STATE FISHERY MANAGERS FAIL INSHORE STOCKS IN THE GULF

 

One of the most repeated mantras of the fishing tackle industry and the anglers’ rights crowd is that state fishery managers do a better job of managing recreational fisheries than their federal counterparts do. 

That canard was first imposed on the public consciousness in February 2014, when a coalition of industry and anglers’ rights groups assembled a captive “Commission on Saltwater Recreational Fishery Management,” which put its imprimatur on a collection of the industry’s pet proposals and called them “A Vision for Managing America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries,” which included the statement that

“The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), under the auspices of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and ultimately the Department of Commerce, is the federal agency responsible for fisheries management in federal waters.  Given its mandated commercial focus, the fact that NMFS has not embraced fisheries management practices that also meet the unique goals, needs and motivations of recreational anglers should come as no surprise…

“Many state natural resource agencies, especially those in the South, recognize the benefits of a vibrant recreational fishing community, and have managed to promote it while conserving their saltwater resources.  Striped bass, red drum, black drum, summer flounder, sheepshead, snook, spotted seatrout and tarpon are examples of successfully managed state fisheries that sufficiently meet the needs of recreational anglers while providing extensive economic benefits to their state and national economies.

“Many coastal states have adopted management models that are well tuned for their particular saltwater fisheries.  These models conserve fishery resources, provide multi-year consistency in regulations and allow for ample public access.  However, these approaches have not yet been embraced by the NMFS, which is a significant contributing factor to the dilemma in saltwater recreational fishery management.”

Those three paragraphs contain many questionable statements; with the exception of the opening sentence, every assertion made can be contradicted by easily verifiable fact.  However, of all the misstatements made, it is the overall premise, that state fishery managers can both properly conserve fish stocks while allowing “ample public access”—with “access” being a euphemism for recreational harvest—that strays the farthest from the truth.

After all, state fishery managers allowed the striped bass, once hailed as the shining success of the state management system, to suffer from overfishing and become overfished; in parts of the South, the two flagship inshore species, red drum and speckled trout, are not doing too well.

We have already seen some states’ fisheries managers drop the ball in the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery where, although snapper are federally managed species, the states are permitted to set seasons and associated regulations that are supposed to constrain each state’s anglers to the state’s recreational red snapper quota.  Because of differences in how the federal and state recreational data programs estimate recreational catch, state managers in both Mississippi and Alabama have badly undercounted recreational landings in recent years, leading both states to severely overfish their allocations.  However, neither state is willing to revisit their red snapper regulations, and are fighting federal efforts to reduce their anglers’ red snapper landings to sustainable levels.

 Thus, state management could impair the recovery of the still-rebuilding red snapper stock.

In Louisiana waters, state managers have presided over the depletion of both spotted seatrout (“speckled trout”) and red drum.

The problem with speckled trout has been going on for a long time.

A recent stock assessment indicates that Louisiana’s speckled trout have been overfished since 2016.  However, there is reason to believe that the problems with the stock extend farther back than that.  Louisiana has established a spawning potential ratio (SPR) of 18% as the threshold for speckled trout.  That means that the stock is not overfished so long as its spawning potential ratio is at least 18% of the spawning potential of an unfished population.

Since 1981, the SPR of Louisiana’s speckled trout stock has never risen above 20%, but has fallen as low as 8%, less than half the SPR threshold.  Yet, despite speckled trout’s generally low abundance in the state, Louisiana has, since 1987, maintained some of the most liberal regulations anywhere on the Gulf Coast, allowing anglers to retain a daily limit of 25 fish, which may be as small as 12 inches long.

Back in 2017, a Louisiana fishery manager explained that

“The current limits, biologically speaking, are designed to maximize angler yield while not putting the stock into a condition where we may see recruitment overfishing.”

Thus, Louisiana’s experience with speckled trout provides a good illustration of what “A Vision for Managing America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries” calls “allow[ing for] ample public access;” that is, the state allows anglers to kill plenty of fish.  But Louisiana has hardly conserved fishery resources by doing so.

