THE UNITED STATES' FISHERIES: HOW ARE WE DOING?

 This blog is about fisheries conservation and management.  It tends to focus on individual species, most often those found in New England and the mid-Atlantic, and on the fishery management process itself, examining both legal and political issues.

But sometimes, it’s worth standing back and taking a broader view.  Are the nation’s fish stocks essentially healthy?  And what are the trends?

Are our fish in a better place today than they were a year ago?

As one might suspect, given that the United States’ fish stocks span both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, from Maine, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the east to Guam, American Samoa and Alaska’s most distant islands in the west, that’s not a simple question to answer.  But two reports recently released by the National Marine Fisheries Service, Status of Stocks 2021 and 2020 Fisheries of the United States, provide quite a bit of relevant information.

They make it clear that managing the nation’s fisheries is a huge job.  Right now, there are 460 fish stocks and stock complexes under management, and more may be added; chub mackerel, to provide just one example, were only added to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Atlantic Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan in 2019. 

Developing enough information to properly manage a stock is another immense task; just because a regional fishery management council determines that a stock is in need of conservation and management doesn’t mean that the data to do so is on hand.  Of the 460 managed stocks and stock complexes, federal managers only have the information needed determine whether 322 (70%) of such stocks are experiencing overfishing.  It’s even more difficult to determine whether a stock is overfished; sufficient information to make such a finding is available for just 252 (55%) stocks and stock complexes.

Where the information is available, it appears that managers are keeping overfishing under control.  Of the 322 stocks with known overfishing status, only 22 (8%) were suffering from overfishing at the end of 2021.  

Recovering overfished stocks is a more difficult slog; the health if just 252 stocks can be determined, and out of those, 51 (20%) remained overfished at the close of last year, a number that slightly exceeds the 47 once-overfished stocks that have been fully rebuilt since the most important conservation provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act were adopted in 1996.

Looking at those figures on a year-to-year basis, the number of stocks experiencing overfishing remains unchanged compared to 2020, but the number of overfished stocks has increased from 49 to 51.  However, the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

The status of fish stocks is never static.  The health of fish stocks can be impacted by both fishing and by natural factors, all of which vary from year to year.  While commercial landings are generally driven by quotas and rarely change too much absent a change in regulations or fish abundance, recreational landings can be much more volatile, driven not only by abundance and regulation, but by unpredictable factors that might include weather, fuel prices, general economic conditions, and the relative abundance of one species compared to another.

The upshot of that is that, while the number of stocks experiencing overfishing might not have changed between the end of 2020 and the end of 2021, the identity of some of them has.  Both South Atlantic tilefish and Eastern Pacific yellowfin tuna were removed from the overfishing list because fishing mortality has fallen below their respective fishing mortality thresholds.  On the other hand, in the case of South Atlantic snowy grouper, Gulf of Mexico greater amberjack, South Atlantic gag grouper, and Gulf of Mexico gag grouper, biologists have determined that fishing mortality rose above threshold and added them to the list.

There were two other stocks, South Atlantic speckled hind (a sort of grouper) and South Atlantic Warsaw grouper, that were also removed from the overfishing list, but in the case of those stocks, it wasn’t because fishing mortality had necessarily fallen.  Instead, scientists decided that they currently lack some of the information needed to make a determination, and so changed the designation of both stocks from “Overfishing” to “Unknown;” it is very possible, although not necessarily true, that if their status could still be calculated, managers would have determined that overfishing was still going on.

When it comes to federal managers’ determinations of overfished stocks, there is less ambiguity.  In news that caught me by surprise, California Central Valley/Sacramento River Chinook salmon were removed from the overfished list, while Gulf of Mexico gag grouper, South Atlantic gag grouper, and Bering Sea snow crab were added to the list.  None of the three additions were due to suddenly increased fishing pressure; instead, scientists developed a more accurate stock assessment approach for gag grouper, which resulted in the “overfished” finding, while the Bering Sea snow crab were largely victims of changed environmental conditions brought about by a warming ocean.

One stock was also removed from both the “unknown” categories; Atlantic blacktip shark was fully assessed for the first time, and found to be neither overfished nor subject to overfishing.

Of course, that only applies to federally managed fish stocks.  There are many other stocks, a lot of which are important to the recreational fishery and some of which are commercially important, too, which are solely managed either by state fishery managers or by the states acting cooperatively through the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which are not included in the above breakdown.

