IN SUPPORT OF FACT-BASED FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

One of the frustrating parts of fisheries advocacy is that you meet a lot of well-meaning people along the way, folks with the sort of energy that, if properly focused, could help move the management process forward.  But far too many such folks have come to some false conclusions about management issues, that they cling to as tenaciously as a barnacle clings to a stone, and when that happens, their practical contributions to the management process fall close to zero.

As Mark Twain once allegedly said (but very possibly didn’t),

“It ain’t what you don’t know that get’s you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

In the fisheries arena, a lot of people getg themselves into trouble that way.

Recently, I’ve been in an ongoing debate with a charter boat captain from Massachusetts, who is completely convinced that state regulators destroyed the winter flounder fishery by increasing the trip limit for inshore trawlers from 250 to 500 pounds. 

He claims that fishing was getting steadily better since he began fishing the area about 25 years ago, but that it started to tank around 2012, after the trip limit was increased, and the flounder were exposed to much higher levels of fishing pressure.  

He also argues that the entire Gulf of Maine stock of winter flounder are overfished, and that in order to address the problem, the trawlers should be banned from state waters, and forced to fish farther offshore.

He offers no data to support his opinion about the trawlers, but refuses to consider the possibility that such opinion could be wrong.  Contradictory facts are dismissed as "lies" or the products of a "corrupt" management system.

I looked into the issue a little bit, first just out of curiosity and then, as he continued to discount any data that conflicted with his beliefs, to try to explain a little bit about how the fishery management process actually works and, how his concerns fit inton the overall management program.

It turns out that the Gulf of Maine winter flounder is the only one of the three winter flounder stocks recognized by the New England Fishery Management Council and National Marine Fisheries Service that hasn’t been declared overfished.  That’s not because the Gulf of Maine stock is necessarily more abundant than the other two, but because the model used to determine the health of the population is incapable of estimating spawning stock biomass, and does not allow biologists to develop biological reference points that could be used to determine the state of the stock.

The most recent stock assessment update strongly suggests that Gulf of Maine flounder abundance may have been declining since 2014.  Thus, it’s possible that, if biological reference points could be calculated, and a good estimate of the biomass produced, the Gulf of Maine stock would be found to be overfished as well.  But it’s also possible that, if such calculations could be made, biologists would find that while abundance had declined, spawning stock biomass had not fallen below the threshold (one-half of the biomass needed to produce maximum sustainable yield) that defines an overfished stock.

Right now, it's impossible to know.  The data just isn't there.

And that lack of knowledge is important, because if the Gulf of Maine stock of winter flounder was found to be overfished, that finding would have clear legal consequences.  Pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, NMFS would be required to implement a rebuilding plan for the stock within two years, and that rebuilding plan would have to be designed to rebuild the stock within ten years after its initiation.

Thus, one cannot merely do as the captain in question would do, and declare the stock to be overfished based on “common sense.”  Stock status must be determined in accordance with objective standards, not only to accord with Magnuson-Stevens, but also to ensure that the resulting regulations comply with the Administrative Procedures Act's standards, which require, in part, that a

“reviewing court…hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law…[or] unsupported by substantial evidence…  [emphasis added, internal formatting omitted]”

Basing a regulation on someone's subjective view of “common sense” rather than on objective data would pretty well guarantee that such regulation would not survive its trip to the courthouse.

And when you look at the data in Massachusetts, it doesn’t even really accord with the captain’s memory, much less his claims of cause and effect.

His argument was that recreational fishing got increasingly better from the late 1990s to 2012 or so, then began to decline as more commercial effort entered the fishery.  But when we look at recreational and commercial catch data for the fishery, we see a very different story unfold.  

Massachusetts recreational flounder landings for the years 2002-2007 were only about half of what they were in the years immediately prior--for a period of six years, the fishing wasn't getting better, but worse, than it had been in the late '90s--then suddenly quadrupled for the years 2008-2011, before dropping by more than half again in 2012-2016.  After spiking a bit in 2017 and 2018, they then fell to all-time lows for the next three years.

Charting recreational landings against commercial landings, we see a pattern quite different from what the captain suggested emerge.  Commercial landings peaked, between 10.4 million and 11.7 million pounds, during the years 2001-2003, right at the time when the Massachusetts captain claimed that recreational fishing was getting better.  Then they entered a period of steady decline.  While such landings did increase modestly between 2011 and 2013, from 4.5 million to 5.4 million pounds—roughly half of what they were at their peak, such landings fell sharply after that, falling from 3.8 million pounds in 2014 to just 0.9 million pounds in 2020.

Recreational and commercial landings reached historically low levels at the same time, so to blame increasing commercial landings for the steady decline of the winter flounder population, particularly when the most recent stock assessment update found that overfishing isn’t occurring, doesn’t accord with the available data.  

Certainly, overfishing may have played a role in the early years, and even well into the first decade of this century, but the fact that both commercial and recreational landings, as well as estimates of stock abundance, is waning even though fishing mortality remains acceptably low suggests that causes other than fishing, perhaps ocean warming (the Gulf of Maine is one of the most rapidly warming bodies of water on the planet), are driving its continued decline.

But, again, we lack the knowledge to identify what those causes might be.

To be fair, the flounder situation might have been a little different around Boston Harbor, where that particular captain usually fished.  But even if it were, that fact would demonstrate why statistically valid data, rather than an individual’s perceptions of what is going on, ought to drive the fishery management process.  Because yes, there may be local differences in abundance—after the striped bass stock collapsed in the late 1970s, there was still unusually good fishing for very large fish at Block Island and Cape Cod’s Pochet’s Hole—but local observations of abundance or scarcity are not appropriate drivers of management action, which needs to be based on information that reflects the overall state of the stock.

Gulf of Maine winter flounder are, after all, managed as a unified stock, and not broken down into local populations (if, indeed, local populations exist, as they do in the Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic stock; my suggestion that the captain in question try to find someone to finance a study on whether the fish around Boston Harbor comprised a discreet population, and should be subject to special state management measures, did not receive a warm reception).  It is the overall status of the stock that drives management, and not the seeming abundance or absence of fish in one particular spot.

Thus, the captain in question has fallen into a trap that snares far too many people who have the desire, and the enthusiasm, to get involved in the management process, but who insist on elevating their own opinions above demonstrable facts.  Scuh people get frustrated with fishery managers who refuse to elevate their anecdotal comments, and perceived correlations of cause and effect, above statistically valid, verifiable data. 

 They then take out their frustrations on the management system, unwilling to ask, and perhaps not wanting to know, whether the fault lies not in the system, but in themselves.

If we are to have healthy, sustainable fisheries, which continue to provide food, recreation, and employment in the long term, management of those fisheries must be based on the best scientific information available.

If we base management on our guesses, our biases, and on what we want to be true, we only do a disservice to the fish-- and to ourselves.