishing such allocation criteria wouldn’t have been a mere academic exercise, as the discussion draft also provided that

“The Task Force shall make recommendations to the Administrator and to the Regional Fishery Management Councils recommendations [sic] for the allocation and distribution of fishing privileges based on the criteria developed…”

The discussion draft would have even created a mechanism by which

“Any member of the public may submit a petition to request the review of potentially shifting stock…

“If the Task Force makes a determination…that a petition contains sufficient information, the Task Force shall review such petition…

“Upon completion of a review…the Task Force shall determine which Regional Fishery Management Council’s or Councils’ geographic area of authority the fishery is located in; and submit to the Administrator, each Regional FishNery Management Council, and the petitioner written recommendations for allocation and distribution of fishing privileges within the fishery.  [internal numbering and formatting omitted]”

Needless to say, the idea of a panel of independent experts, who would devise science-based criteria for allocating and reallocating fishing privileges (meaning that “It’s the way we’ve done it for the past fifty years!” would no longer qualify as a valid allocation criterion), and was empowered to make allocation recommendations to both the regional fishery management councils and the head of NMFS, didn’t go over to well with the folks who lived where the fish used to be, and were still sitting on seemingly obsolete quotas.

They made their opinions known, and when Representatives Jerrod Huffman (D-CA) and Ed Case (D-HI) introduced their Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act earlier this summer, the Shifting Stocks Task Force had been deleted from the bill, although other, less prescriptive provisions addressing the shifting stocks issue remained.

That’s unfortunate, because right now, there are no clear guidelines that address how the regional fishery management councils must address shifting stocks. 

As I said at the beginning of this essay, climate change is real, and shifting stocks are a real consequence of that change, particularly in New England and the mid-Atlantic.  But right now, there are no legally-binding standards to address the issue.

When it comes to allocation criteria, “They were always our fish, and we don’t want to give them away to anyone else,” remains the state of the art.

 

 

LOOKING BYCATCH IN THE EYE

 When we talk about fisheries issues, bycatch is always somewhere in the conversation.

Sometimes, we call bycatch by different names, such as “regulatory discards,” which are fish that fishermen can’t keep for legal reasons; they might be too small, or out of season, or in excess of an applicable trip limit.  Or we might refer to another sort of bycatch as “economic discards,” which are fish of the same species that fishermen are trying to catch, but are dumped overboard because they are of an undesirable size, quality, etc.

Whatever we call it, people generally agree that bycatch is bad. 

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act contains ten National Standards for Fishery Conservation and Management.  National Standard 9 states that

“Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable, (A) minimize bycatch and (B) to the extent bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch.”

Whether the regional fishery management councils are really adhering to that national standard is very much open to debate.

I was reminded of that a few days ago, when I was shark fishing south of Long Island, New York.

I had taken out a group of researchers from Stony Brook University, who were hoping to deploy acoustic tags in various coastal shark species, and to take various samples from such fish before they were released.  We had already worked up a couple of sandbar sharks, when another line went off and, before long, another sandbar shark was secured alongside the boat.

But this fish was different.  It almost looked like someone had tried to cut off its head with a hacksaw.

Deep lesions appeared on the shark’s back and sides, although the worst were extended from its gills to its throat, where deep cuts on the right and left sides nearly joined in the center.  I had caught sharks with deep lesions before, but in those cases, the cause had always been clear; the fish had been hooked on recreational fishing gear or commercial longlines, had either broken off or been carelessly released, and ended up wrapped in yards of leader and fishing line, which eventually eroded the skin and cut into the flesh.

But there was no hook in this particular sandbar, and neither line nor leader encircled its body; except for the deep wounds, it was in pristine shape.  Although we couldn’t be completely sure, it appeared that the fish had run afoul of a large-mesh gillnet, probably one set for monkfish; I had seen such gillnets set before close to the area where we were fishing, although none were evident that day.  It was impossible to know whether the shark managed to free itself, or whether the gillnetter found it alive and managed to let it go.

Whatever the case, a photo of that one sandbar shark does a good job of taking the sterile term “bycatch” and turning it into something with a little more emotional resonance.  Bycatch, one sees, is clearly not good.

Sandbar sharks are overfished, and so are designated a “prohibited” species that may not be retained by recreational fishermen, and may only be kept by commercial fishermen under very carefully controlled circumstances.  At the same time, anecdotal evidence suggests that their numbers are increasing, and the stock isn’t under immediate threat.  Thus, while sandbar bycatch in monkfish nets should be avoided if possible, it’s not an existential threat to the species.