While the “Status of Stocks” report focuses on the fish themselves, Fisheries of the United States focuses on the recreational, commercial, and aquaculture industries, their use of marine resources, and the resultant revenues.  From a pure conservation standpoint, the status of fish stocks is more important, but economics, demographics, and human behavior remain an unavoidable part of the management process, and must be understood by anyone wanting to make the process work.

One of the more notable aspects of the commercial fishery is that most of its money does not come from what we usually think of as fish; while finfish accounted for 87% of landings, they only accounted for 44% of the value of the catch.  New Bedford, Massachusetts is the nation’s most important commercial fishing port, from the standpoint of its landings' value, which were worth $377 million; 83.6% of that value was derived from the scallop fishery, which only comprised 26% of the port’s landings by weight.

In fact, finfish only compose one of the five most valuable commercial species groups.  That group, salmon, produced landings worth $478 million in 2020, an amount which, while substantial, is dwarfed by the $2.07 billion in value collectively generated by the other four, non-finfish groups, which include crabs ($584 million), lobsters ($563 million), scallops ($488 million), and shrimp ($435 million). 

Ports where large volumes of finfish are landed, often generate relatively low revenues.  Compared to New Bedford, where fishery products command an average $3.28 per pound, the 800 million pounds of landings in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, the nation’s most important port in terms of volume, generate an average of merely $0.23 per pound.  That’s not merely an Alaskan phenomenon.  Vessels out of Reedsville, Virginia land more fish than any other port in the contiguous United States, yet its 302 million pounds of landings consist of little but low-value menhaden, that generated only $64 million, or $0.21 per pound.

Such values need to be taken into account when considering the highest and best use of marine resources.

On the recreational side, anglers made about 199 million fishing trips in 2020, catching about 1 billion fish.  Of those, about 344 million were either retained or died after release.  The fish that were retained tended to be very small; total recreational landings by weight were only about 353 million pounds, meaning that the average fish retained weighed little more than a pound (1.02 pounds), testimony to the importance of saltwater “panfish” such as spot, scup, and croaker to the recreational fishery.

For the first time in probably two decades, the striped bass was dethroned as the species with the highest recreational landings.  Bass landings dropped from about 24 million pounds in 2018 and 2019 to about 15 million pounds in 2020, a drop that probably reflected both the new, more restrictive regulations that became effective in 2020 and the overfished state of the stock.  Yellowfin tuna took over the striped bass’ place, with about 17 million pounds landed.  Spotted sea trout were the most often caught, but not necessarily the most often retained, recreational species at 54 million, while spot (20 million) and scup (14 million) were the fish most often taken home.

All of those numbers are nice, but what do they actually mean?

One of their most obvious messages is that we ought to be allocating more money to fisheries science.  Scientists currently lack the information they need to determine some of the most basic information about 45% of all managed stocks—whether or not such stocks are overfished, or headed in that direction.  Without such information, it would be all too easy to fish such stocks down to levels that will make it very difficult, or even impossible, to bring them back to health.

The commercial fisheries data, which suggests that high volume/low value fisheries exist for a significant number of species, provides meaningful guidance on resolving sector conflicts and deciding how to best utilize various stocks.  

While sustainable commercial fisheries for high value species might reasonably be encouraged, managers ought to ask whether the highest and best use of other species, such as Atlantic menhaden, may be to leave them in the ecosystem to provide a reliable source of forage for more valuable commercial and recreational species.  In the case of other fish which command relatively low market prices, such as scup ($0.67 in 2019), Atlantic croaker ($1.13), or bluefish ($0.84), but are among the top five species retained by anglers, the greatest social and economic benefits from the resource can probably be realized be slanting allocations strongly toward the recreational sector.

The fact that about 65% of all recreational landings are released, and that the average fish retained by recreational fishermen weighs slightly over one pound, also argues in favor of managers making a real distinction between “food fish” that are typically taken home by anglers and should be managed for yield, and “sport fish” that are typically sought for the angling experience, and should be managed for abundance.

Managing striped bass and scup in the same manner, using the same set of criteria even though anglers typically pursue them for very different reasons, makes no sense at all.

In the end, the United States’ fisheries are so diverse, in the sense of both species and geographical range, and so complex that it is impossible to lump them all into a single conclusion that things are going badly, or that all is well.  There’s a little of both going on.

At the same time, publications like the Status of Stocks and Fisheries of the United States provide a window into nation’s fisheries and its fisheries management program, and the successes and failures of each.  Both are worth a good read.