Instead, as Sport Fishing magazine reported,

“According to [Jason] Adriance [a marine biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries], Louisiana’s spawning biomass of trout is too low because overfishing by anglers has removed too many trout for them to effectively resupply the trout stock.”

Louisiana’s Finfish Task Force has recommended that the state reduce its speckled trout bag limit to 15 fish, and raise its minimum size to 13.5 inches.  Whether that will actually occur remains an open question.

The same regulations were considered two years ago, when the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission decided to defer action until more information on the issue could be developed.  At the time, the regulatory change was being questioned by some in the recreational fishing community, with Joe Macaluso, a columnist for The Advocate, a widely-read Louisiana website, writing,

“Increasing the minimum size was troubling, too.

“If you want to save fish, especially a ‘tender’ fish like speckled trout, than catching it, hauling it into a boat, removing the hook, measuring it, then releasing it lends to what we know as ‘discard mortality.’

“So, with data showing we have a disproportionate share of 12-14 inch long trout in the population, wouldn’t it mean that setting a minimum size of 13 or 14 inches (or somewhere in between) would lead to increased discard mortality, that we would kill more of the fish that could grow larger to be ‘legal’ with a 15-fish limit of trout longer than 12 inches?”

There is no guarantee that, when public hearings are held on the new proposal to impose new regulations, proponents of “ample public access” won’t defeat needed conservation measures again.

A similar situation seems to be developing with Louisiana’s red drum.  Although there has not yet been a stock assessment indicating that the state’s red drum might be overfished (a new stock assessment will be completed fairly soon), anecdotal information from anglers suggests that the stock could be in some sort of trouble.  As long-time Louisiana angler and outdoor writer Todd Masson recently observed in an article that appeared on Salt Water Sportsman’s website,

“Currently, Louisiana anglers may harvest five reds per angler per day, with a size minimum of 16 inches and a maximum of 27 inches (one fish may be over).

“Louisiana has a rich culinary history, particularly when it comes to seafood.  It was birthed out of our abundance.  When nature keeps giving you a specific protein, you’d better come up with creative ways to prepare it.

“In the local culture, eating fish is as significant a part of the fun as catching them.  That means most anglers put every single legal redfish they catch in the box.  They view catch and release as a type of sacrilege, like slapping the face of a god trying to bless you with bounty.

“So, an angler who catches five reds is going home with five reds.”

Once again, the state has decided to “provide ample access” to anglers, in this case, anglers who fish for red drum.

And once again, conservation considerations have been given a lower priority.

As Masson notes elsewhere in the article,

“I’ve spent three decades covering the outdoors in Louisiana, and because of that, I have a vast network of anglers I share information with on a daily or weekly basis.  To a man, they all agree that—by orders of magnitude—Louisiana’s redfish population is worse than it’s ever been…

“…It’s time for the state’s fisheries managers to acknowledge the decline that has become so obvious to anglers, and tighten the harvest limits.”

Given the way Louisiana has dealt—or not dealt—with its speckled trout problem, I wouldn’t hold my breath while I waited for action. 

If speckled trout were a federally managed species, then the clear language of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act would have required that a plan to rebuild the stock—and rebuild it within ten years, if that was biologically feasible—be put in place within two years after the stock was found to be overfished.  If red drum were a federally managed species, the same timeline would apply to that species, too.

But neither species falls under Magnuson-Stevens’ jurisdiction; instead, they’re both managed by the sort of state managers that, according to the “Vision” statement, "recognize the benefits of a vibrant recreational fishing community, and have managed to promote it while conserving their saltwater resources."  

The problem is that state fishery management agencies, which operate in a smaller political arena that is more vulnerable to pressure brought by well-heeled special interest groups, are more apt to “promote” recreational fishing, and focus on the short-term benefits that accrue to both the industry and anglers when managers strive to “provide ample access,” rather than on the long-term benefits that accrue from conserving and actively managing fish stocks.

Such focus may appeal to a recreational fishing industry that concentrates on the short term.

But as Louisiana’s problems with speckled trout and red drum make all too clear, such environment, unlike the environment created by Magnuson-Stevens, does not promote the long-term sustainability of fish stocks and so, contrary to angling industry claims, doesn’t really work well at all.