That might not be the case with Atlantic sturgeon.  The New York Bight population segment, as well as three others, has been listed as “Endangered” under the federal Endangered Species Act, and they are frequently encountered in the monkfish gillnet fishery.  The “Completion Report” for a three-year Sturgeon Gillnet Study reported that

“bycatch in sink-gillnets was a significant hurdle to Atlantic sturgeon recovery.”

The report went on to note that

“During 2012 we compared [a] low profile net configuration (eight meshes tied-down to two) which reduced Atlantic sturgeon bycatch with minimal impact the landings of targeted species.  Our findings suggest that the use of tie-downs is important for maintaining adequate catches of target species, and that certain tie-down configurations can reduce Atlantic sturgeon bycatch.  Additionally, experimental testing of gear developed by harvesters allows for the identification of gear configurations that both address conservation objectives and are realistic for use in commercial harvest.”

Gear that both reduces the bycatch of endangered sturgeon and maintains monkfish harvest levels sounds like a win-win, and one might expect the New England and Mid-Atlantic fishery management councils, which are jointly responsible for monkfish management, to require the use of low-profile nets in the monkfish gillnet fishery.  Yet an examination of federal regulations demonstrates that, nearly ten years after the study was completed, no such requirement exists.

Thus, sturgeon bycatch continues, and dead sturgeon continue to wash up on New York beaches, in large enough numbers that the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation engages in an “Atlantic Sturgeon Salvage Program,” and has constructed a web page instructing the public on what to do when they find a dead sturgeon.u

Despite National Standard 9, it doesn’t seem that the regional fishery management councils are doing all that they can to minimize sturgeon bycatch, and no one seems to be all that concerned.

Once in a while, a dead sturgeon, or a wounded shark, might appear to remind us of the bycatch problem, but much—perhaps most—bycatch takes place out at sea, where there is no one around to  notice what’s going on.  Federal fisheries observers are supposed to detect such problems, but there’s no guarantee that fishermen are going to behave the same way with an observer on board as they do when they’re out and all alone.

That issue was recently cited, as one among many problems besetting the northeastern cod fishery, in a petition that the Conservation Law Foundation filed with the National Marine Fisheries Service.  As NMFS recently stated in the Federal Register.

“CLF’s petition also alleges that inadequate at-sea monitoring coverage in the sector fishery has failed to provide sufficiently accurate and precise data to prevent and end overfishing or rebuild the cod stocks.  CLF asserts that inadequate monitoring coverage targets, coupled with low quotas, have created incentives for the fishing industry to illegally discard and misreport cod catch.  Additionally, CLF relies on recent analyses in the development of Amendment 23 to the Northeast Multispecies [Fishery Management Plan] indicating that there is an observer effect in the Northeast multispecies fishery.  This observer effect could mean observed trips are not representative of unobserved trips.  CLF also states that, without accurate and precise catch data, managers cannot appropriately apply the accountability measures that are designed to prevent overfishing.”

The Conservation Law Foundation’s proposed solution to such regulatory discard issue is 100% observer coverage on vessels engaged in the Northeast groundfish fishery, that might encounter cod in the course of their fishing activities.

That’s probably the only realistic way to address the problem of “observer effect,” but given the cost of observer coverage, there’s likely to be very substantial resistance to the proposal, National Standard 9 be damned.

If the Conservation Law Foundation is right, reducing the current bycatch—what we might term “cryptic discards”—might be critical to the cod’s recovery, although most people don’t think about it, because it happens out at sea and out of sight.

On the other hand, when a big bycatch event occurs close to shore, people—and particularly anglers—tend to exaggerate its impact.  That’s particularly true when the bycatch is composed of striped bass floating behind a squid trawler off Martha’s Vineyard or Montauk, or dumped by a trawler off North Carolina, that has caught far more than the 50 bass that it’s allowed to land in a day.

 

Yet the most recent benchmark stock assessment for striped bass indicates that only 2% of all striped bass fishing mortality is attributable to commercial discards.

However, many of the same anglers that are quick to point fingers at commercial bycatch are far less eager to call out the losses caused by regulatory discards in the recreational fishery, such as the notorious fields of “floaters” that pop up down-tide of the recreational fleet participating in Maryland’s summer striped bass fishery.  That’s true even though the same stock assessment found that recreational release mortality accounts for nearly half of striped bass fishing mortality.

The bottom line is that bycatch is ugly whenever you see it, and just as ugly—and, sometimes, even more destructive—when you don’t.  Yet regulators, at both the state and federal levels, have yet to show a real commitment to minimizing bycatch-related removals.

It’s well past time for that to change.

