STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7--ITS PROMISE AND PERILS: PART I, MANAGEMENT TRIGGERS

On the afternoon of Wednesday, January 26, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will hold its annual winter meeting, where it will review the latest version of its Draft Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, perhaps make a few changes, and then, in all likelihood, release the Draft Amendment for public review and comment.

The Draft Amendment has come a long way since the worrisome Work Group report was issued in August 2020, and since the Public Information Document to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was released nearly one year ago.

Since then, stakeholders in the striped bass fishery came out in big numbers to tell the Management Board that they wanted conservative striped bass management, and a healthy and abundant striped bass stock.  Last May, the Management Board heeded the more than 3,000 comments received.  It stripped provisions that would have tended to increase fishing mortality, while permanently reducing abundance and increasing long-term risk to the stock, out of the Amendment, then went even further, adding language that, if it survives in the final Amendment, would provide greater protection to the stock.

In October, the Management Board, recognizing that it has an obligation to rebuild the overfished stock, voted to add a rebuilding provision to the Draft Amendment.

Since then, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Plan Development Team, working in conjunction with the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee, has worked diligently to refine provisions supported by the Management Board, and produce options that reflect the varying sentiments of Management Board members.

The result is a Draft Amendment 7 that has the potential to significantly improve striped bass management, if the Management Board ultimately selects conservative options that focus on the long-term health and abundance of the striped bass resource.  At the same time, the Draft Amendment also contains other options that, if included in the final document, will not only perpetuate, but amplify, the problems that plague the striped bass management program today.

The following is a discussion of the merits, and the perils, of the options in the current draft.

Delay does no long-term good

Ever since striped bass biomass began to decline nearly two decades ago, delay has been the Management Board’s defining vice.

In 2011, after receiving a stock assessment update advising that the stock would be overfished within six years, it almost acted to reduce landings, but ultimately decided that bass still represented a “green light fishery” because none of the triggers calling for management action had yet been tripped.

In 2014, after two management triggers had finally been tripped, the Management Board did act decisively, and over the objections of some of its members, to reduce fishing mortality, but completely ignored its obligation to initiate a 10-year rebuilding plan, perhaps because of advice given by Michael Waine, then the Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, that because of uncertainty in rebuilding estimates, it was better to just address the mortality issue, and expect that biomass would eventually return to its target level, something that never occurred.

And in 2019, the Management Board learned that the striped bass stock was overfished.  Three years later, it has not even begun to draft a plan to rebuild the stock within 10 years, even though it was required to do so.

Now, the Draft Amendment 7 contains a number of proposed changes to the so-called “management triggers,” which would formally condone even more delay on the part of the Management Board, even when it appeared that the stock was already overfished and/or experiencing overfishing.

Section 4.1 of the Draft Amendment deals with such management trigger options, breaking them down into several “tiers.” 

Fishing mortality triggers

The “Tier One Options” deal with fishing mortality.

There are currently two fishing mortality triggers.  Trigger 1 reads

“If the fishing mortality threshold is exceeded in any year, the striped bass management program must be adjusted to reduce the fishing mortality to a level that is at or below the target within one year.”

It’s a sensible trigger, because if the stock becomes subject to overfishing, which is defined as a fishing mortality level above the relevant threshold, such overfishing needs to be stopped as soon as possible. 

Trigger 3 is a little different, reading

“If the fishing mortality target is exceeded in two consecutive years and the female [spawning stock biomass] falls below the target within either of those years, the striped bass management program must be adjusted to reduce the fishing mortality to a level that is at or below the target within one year.”

The fact that Trigger 3 deals with fishing mortality exceeding the target, rather than the threshold, is important.  In a perfect world, the target would never be exceeded, because managers would always be prescient enough to craft regulations that prevent that from happening, and estimates of fishing mortality would always be perfectly accurate, assuring that managers would always have the information that they need to get the job done.

Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t work that way.  Estimates of fishing mortality vary from year to year, for a host of reasons.  While commercial landings, constrained by hard poundage quotas, usually stay somewhat constant, estimates of recreational effort, and thus recreational-related fishing mortality, varies from year to year.  Sometimes that’s due to weather, sometimes its due to the presence or absence of fish, sometimes it’s just an artifact of the Marine Recreational Information Program which, in the case of striped bass, produces coastwide estimates which are typically within about 10%--over or under—of the actual landings.

That sort of uncertainty is exactly why a target fishing mortality rate is needed, for if fishermen merely exceed the target in any given year no harm is done to the stock; on the other hand, if there were no target, and bass were managed to the fishing mortality threshold, exceeding that threshold would cause overfishing and, under typical circumstances, a meaningful decline in abundance.

Thus, managers don’t need to get too concerned if fishermen modestly exceed the target in any given year.  However, Trigger 3 makes a sort of sense, because if the target is repeatedly exceeded, and spawning stock biomass is trending down, there may be some sort of cause-and-effect relationship, and the Management Board might want to reduce fishing mortality in order to prevent bigger problems from occurring in a few years.

With that in mind, we have to look at the proposal listed as “Sub-option A2,” which reads

“Reduce [fishing mortality] to a level that is at or below the target within two years,”

and just ask why?

Since Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was adopted in 2003, fishing mortality-related management triggers were only tripped twice, once when the findings of the 2013 benchmark stock assessment tripped Trigger 3, and once when the 2019 benchmark assessment found bass to be experiencing overfishing, and tripped Trigger 1.

Both times, when it adopted Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan in 2014, and when it adopted Addendum VI to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, over the course of just six months, in 2019, the Management Board demonstrated that it can amend striped bass management measures and successfully reduce fishing mortality to target within the 1-year timeline.

Why, then, introduce unnecessary delay?

Yes, measures needed to reduce fishing mortality to target can be phased in over a period of time, but in the end, the final measures adopted must be capable of not only reducing fishing mortality to target, but at maintaining such mortality close to the target rate over an extended period.  Thus, reducing landings is best viewed in the same light as tearing a bandage off a wound—something that is best done quickly, so that any resulting discomfort can be relegated to the past as soon as possible.

The current, one-year requirement makes far more sense.

When we get to Option B:  F Threshold triggers, we find another bad idea, cast in two different forms.

Currently, Trigger 1 is tripped as soon as a stock assessment informs the Management Board that overfishing is occurring.  Both “Sub-option B-2” and “Sub-option B-3” would build delay into the process.  Sub-option B-2 states

“If the two-year average [fishing mortality] exceeds the [fishing mortality] threshold, the striped bass management program must be adjusted to reduce [fishing mortality] to a level that is at or below the target within the timeframe selected under Option A.  The two-year average [fishing mortality] should not include data under different management actions (i.e., the [fishing mortality] threshold trigger should not be evaluated unless there are at least two years of data in the assessment under the most recent management action).”

Sub-option B3 uses identical language, but would require a three-year average before the trigger is tripped.

If one looks at the worst-case scenario, such options could result in a management trigger never being tripped, and overfishing to continue indefinitely.

Let’s run the numbers.

Right now, if overfishing is found to occur in Year 1, the Management Board must complete a plan to reduce fishing mortality to the target level in Year 2.  That’s what we saw in the case of Addendum IV, which was adopted roughly one year after the 2013 benchmark assessment tripped Trigger 3.  Addendum VI was triggered and completed even more quickly.

But if Sub-options A2 and B3 were adopted, and overfishing occurred in Year 1, the management trigger wouldn’t trip until Year 3, when a 3-year average of the fishing mortality rate confirmed that continued overfishing was going on.  And after that trigger was tripped, the Management Board would have until Year 5 to return fishing mortality to the target level; until then, overfishing could continue to erode the health of the striped bass stock.

