AT THE ASMFC: IS THE LEOPARD CHANGING ITS SPOTS?

 

Anyone who has followed this blog for a while knows that I have often been critical of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. 

Or maybe that’s not quite correct, because that statement implies that I’m critical of the folks who are employed by the ASMFC—the scientists, as well as the administrators and support staff that keep the lights on and the information flowing to the public and to the people who actually make the management decisions—and that’s not the case.  I respect the ASMFC’s employees, and believe that, with very, very few exceptions, they do and have always done an exemplary job.

My criticism is actually aimed at the various species management boards, where the professional fishery managers are outnumbered, almost two-to-one, by appointees and proxies who, for the most part, have no formal training in fishery management or any other branch of the biological sciences, often have a vested economic interest in the fisheries that they manage, and yet are allowed to exercise their unfettered discretion in setting management measures for ASMFC managed species.

My criticism is also aimed at the law that allowed that situation to develop, the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, which wisely gave the ASMFC the authority to compel coastal states to comply with its interstate fishery management plans, but foolishly failed to establish any sort of qualifications for the Governors’ and Legislative Appointees that sit on the management boards, or for the proxies that take such appointees’ places when they choose not to attend a meeting, and further failed to set any sort of legal standards for management board decisions.

As a result of those failures, the ASMFC has had very limited success in rebuilding overfished stocks and preventing formerly healthy stocks from declining.  Its most notable failure occurred when, despite repeated warnings from both the science and the angling community, it allowed the Atlantic striped bass stock, which it successfully rebuilt after it collapsed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to become overfished once again.

But that isn’t its only failure.  It ignored scientific advice and, despite the threat posed by a warming ocean, set northern shrimp quotas too high, and opened the trawl season too early to prevent egg-bearing females from being caught.  The stock subsequently collapsed, and there has not been a northern shrimp season for many years.

The ASMFC first learned that tautog had become overfished in 1996 but, unwilling to impose the sort of landings reductions needed to end overfishing and rebuild the stock out of fear that they might cause some economic distress to elements of the recreational fishing industry, took over 20 years to put an effective fishery management plan in place.  And even that management plan would allow overfishing to occur in Long Island Sound for another decade.

In 2010, the ASMFC’s American Lobster Technical Committee issued a report finding that the Southern New England lobster stock was “critically depleted” due to recruitment failure.  It recommended that a 5-year moratorium be imposed on the Southern New England lobster fishery, in hope of rebuilding the spawning stock and paving the way to successful recruitment should ocean conditions improve.  After lobstermen protested the report’s conclusions, the possibility of a moratorium was taken off the table, and the report was sent out for an independent peer review.  Two of the three peer reviewers effectively endorsed the report’s conclusions, while the third found a moratorium unnecessary, but advised that lobster landings should be reduced by 50 to 75 percent.  The ASMFC, concerned more about maintaining the lobster fishery than conserving the lobster stock, settled on a 10% harvest reduction.  The Southern New England lobster stock remains in a state of collapse.

Such ineffective management actions have caused most concerned anglers to doubt the ASMFC’s commitment to rebuilding overfished stocks, and maintaining now-healthy stocks at sustainable levels.

However, recent ASMFC actions seem to suggest that conservation is becoming a more important consideration at management board meetings.

The trend probably began when the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board began its work on Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass. 

Initially, anglers had low expectations for the new amendment.  There was a faction of the Management Board that saw the amendment as a vehicle that could be used to lower the spawning stock biomass target and threshold, increase the fishing mortality reference points, and raise annual landings at the expense of striped bass sustainability.  Language contained in the first amendment-related document released, the Public Information Document to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, only confirmed their fears.

But then something unexpected happened.  Anglers concerned with the health of the striped bass stock emerged in substantial numbers, to call for more conservative management, and the majority of the Management Board took heed.  Yes, there was still a New Jersey legislative proxy who saw nothing wrong with gaff-and-release, and voices coming from New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland who were calling for larger harvests, but overall, the tone of the conversations began to change.  Striped bass champions emerged, concentrated in New England, but coming from states all along the coast.

And when Amendment 7 was finally done, it was a document that sought to better protect, rather than more aggressively exploit, the striped bass resource.  And the Management Board seems to still be charting a new, pro-conservation course.