CATCH-AND-RELEASE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Anglers have long recognized the virtue of releasing some or all of their catch.  In 1939, the late Lee Wulff, a noted writer, angler, and conservationist, observed that

“The fish you release is a gift to another angler and remember, it may have been someone’s similar gift to you.”

I was reminded of that yesterday, when a bulky brown envelope appeared in my mail.  I knew what it was without even looking at the return address:  A message from the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Cooperative Shark Tagging Program, notifying me that one of the sharks that I released had been recaptured.

I had just tagged some shortfin mako and sandbar sharks a couple of weeks earlier, and assumed that one of them had probably been quickly recaught.  But when I opened the package, it turned out that my gift to another offshore angler had been far nicer than I had originally thought.  A mako that I had tagged exactly four years ago, on August 15, 2017, when it weighed 50 pounds or so and was only a little over four feet long (fork length), was recaptured last June, when it had quadrupled in weight and reached an overall length of more than seven feet.

Although the other angler estimated the fish’s weight at 250 pounds, that was probably a little high—a seven-foot mako should typically weigh around 200—the length estimate was roughly what one would expect for a fish that was a little over 4 feet long when released, and was then at large for nearly 4 years.

I can only hope that the fact that both length and weight were estimated means that the angler did not kill the shark, but instead regifted it to another fisherman somewhere down the line.

More and more recreational shark fishermen are doing so, in part because the tournament craze and the desire to hang big fish on a scale has cooled down from its frenzied peak in the late 1900s, and in part, at least in the case of shortfin makos, because the fish’s steadily declining abundance has led to increasingly restrictive size limits.  

I haven’t killed a shark in over 20 years, and haven’t killed a mako since the late 1990s, but even if I had wanted to bring a fish home on that day in 2017, the 52-incher that I released four years ago didn’t quite measure up to the minimum size.

And by the time it was caught again last June, the minimum size for female makos had been increased to 83 inches; since the fish was estimated to measure 87 inches overall length when recaptured, its fork length probably again fell an inch or two short of the minimum size.

Thus, I hope that it’s still swimming around out there somewhere, so it can mature and, hopefully, help rebuild the stock, so that another angler might, perhaps, encounter it, and so that it can contribute to our knowledge of the species, thanks to an acoustic tag that was implanted by Stony Brook University researchers before it was released four years ago.

Many benefits accrue from catch and release fisheries.  Unfortunately, catch and release, at least in salt water, is increasingly coming under attack, in part because its popularity is seen as a threat to traditional catch-and-kill fishing, and in part because some anglers who appear to embrace catch-and-release angling do so in a thoughtless manner that causes many fish to die after they’re returned to the water.

The notion that catch-and-release anglers somehow cause harm to catch-and-kill fishermen has become a particularly prominent issue in the striped bass fishery, after the most recent benchmark stock assessment determined that 48% of all striped bass fishing mortality in 2017, the assessment’s terminal year, was attributable to recreational release mortality.

Since that assessment was released, we saw members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board call recreational release mortality

“the single most important issue [facing striped bass managers] at this time,”

and opinine that

“addressing [that issue] (or reducing discards) is the most important action that can be taken going forward.”

A report issued by one striped bass work group convened by the Management Board noted that

“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 [Management] Board is running out of ways to control removals in the fishery.”

That last comment strays quite far from the truth. as recreational striped bass landings remain robust, accounting for 42% of striped bass mortality in 2017.  Fishery managers still have the option of placing greater restrictions on such landings in order to offset whatever release mortality occurs.  In states which host “primarily catch and release fisheries,” such restrictions would seem to be a logical way to control removals, and very much in line with what has been done in other marine catch-and-release sport fisheries, including Florida tarpon, Florida snook, and Atlantic billfish, among others.

A chart provided to the Management Board at its August meeting illustrated the fact that high levels of catch-and-release are nothing new in the striped bass fishery.  Since the late 1980s, anglers have, on average, released about 90% of their catch.  Even though only 9% of those fish are expected to die after release, 9% of millions of bass turns out to be a very large number.  Yet high release rates, and the related release mortality, has been a characteristic of the fishery for a very long time.