But wait, it gets worse.  We need to consider the parenthetical that says “the [fishing mortality] threshold trigger should not be evaluated unless there are at least three years of data in the assessment under the most recent management action.”

The ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass species page reveals that, since Amendment 6 was adopted, stock assessments have been performed every two or three years.  There was a benchmark assessment in 2003, and other benchmark assessments or assessment updates performed in 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2018.  Management actions are just about always taken in response to an assessment’s findings.  So, based on the historical frequency of assessments, there will seldom if ever be a time when “there are at least three years of data in the assessment under the most recent management action.   Trigger 1 might never be tripped.

The situation might be a little better in the case of Sub-option B-2, which only requires “two years of data in the assessment under the most recent management action,” but even then, there are likely to be times when overfishing continues but, because of the frequency of assessments, no management action is required.

The Draft Amendment tries to alleviate such concerns by noting that

“Although the trigger would only be evaluated when sufficient data years are available for sub-options B2 or B3, the Board is not limited to taking action only when a management trigger is tripped.”

That statement is true, but it is also completely irrelevant in the real world.

At no time, since the current amendment to the management plan was adopted in 2003, since the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act was passed in 1993, nor since the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act became law in 1984, has the Management Board ever acted preemptively to address a threat to the striped bass stock before a trigger was tripped.  It came the closest in 1985, when it adopted Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, and began rebuilding the then-collapsed stock, but it’s easy to argue that such amendment was a response to Congressional action, and not initiated on the Board’s own initiative.  And the Board, at that time, was made up of fisheries professionals, and not of the sort of self-interested, amateur managers that dominate it today.

So anyone who really believes that the Management Board would take meaningful action without a trigger being tripped does not have history on their side.  The proposed fishing mortality options deserve a quick and unheralded death.

When we move on to Option C:  F Target Triggers, we face another dismal set of proposals.  Despite the labeling, there is no true status quo option; even the option that retains the current triggering events entertains the possibility of extending the deadline to achieve the fishing mortality target out an extra year.

A second sub-option would decouple fishing mortality from spawning stock biomass, and allow fishing mortality to exceed the target level for three years before the trigger is tripped.  Because it addresses target, not threshold, it’s not particularly damaging, but it’s difficult to argue that it’s a better trigger than what we have today.

But it’s the third sub-option that’s the really bad one.  It would eliminate the target-related trigger entirely, which for a practical matter would mean that striped bass would be managed for threshold, not target, fishing mortality, substantially increasing the danger that overfishing would occur.  At that point, as explained above, there is no guarantee that the Management Board would have to do anything at all.

These options, too, deserve to die.

Female spawning stock biomass triggers

When we get to the “Tier 2 options” for management triggers related to spawning stock biomass, things get a little more complicated, and there is even a little good news.

Right now, although the Management Board is obliged to initiate a 10-year rebuilding plan if certain management triggers are tripped, there is no hard deadline for when such plan must be started, nor for when it must be implemented.  Thus, while we may complain that the Management Board violated its obligations under the management plan when it failed to initiate rebuilding after the 2013 and 2019 stock assessments, that claim is not, strictly speaking, true.  While the Management Board may be obliged to create a rebuilding plan, it is facing no hard deadline, and thus has an indefinite amount of time to do so.

That’s why the proposal known as “Sub-option A2” is worthy of strong support.  It would require the Management Board to implement a rebuilding plan within two years after accepting a stock assessment’s findings that the stock had become overfished.  Such deadline would elevate at least that portion of the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan to the level long occupied by federal fishery managers, who are required to implement rebuilding plans within two years by the explicit language of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

After that, though, the female spawning stock biomass options are, on the whole, less attractive.

The current management triggers include Trigger 2, which reads

“If the Management Board determines that the biomass has fallen below the threshold in any given year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to the target level within [no more than 10 years]”

That makes sense, because if the stock has become overfished, the Board ought to act promptly to restore it to health, rather than to let if fall farther, and perhaps collapse.

