TAUTOG: SOMETIMES, IT'S GOOD TO BE WRONG

I’ve been a consistent critic of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s efforts to manage tautog (a/k/a “blackfish”), and for very good reason.

The ASMFC first learned that tautog had become overfished in1996.  However, faced with dogged fishing industry opposition to every effort to reduce fishing mortality, the Commission delayed taking decisive action to rebuild the stock.  Instead, it adopted a long series of half-measures that were never restrictive enough to make a significant difference; as a result, tautog stubbornly refused to rebuild.

It wasn’t until 2017, fully twenty-one years after the stock was declared to be overfished, that the ASMFC’s Tautog Management Board finally adopted an amendment to its management plan that had a decent chance of rebuilding the stock.  Even then, with respect to the tautog in Long Island Sound, arguably the single most productive piece of water in the species’ entire range, the Management Board failed to adopt biologists’ recommended measures.  Instead, it opted for significantly less restrictive regulations, which were not expected to end overfishing until 2029.

Given that, I predicted that Long Island Sound’s tautog stock would not only fail to rebuild, but would continue to decline.  As recently as last week, I also suggestedthat tautog would be the next northeastern fish species to become too scarce tosupport significant recreational or commercial fisheries.

For once, it appears that I was overly pessimistic about the tautog’s future, and that my predictions were wrong.

I’m happy about that.

Recently, the ASMFC released a stock assessment update that covered all four tautog stocks which, to my surprise, seem to be doing better than they were in 2017.

Back then, only the Massachusetts-Rhode Island stock was doing well.  The Long Island Sound and New Jersey-New York Bight stocks were both overfished and experiencing overfishing, while the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia stock was overfished, although overfishing was not occurring.

Today, the Massachusetts-Rhode Island stock remains healthy.  The Long Island Sound stock, although not fully recovered, is no longer overfished, and is no longer experiencing overfishing.  The New Jersey-New York Bight stock remains overfished, but overfishing is no longer occurring; there is a 53% chance that biomass will rise above the threshold denoting an overfished stock by 2025.  The Delaware-Maryland-Virginia stock, like the Long Island Sound stock, is not yet rebuilt but no longer overfished.

Over all, the tautog news is pretty good.

At the same time, it doesn’t mean that managers shouldn’t proceed with caution for, except in the case of the Rhode Island-Massachusetts stock, the tautog’s recovery remains somewhat fragile.

With respect to the Long Island Sound stock, the assessment update noted that

“Short term projections (five years) were conducted to evaluate the risk to the stock for maintaining status quo management.  While there is little risk that the stock will be overfished in the near future, the stock is still at risk of overfishing with the current level of removals, so precaution should be taken in management decisions.  [emphasis added]”

The need for precaution is reinforced by the level of uncertainty inherent in the stock assessment.  A Preliminary Risk and Uncertainty Report prepared in connection with the assessment stated that, with respect to the Long Island Sound stock,

“The [Marine Recreational Information Program] estimates have high [Percent Standard Errors], especially as a result of splitting New York between Long Island Sound and New York Bight.  The interruptions to the recreational sampling surveys and fishery independent surveys in 2020 increase uncertainty.  There is high uncertainty in catch and catch-at-age due to poor sample sizes.  There is an age 1+ fishery independent index with a long time series; however, it is a trawl survey, which is not ideal for tautog.  Overall, there are few biological observations.  There are not enough catch and length observations for all modes, particularly headboats (no length observations since 2016), spear fishing (no observations at all), and the commercial fleet (few observations).  Length-age observations had to be borrowed from different years and different regions to fill out a minimal age-length key.  The retrospective patterns were large but in a conservative direction.  The retrospective patterns fit within the 95% confidence intervals, however the percent difference in [fishing mortality] is as high as 250% different from 2020.  Retrospective patterns in recruitment are distributed more evenly, some years overestimating some underestimating.  Harvest is fairly variable.”

In addition,

“The recreational fishery accounts for about 96% of tautog removals in the LIS region in weight.  Tautog fishermen are poorly encountered in [Marine Recreational Information Program] sampling and MRIP estimates for the region have moderate to high [Percent Standard Errors], indicating limited ability to accurately estimate catch.  As a result, there is limited capacity to regulate removals and assess recreational compliance.  In addition, there are difficulties with separating Long Island Sound catch from New York Bight catch for New York.  There are significant concerns with illegal and unreported harvesting in the region, however, the commercial tagging program was implemented to help combat these issues.  There is a high level of fishing activity and interest in tautog from fishermen in the LIS region.”

Given that degree of uncertainty, it’s only prudent to view the Long Island Sound tautog’s recovery with more than just a grain of salt.  Still, there is other data that, while largely anecdotal, supports the notion that the stock’s health is improving.

One is angler effort.  On the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound (unfortunately, because publicly available New York MRIP data doesn’t distinguish between the Sound and the New York Bight, I can’t make the same comparisons for that state), the number of trips primarily targeting tautog has been increasing since the new management measures took effect.  In 2018, Connecticut anglers made more than 353,000 targeted tautog trips.  That number increased to 464,000 in 2019 and 490,000 in 2021.

Given that angler effort is typically tied to the abundance of the targeted species, steadily increasing effort can be an indicator of increasing abundance.

The number of fish landed seems to vary from year to year, with 2018 seeing the lowest landings, 2019 the highest, and 2020 falling in between, making it hard to say that anglers are actually catching more fish.  Given that the percent standard error for those years are 37.7, 25.7, and 20.6, respectively, and indicate a high degree of uncertainty, the fact that fewer fish seem to have been caught in 2020, despite increasing effort (PSEs for effort were nearly as high, at 25.7, 32.4, and 19.1, admittedly adding uncertainty to the “increasing effort” argument as well) probably shouldn’t be seen as a sign that tautog were becoming less available.

Another factor that seems to suggest that the health of the tautog stock may be improving is the ratio between fish harvested and fish released.  In 2018, that ratio was 13.6 tautog released for every one kept.  Such ratio dropped to 3.4 in 2019, then increased to 7.9 in 2020.

Once again, the inherent uncertainty, expressed as PSE, in the estimates clouds the trend of the numbers.  However, when effort, landings, and the number of larger fish in the population all seem to be increasing, it is much easier to become comfortable with the optimistic conclusions in the stock assessment, despite the existing uncertainty.

Yes, it is possible that the stock assessment could still be wrong, that the tautog stock in Long Island Sound remains overfished, and that overfishing is still continuing.  But given the data, and the trends in such data, since 2018, it seems more likely that I was wrong about the species’ outlook, and that the state of the tautog is slowly and steadily improving.

It’s a mistake that I’ll gladly own up to.  I grew up fishing for tautog from the Connecticut shore, and from boats on Long Island Sound.  I recall when the fish were abundant.

Nothing would make me happier than to see tautog abundant again.  The assessment update gives me hope that could happen.

It also gave me the incentive to take a ride up to my old fishing grounds this weekend, where I’ll check out tautog abundance for myself.

I’m looking forward to the trip.