Still, some members of the Management Board, mainly those who lived most of their lives in the past century rather than this one, and are still trying to cling to the management paradigms of their younger years, view catch-and-kill as the highest and best use of striped bass.  Perhaps the most strident of those is Tom Fote, the Governor’s Appointee from New Jersey, who raged at the May Management Board meeting that

“We can’t bury our heads in the sand over this issue.  We need to look at, how do we basically stop those huge numbers of fish being killed, which denies the public fish to take home to eat, because we’re catch and releasing them, and killing so many fish…”

Two months earlier, at another Management Board meeting called to address new regulations requiring the use of circle hooks when fishing for striped bass with bait, Fote opposed a requirement that anglers who catch striped bass on bait while using traditional J-hooks release such fish.  The proposed release requirement was meant to discourage anglers from trying to circumvent the circle hook rules by catching striped bass while supposedly targeting other species, but Fote would have none of that, saying

“I’ve got the Governor’s Surf Fishing Tournament coming up on May 23^rd.  Summer flounder season will be open at that time from the surf also.  I help people fishing in [sic] squid to catch summer flounder, particularly if they want to eat it.

“If they accidentally catch a striped bass, of the probably 600 kids that I have fishing, because it’s a family tournament.  I will have to make them release the fish, and I don’t want to really do that…a lot of kids catch their first striped bass as an incidental catch.”

It was a strange sort of argument.  After all, a lot of kids’ first striped bass are under the minimum size limit, but Fote hopefully wouldn’t argue that kids shouldn’t have to release short stripers.  Deputy Chief Kurt Blanchard, representing the ASMFC’s Law Enforcement Committee, made the perfect riposte to Fote's comment, saying

“There is no way that we would have the ability to enforce incidental take at that point…

“To allow for that one-time effort that we may have an incidental catch, [is] to throw everything else out the window…

“The other discussion about first time takes and things like that.  I really think that this is, I spoke to this on the [Law Enforcement] Committee.  I really think that this is our opportunity to talk to young folks, and others that may be new to the fisheries, to talk about what conservation means, and take the opportunity to highlight why you’re returning that fish, caught incidentally, back to the resource, and what the means for the future of the stock.  [emphasis added]”

It was an eloquent statement that did nothing to change Fote’s mind; educating children, and older folks, about conservation seemed, to him, a frivolous effort compared with the serious business of killing striped bass.  Thus, just a few minutes later, he tried a different tack, attempting to don the mantle of advocate for the tackle shops, saying

“one of the things that concerns me, where we didn’t put this in the Amendment [sic], a lot of people supported the circle hook thinking it wasn’t going to eliminate incidental catch.  I think of tackle store owners that basically cater to the surf fishermen, basically went ahead and started stocking circle hooks.

“But they also continued buying the mullet rigs.  Unless you’re a surf fisherman, you don’t know what I’m talking about.  A mullet rig is basically what you fish mullet [as bait] with.  It’s a split hook, you know it’s a two-prong hook that you put the mullet through, and you put this two-hook on.  You catch bluefish, you catch kingfish, you catch whatever is in the surf, but it does catch striped bass.

“You basically want to keep a fish, and it might be bluefish, striped bass.  It does away with the mullet rigs.  This is a big expense for tackle stores, because they basically stock up mullets for probably a year, so they have it in the spring, because they catch it in the fall.  Now they have the hooks all set, means thousands of them in each tackle store, and they are basically going to stop selling those rigs.”

It was a stretch, even for Fote, who apparently couldn’t conceive of someone fishing mullet--on a mullet rig--for bluefish and kingfish, and maybe for summer flounder and weakfish as well, and just releasing any striped bass that they caught.  But he managed to deliver his lines with a straight face, although they weren’t particularly convincing; only New Jersey voted to oppose the mandatory release of striped bass caught on J-hooks, although the North Carolina delegation couldn’t reach a decision and cast a null vote.

That doesn’t mean that other Management Board members don’t remain very concerned about release mortality, and the unfortunate truth is that some striped bass anglers are handing them ammunition to support their efforts to restrict the catch-and-release fishery.

Sadly, many such anglers don’t realize that they are doing harm. 

More than three decades ago, a new catchphrase entered the angling lexicon.  It was “CPR,” which stands for “catch, photograph, release.”  As explained in a 1989 article in Virginia’s Morning Call,

“It’s called CPR.  Not the life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation but a different form of life-saving—giving a fish a chance to swim free while, at the same time, taking it home on film.

“This form of CPR—catch, photograph and release—will hopefully catch on across the country.”

CPR didn’t originate in the striped bass fishery, but it quickly took root there.  A 2014 post on the blog Delaware Surf Fishing noted that

“CPR…Catch Photo, and Release [is a] grass roots [movement] to inspire anglers to only take what you need or release what you can to promote the rebuilding of the stocks.

“…let’s face it most people just want a picture of themselves of them [sic] holding that monster fish they just caught.  Keeping that large of a fish is not always a desirable thing for many anglers.”

It’s a nice idea, and most of the anglers have good intentions, but the unfortunate truth is that cameras kill.