The current triggers also include Trigger 4, which has a parallel structure to the fishing mortality target-related Trigger 3:

“If the Management Board determines that the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target for two consecutive years and the fishing mortality rate exceeds the target in either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above the target within [no more than 10 years].”

However, it is more difficult to make an argument favoring the current Trigger 4 than it is to support Trigger 3.  While Trigger 3 arguably creates a cause-and-effect relationship—the Management Board must respond to an above-target fishing mortality rate because it may be causing spawning stock biomass to decline—the same relationship doesn’t apply to Trigger 4.  Yes, spawning stock biomass may be decreasing, but that decrease doesn’t cause a rise in the fishing mortality rate; in fact, it may lead to a corresponding decrease, as recreational fishing effort is tied to striped bass abundance, and tends to wane as abundance declines.  Thus, Trigger 4 is probably ripe for revision.

That being the case, “Sub-option C-2” could be worthy of support.  It would decouple fishing mortality from spawning stock biomass, and require the Management Board to act if biomass fell below target for three consecutive years.  Because it deals with the target, rather than the threshold, level, the extra year is unlikely to cause any harm, and eliminating the fishing mortality component seems like an appropriate action.

The remaining options are problematic.  “Sub-option B-2” and “Sub-option C-3” would, respectively, completely eliminate the threshold and target spawning stock biomass triggers.  Those are both bad ideas.

While Draft Amendment 7 recognizes that it would be foolish to completely eliminate both spawning stock biomass triggers, and includes language requiring that either the threshold or target trigger remain, removing any such triggers would be a mistake.

As mentioned earlier, with respect to fishing mortality, eliminating the target trigger means that the fishery would be managed to its threshold level.  That would have a very detrimental effect on long-term abundance, and also make it more likely that the stock would become overfished.  Eliminating the threshold trigger would, in one way, be less of an issue, for if the target trigger was tripped, and the Management Board responded appropriately, the stock should never decline to the threshold.  However, eliminating the threshold trigger could inadvertently lead to a delay in responding to an overfished stock, especially in a period of rapid decline, if a new stock assessment found bass to be overfished, but the three years below target standard had not yet been satisfied.

The latter scenario is probably unlikely to occur, but why take the chance?  Keep Trigger 2 at the status quo.

Recruitment triggers

Finally, some unalloyed good news.

Currently, poor recruitment is addressed by Trigger 5, which reads:

“The Management Board shall annually examine trends in all required Juvenile Abundance Index surveys.  If any JAI shows recruitment failure (i.e., JAI is lower than all other values in the dataset) for three consecutive years, then the Management Board will review the cause of the recruitment failure (e.g. fishing mortality, environmental conditions, disease, etc.) and determine the appropriate management action.  The Management Board shall be the final arbiter in all management decisions.”

There are two big problems with Trigger 5.  The first is that “the dataset” extends back for more than 60 years, and includes the low-recruitment years that precipitated, and continued throughout, the stock collapse of the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Even when a juvenile abundance index is very low for the requisite three consecutive years, the values are unlikely to fall into the lower 25 percent of such dataset.  And, after all, the purpose of the management trigger is to compel Management Board action that will maintain stock health and prevent another collapse.  Waiting for recruitment to not merely emulate, but perhaps fall below, collapse-era levels is probably counterproductive.

In addition to that, Trigger 5 doesn’t actually require the Management Board to take any remedial action, raising the always-present possibility, perhaps likelihood, that even if the trigger was tripped, the Board would stand pat and do nothing.

Draft Amendment 7 seeks to remedy that situation by including two options, designated “Sub-option A2” and “Sub-option A3,” which would reduce the number of juvenile abundance indicators considered from six (Maine, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina), to four (eliminating North Carolina and Maine), and shorten the time series used to 1992-2006, when striped bass generally enjoyed strong recruitment. 

