FISHERY MANAGEMENT: CRITICS SING THE SAME SONG

I went to my first fishery management meeting a very long time ago. 

It was held in Connecticut, where I lived ‘way back then, at a time when striped bass abundance was hitting new lows and scientists were raising their first concerns about winter flounder.  I think Jimmy Carter was President, though it might have still been Gerald Ford.

As I recall, state biologists were talking about adopting a modest minimum size for winter flounder, perhaps 8 inches or so, a size that let fishermen keep flounder that were still far too small to fillet, but were at least big enough that you had to squint a little bit if you wanted to see bones through the white side when you held the fish up to the sun.  Yet some people objected to that, mainly folks who owned angling-related businesses, and were afraid that outlawing the harvest of postage-stamp flounder might cause them a few sales.

They said that such rules weren’t needed.  There were plenty of flounder around and no need for restrictions.  The fish would do fine on their own.

It would be interesting to have a conversation with those same folks today, now that the flounder are, for all practical purposes, gone.

Yet, when you think about it, the same conversation takes place quite often these days.  The people might be different, and instead of flounder, they might be talking about striped bass, tautog, channeled whelk, or cod, but while the folks and the fish always vary, the song that they sing remains the same.

“The science is wrong."

"Regulations will hurt my business.”

“There are plenty of fish around.”

I’ve written about that song plenty of times before.

Back in January 2014, when this blog wasn’t quite three weeks old, I described a meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council, where the Department of Environmental Conservation’s proposal to place a 5 ½-inch minimum size on whelks—which is the point when many, but not most, females first mature—caused an uproar among commercial whelk fishermen, who claimed that such rule would put them out of business.

State biologists pressed the point that, by continuing to harvest immature whelks and not giving the females an opportunity to reproduce, the fishermen risked putting themselves out of business, but no one else in the room seemed to be looking that far ahead.  Perhaps the most remarkable comment came not from the audience, but from an Advisory Council member, who complained that, if the DEC adopted the rules for the upcoming season,

“You’re not giving us time to dispute your data,”

never seeming to even consider the possibility that the agency data was right, since disputing fisheries data is just what fishermen do, at least when such data indicates the need for more regulation.

A few years later, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission finally decided to end two decades of ineffective tautog management, and adopt a plan that might finally begin to rebuild the overfished stock.  But that plan, too, required landings cuts, so it came as no surprise when an ill-mannered Montauk party boat captain interrupted the ASMFC’s New York hearing to announce

“We don’t care about your science.  Your science is bullcrap.”

Nor was it surprising to hear the crowd respond with cheers.

Similar situations pop up in other fisheries.

Up in New England, after a state fisheries survey, intended to fact-check the findings of federal surveys, confirmed that the cod population was in dire shape, a Gloucester fisherman criticized the results, saying

“The state survey literally does zero to improve our confidence [in the biologists’ findings].  You can’t just sample anywhere.  You have to go where the cod are supposed to be.”

In saying that, he completely ignored the fact that, if the cod stocks were healthy, the survey would have found fish where the cod used to be, for such truth would not support his position, and thus must remain unsaid.

Then there are the claims that the overfished striped bass stock is really healthy, but that the fish have all moved offshore (a pretty neat trick for a fish that must ascend coastal rivers to spawn), or that bluefish aren’t really overfished, they’ve just gone somewhere else—although just where, no one can say.

Every time I hear that sort of thing, I keep hoping that, at some point, people are going to start embracing reality, but two recent news articles make it clear that the same folks are still singing their same anti-science, anti-management song.

Up in New England, the cod still aren’t doing well.  The most recent operational stock assessment found that

“the stock status for the Gulf of Maine Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) stock is overfished and overfishing is occurring,”

while

“the Georges Bank Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) stock status cannot be quantitatively determined due to a lack of biological reference points associated with the PlanBsmooth approach but is recommended to be overfished due to poor stock condition, while recommended overfishing status is unknown.”

The New England Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, executing its legal duty to set a maximum fishing level for the Georges Bank stock, established an acceptable biological catch which gave due consideration to the relatively high level of scientific uncertainty, and called for a 70% reduction in landings.

That naturally didn’t sit well with fishermen, so two organizations, the Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Associated Fisheries of Maine, have asked that the New England Fishery Management Council remand the issue to its Scientific and Statistical Committee for reconsideration.  The organizations claim that the Committee did not have all of the “relevant information” needed to make an informed decision when it set the 2022 acceptable biological catch for Georges Bank cod.

In particular, the organizations claim that the Scientific and Statistical Committee lacked final 2020 catch data, relevant socioeconomic information, and groundfish surveys from areas where recreational fishermen landed large amounts of cod.  They also noted that, due to COVID, the National Marine Fisheries Service didn’t engage in their usual trawl surveys in 2020, further clouding the true state of the stock.

As is typical in such disputes, the executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition claimed that fishermen were seeing more fish than the scientists’ work revealed.