Big striped bass are already stressed when an angler finally brings them to the boat or the beach.  There are ways that the stress can be minimized; anglers can employ single-hooked lures and tackle stout enough to beat the fish quickly, and can refrain from fishing when high water temperature and low salinity and/or dissolved oxygen create conditions that make a released fish less likely to survive.  But even under the best of conditions, such bass will be suffering from lactic acid buildup, and will be vulnerable to bad handling practices.

Under such circumstances, the worst thing that an angler can do is grab the bass by the jaw (or, even worse, by the gill plate), hold it vertically and stand there smiling while someone looks for, eventually finds, and finally starts using a camera (although yes, we’ve all done that a time or two in our lives).  Taking a bass out of the water at all lowers its chance of survival; keeping it out of the water for an extended photo session makes survival even less likely.

Thus, we see the organization Keep Fish Wet remind us that

“The Striped Bass Fishery Is in Our Hands,”

and advise,

“Whether you fish from a center console, the beach, a rocky shoreline, a skiff, or a downtown piece of city concrete, these principles will help to make sure that your catch is released safely.

·         Minimize Air Exposure.  10 seconds or less is best.

·         Eliminate Contact with Dry Surfaces.  Wet your hands before touching fish and avoid bringing them into boats.

·         Reduce Handling Time.  Release fish quickly and only revive fish that cannot swim on their own.”

It’s all good advice and, if practiced regularly, will go a long way to both reduce release mortality and take away arguments from those who want to limit catch-and-release in order to promote catch-and-kill.

Of course, there are some recreational fisheries that are essentially irredeemable, fisheries where catch-and-release is only a screen for glaringly excessive levels of fishing mortality.  In that respect, the mid-Atlantic’s surf fishery for protected shark species is particularly heinous.

It came about innocently enough; surf fishermen along much of the coast suffer from the summer doldrums; the decline of striped bass, bluefish, and weakfish populations have made what was always a relatively slow time even worse.  Thus, it’s understandable that, when anglers learned that they could catch big sharks and rays from they beach, many began to do so.

The problem is that, especially in the upper mid-Atlantic and southern New England, just about all of the sharks that such anglers catch are either sandbar sharks, sand tigers, or dusky sharks, fish deemed “prohibited species” that must be immediately released when caught and, in some states, aren’t even legal to target.  While responsible anglers try to release such sharks without causing appreciable harm, the surf zone is a stressful place; either the anglers have to wade out to release the sharks, and risk being injured by the fish, or they must drag the shark into the wash and even onto the sand, an effort that is inevitably harmful to the shark, damaging its spinal column (if the fish is dragged by the tail), forcing the weight of the entire fish to press down upon its internal organs (remember that sharks have no supporting skeletal structure), and taking its gills up out of the water.

The sharks’ survival is far from assured.

And that’s even before we consider the Bozo Factor.

There’s something about sharks that brings out the worst in people, and makes them want to sit on their backs, bend back their spines, make stupid gestures and say stupid things while their friends take videos of the fish’s teeth.  

In one of the more outrageous recent episodes, a couple of Bubbas from West Virginia crawled out of their cave and went down to Florida, where they caught a protected sand tiger shark and proceeded to open a beer can using the living shark’s teeth.  Like most fish-abusing idiots, they quickly posted their antics on social media, trying to impress…someone.

Their excuse was that

“It was just a bit of fun.”

Such behavior doesn’t do much for the public image of anglers, and does even less for the health of the fish.

It also provides those who would restrict catch-and-release angling, in order to promote catch-and-kill, ready-made arguments that help them make their point.

If sportfishing is to survive well into the 21^st Century, as human populations increase, the climate shifts, and fish populations come under more stress, catch-and-release angling is going to have to play an ever-larger role.

But if catch-and-release angling is going to remain a viable option in the public’s eye, anglers are going to have to take responsibility to assure that it’s done right, minimizing the stress on the fish, maximizing the chances of released fish’s survival, while also maximizing the likelihood that angling, itself, will survive.

As Gifford Pinchot, first head of the U.S. Forest Service, observed more than eighty years ago,

“We love the search for fish and the finding, the tense eagerness before the strike and the tenser excitement afterward; the long hard fight, searching the heart, testing the body and soul; and the supreme moment when the glorious creature, fresh risen from the depths of the sea, floats to your hand and then, the hook removed, sinks with a gently motion back from whence it came, to live and fight another day.”

Intentionally killing a fish is a poor anticlimax to such an experience; unintentionally killing, when such killing could be avoided, is both a tragedy and a disgrace.