Sub-option A2 would still require that the juvenile abundance index fall below 75% of the values, in that shorter time series, for three consecutive years, while sub-option A3 would only require that such index fall below the median value for the time series for the same three years. 

Either option would be substantially more sensitive to reduced recruitment than the current Trigger 5.  Trigger 5 has only been tripped once since 2003, by the North Carolina juvenile abundance index for 2020.  During the same time period, sub-option A2 would have been tripped three times (New York in 2006, and Maryland in 2010 and 2014), while sub-option A3 would have been tripped six times (New York in 2006 and 2013; Maryland in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2014; and Virginia in 2010).

Other proposed options would require the Management Board to act if the recruitment trigger was tripped.  “Sub-option B2” and “sub-option B-3” would both require the Management Board to adopt an interim fishing mortality rate based on an assumption of low recruitment, and implement it if such rate was lower than the fishing mortality target recommended in the most recent stock assessment; such interim rate would remain in effect at least until the next stock assessment was released.  Sub-option B3 would also implement an interim spawning stock biomass threshold.  How that would work isn’t completely clear, but could prove problematic if such interim threshold allowed biomass to fall lower before the stock was declared overfished.

Taking no action when action is called for

The final tier of the management trigger section is TIER 4 OPTIONS:  Deferred management actions, a section that could also be named “Doing nothing even though a trigger was tripped.”

Draft Amendment 7 notes that

“These options are developed in response to the Board’s concern about the frequent need for management action due to triggers tripping with each stock assessment update or benchmark.  Stock assessment updates are typically conducted about every 2 years with benchmark assessments conducted about every 5 years.  The alternative Options B-F would defer management action until the following stock assessment.”

In other words, it formally perpetuates and encourages additional delay.

While none of the options would be good for the bass, two carry particular risk.  One is Option B which, if a trigger was tripped, would allow the Management Board to do nothing until the next stock assessment if it had put a management measure in place within the past three years. 

To understand why that’s a bad idea, picture this scenario:    In its final version of Amendment 7, the Management Board chooses Sub-option C2, which requires that fishing mortality be above target for 3 years before action is taken, and opts to eliminate the spawning stock biomass trigger.  Spawning stock biomass has been in steep decline, but the Board, not required to take any action, decides to do nothing.  Finally, the fishing mortality trigger is tripped, so the Board modestly reduces landings, hoping that such reduction will reduce fishing mortality to target although, thanks to conservation equivalency, there is only a 42 percent chance of that happening (as was the case, in the real world, when Addendum VI was implemented).  The same year that the new management measures went into effect, a new stock assessment comes out, revealing that the stock is badly overfished.  The Management Board, taking advantage of the Option B deferral, does nothing.  For at least two more years, the stock suffers from fishing mortality at above-target levels and continues to decline.

If the Management Board makes the wrong choices on Amendment 7, that scenario could become all too real.

Option F, which reads

“If a management trigger trips after the Board has already initiated action in response to a different management trigger, the Board can defer management action in response to the subsequent trigger until the next assessment,”

leaves the door open to something similar, although the period between management actions would, hopefully not be quite as long.

Options C-E are nowhere near as offensive, as they deal with only the fishing mortality target, and permit the Management Board to defer action only if the spawning stock biomass remains relatively healthy.

Even so, why delay?  A minor management action, taken in time, might prevent a crisis, and so prevent the need to adopt much more restrictive management measures a few years down the road.

As I noted before, delay never does any good for the bass.  And, in the long term, it doesn’t benefit fishermen, either.

Justifying delay

The Draft Amendment justifies proposals that induce delay by saying, in part, that

“When female [spawning stock biomass] is below the target level, the variable nature of fishing mortality can result in a continued need for management action.  Additionally, the shorter timetables for corrective action are in conflict with the desire for management stability, and the use of point estimates does not account for in inherent level of uncertainty.”

But when you look at that statement, such excuses quickly wear thin.