“Why are these assessments not reflecting what fishermen are seeing on the water?...These assessment reports do not reflect what’s going on on the water.”

But fishermen’s unverified observations are not the same thing as scientific assessments, particularly given that reports from fishermen, who would suffer financial difficulties if landing levels were cut, could well be biased.  Furthermore, the fishermen don’t seem to understand how the Scientific and Statistical Committee is supposed to deal with uncertainty when setting the maximum catch level, although that issue is very clearly addressed in the National Marine Fisheries Service’s published guidelines, which direct, in part, that

“Acceptable biological catch (ABC) is a level of a stock or stock complex’s annual catch, which is based on an ABC control rule that accounts for the scientific uncertainty in the estimate of [the overfishing limit], any other scientific uncertainty, and the Council’s risk policy…”

“Scientific uncertainty refers to uncertainty in the information about a stock and its reference points.  Sources of scientific uncertainty could include: Uncertainty in stock assessment results; uncertainty in the estimates of [maximum fishing mortality threshold], [minimum stock size threshold], the biomass of the stock, and [overfishing limit]; time lags in updating assessments; the degree of retrospective revision of assessment results; uncertainty in projections; uncertainties due to the choice of assessment model; longer-term uncertainties due to potential ecosystem and environmental effects; or other factors.”

“…each Council must establish an ABC control rule that accounts for scientific uncertainty in the [overfishing limit] and for the Council’s risk policy, and that is based on a comprehensive analysis that shows how the control rule prevents overfishing…the ABC control rule should consider reducing fishing mortality as stock size declines below [the biomass needed to produce maximum sustainable yield] and as scientific uncertainty increases…”

The fishermen argue that the significant scientific uncertainty surrounding Georges Bank cod should militate against significant landings reductions, while NMFS policy, as expressed in its published guidelines, calls for an acceptable biological catch that is calculated to prevent overfishing, and endorses reducing fishing mortality when a stock declines below sustainable biomass levels and/or when substantial scientific uncertainty exists.

In the case of Georges Bank cod, the stock is badly depleted, with biomass far below a sustainable level, and the stock assessment admits to substantial scientific uncertainty.  Such conditions justify the Scientific and Statistical Committee’s finding that landings be substantially reduced.

But New England cod fishermen never believe that such substantial reductions are ever justified.  The science must be wrong...

Something similar is happening in the Connecticut whelk fishery.

Both New York and Connecticut are considering adopting a 5 ½-inch minimum length/3-inch minimum shell diameter for whelk (yes, New York whelk fishermen have so far managed to delay their state’s regulations for nearly eight years).

New York issued proposed regulations in April 2021; the comment period closed long ago, and the state is now deliberating whether, and how, to issue final rules.

Connecticut is lagging a little behind New York, and has only recently held a hearing on its proposed regulations.  According to the Connecticut Examiner, fishermen attending that hearing predictably

“decried the state’s plan to limit harvesting of the edible oversized snail as another blow to the survival of their industry and livelihood…

”East Haven lobsterman and whelk fisherman Peter Consiglio said the state’s proposal to protect the Sound’s whelk population by cutting the harvest by as much as 62 percent is not only based on inaccurate data, but will bring the industry another step closer to extinction.”

As is typical, the fishermen questioned the state’s science, while advancing questionable scientific thoughts of their own.  The Examiner reported that

“Al Schabel, a dealer of whelk and crabs in Northford, said population swings of shellfish and other species is a natural if not mysterious occurrence that can’t be completely controlled by humans.

“’It’s going to go up and down forever—that’s just the way it is,’ he said, adding that he expects this year to produce one of the most robust whelk harvests in 20 years.  ‘It’s not a regulatory thing.’”

It also reported that a Norwalk lobsterman called state surveys, which found that the whelk population had declined by 90% over the past 20 years,

“Hogwash,”

and said that

“We lost the lobsters and now the conch has the show.  The conchs are all we have left and we fishermen have proven that we can manage it ourselves…”

Precisely what the fishermen actually did to manage the conch (whelk) stock, other than catch as many as they could bring to market, was never described.

One lobsterman even alleged that whelks were a threat to the lobsters.  John German (who actually lives not in Connecticut, but on the North Shore of Long Island, New York, where he has long fought against whelk regulations in his state of residence) argued that

“Conch has taken over the lobster grounds and are hindering the lobsters coming back.  They’re predators and they should be treated as predators,”

although he never explained just how lobsters are being threatened by whelk.

Once again, fishermen’s rhetoric usually seemed to outrun established fact.

But that’s nothing new.

Fishermen opposed to needed management measures always seem to sing the same old song, with verses lamenting the failures of science and the threats to their way of life.

But with cod and winter flounder already on the ropes, bluefish and striped bass overfished, mako sharks in peril and a host of other species facing real problems, that song is getting a little stale.

It’s time for them to find a new tune.