Amendment 6 was adopted in 2003, and in the nearly 19 years between such adoption and today, management triggers were tripped only twice—in 2013, when a benchmark stock assessment revealed that the stock was headed sharply downhill (and would have revealed even worse information, had the assessors only known that the estimates of recreational fishing mortality used at that time grossly underestimated the number of bass being caught and killed by anglers), and in 2019, when the next benchmark assessment revealed the stock to be both overfished and experiencing overfishing.  Two management changes over the course of 19 years, both in response to clear threats to the stock, hardly constitute “continued need for management action.”

As for the alleged “desire for management stability,” I can go through all 3,000-plus comments made in response to the Public Information Document last March, and while I can only find a few stakeholders calling for more “management stability,” I can easily find a report prepared by Emile Franke, the current Fishery Management Plan Coordinator (who, I might add, is doing a very good job after walking into something close to a firestorm when she took over the post as last spring’s comment process was just beginning) noting that 1,292 stakeholders commented that “Stability and/or flexibility should not override goal” of the management plan.  Included among them was a comment from the Maine Association of Charterboat Captains, who noted that

“Stability is easily achieved with a fully rebuilt fishery.”

A similar comment was made by the Native Fish Coalition, which stated that

“management stability should not be considered more important than rapid action toward rebuilding the population to a healthy, sustainable level.”

Recreational fishing clubs seem to agree, with the Rhode Island Anglers Association saying

“We agree with more stability and regulatory consistency, but only when the stock has been rebuilt to levels above the [spawning stock biomass] Target level,  [emphasis added]”

And the Virginia Anglers Association noting

“Given the current status of the stock, management flexibility and stability should take a back seat to other issues until the stock is closer to its target population.”

Individual stakeholders seem to agree, making comments such as

“stock stability is a first-order concern, far more important to our coastal fisheries than management stability,”

“Now is NOT the time for management stability.  Now is the time for management action,”

and

“the goal of stability in the fishery should be swapped for the stability of the striped bass population (i.e. it is ok to change regulations frequently to protect the species).”

So maybe “management stability” doesn’t matter too much, except to a small handful of stakeholders, most of whom are recreational and commercial industry members who profit from killing fish, and to a few state bureaucrats who don’t want to prepare new regulatory packages any more often than they need to.

Finally, although the use of point estimates unquestionably does not account for the uncertainty inherent in such estimates, using such uncertainty as an excuse for delay ignores the fact that uncertainty goes in two directions—it can both underestimate or overestimate a particular value.

The various options that would incorporate more delay into the striped bass management process ignore that fact.  They assume that, because of uncertainty, fishing mortality point estimates will always overestimate the mortality level; the possibility that the point estimate will underestimate the true level of fishing mortality never seems to raise any concerns. 

Yet, absent any retrospective bias in the stock assessment, both possibilities are equally likely.

Thus, Board members frequently express concerns that proposed management measures might be unnecessary, because the point estimate could be overestimating fishing mortality and overfishing isn’t really occurring, but seldom if ever voice fears that, even though the point estimate is very slightly below the fishing mortality threshold, the uncertainty inherent in that point estimate could be masking the fact that overfishing is already occurring, and prompt remedial measures are needed.

The Management Board is biased toward maintaining the highest possible level of landings, and not toward adopting conservative measures intended to ensure the health of the stock.

The current effort to insert greater delay into the management triggers, and to find ways to defer taking needed management actions, are the latest evidence of such long-held biases.

Hopefully, such measures will not survive stakeholder review.

-----

I apologize for the length of this essay, but I wanted to give the thorough treatment that it deserves.

Although I originally intended to cover the entirety of the Draft Amendment 7 in a single post, it now appears that I will have to break the issues down into three separate parts.  Sunday’s edition will address rebuilding and special protections for the 2015, 2017, and 2018 year classes.  It should be a much shorter essay than this one.