Back in 2016, a little more than a year after the more restrictive management measures included in Addendum IV to Amendment 6 of the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan became effective, the Management Board learned that the 2015 fishing mortality rate was 0.15, three-hundredths of a point below the fishing mortality target.  Faced with that revelation, some Management Board members immediately wanted to introduce slightly more liberal recreational regulations, in order to raise the fishing mortality rate to the target level.  That was the case even though recreational catch and landings estimates suggested that anglers’ 2016 landings would be substantially higher than they were in the year before, and despite the fact that managers already knew that anglers in the Chesapeake Bay not only failed to achieve their planned 20.5% reduction in fishing mortality, but actually increased such mortality by 50%.

While the effort to relax recreational regulations ultimately stalled, no effort was made to reduce recreational landings in the Chesapeake Bay, even though such landings hit levels more than twice what they would have been if the 20.5% reduction had been achieved.

Such indifference to the effectiveness of striped bass regulations is a stark contrast to what we saw this year, after a recent stock assessment update found that the 2021 fishing mortality rate again fell three-hundredths of a point below the target level, and projected that the stock would probably be rebuilt with no change in current regulations.

Instead of taking the sort of hands-off posture that it struck in 2016, and instead of suggesting that fishing mortality should be increased to meet the target level, the majority of the Management Board supported a more conservative management approach.  Concerned that the 2021 fishing mortality rate might not continue throughout the rebuilding period, it asked the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee to wait until early next year, when recreational striped bass landings estimates for all of 2022 will be available, and then compare those actual landings with projected landings based on the assumptions in the stock assessment update.

If 2022 landings turn out to be materially higher than the projection, the Management Board will consider imposing new, more restrictive management measures for the 2023 season.  That’s a big change from how the Management Board acted just six years ago.

And it wasn’t the only pro-conservation stance taken at the ASMFC’s November Annual Meeting.  The Horseshoe Crab Management Board also took an unexpectedly conservative action when it met.

Anglers generally aren’t too concerned with horseshoe crabs, but ornithologists and birdwatchers are.  That’s because horseshoe crab eggs are an important food source for the red knot, an endangered shorebird that migrates from southern South America to the Arctic tundra each spring, when the birds make an important stopover along the shores of Delaware Bay to gorge on horseshoe crab eggs and take on enough calories to carry them the rest of the way to the Arctic.  In recent years, a sharp decline in the number of horseshoe crabs has led to a sharp drop in the number of red knots, and the harvest of female horseshoe crabs in the vicinity of Delaware Bay has been prohibited in the ASMFC’s horseshoe crab management plan.

The crab stock has responded, and abundance is creeping up.  Recent, peer-reviewed research suggests that the red knot population is stable at a level higher than previously believed, and that horseshoe crab harvest can be safely increased.  A proposal was put on the table to increase the harvest in Delaware Bay, and permit as many as 150,000 female crabs to be taken.  Although a number of environmental groups opposed such liberalized management measures, and argued against them, the best available science seemed to suggest that the measures would do no harm.

Given the ASMFC’s history, and the fact that it had often favored economic arguments when the scientific and economic arguments were at odds, one might easily have assumed that in this instance, when scientific and economic arguments were aligned, permitting the harvest of female horseshoe crabs was inevitable.

But that’s not what happened.  The Horseshoe Crab Management Board opted for a more conservative course, in which higher landings would be permitted, but the harvest of female crabs remained illegal.  It was the sort of outcome that probably wouldn’t have happened five years ago.

So the big question is, might the ASMFC be undergoing a sea change, in which it becomes more focused on conservation, and less on economic outcomes?

Unfortunately, over the long term, that’s probably not the case.  While the various species management boards now enjoy a membership that seems far more concerned about restoring and maintaining healthy marine resource populations than was the case a decade ago, the composition of those management boards is in constant flux.  

While the pendulum may now have swung toward conservation, it could easily swing in the other direction by this time next year.

The New Jersey proxy who supported gaff-and-release fell off the management boards last summer, after the legislator he represented departed his post, but was back for the November meeting, representing a new legislative appointee.  At the same time, New York’s legislative appointee resigned from politics earlier this fall, forcing his proxy—who happened to be one of the more consistently conservation-oriented folks at the meetings—to leave the management boards.  Such comings and goings will occur after every election, and for some management board attendees, during the years in-between.

So, while the recent trends at the ASMFC have been encouraging, the only way to assure that the ASMFC prioritizes healthy and sustainable fish stocks in the long term is to convince legislators to build safeguards into the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, which limit management board discretion and require that overfished stocks are promptly rebuilt, that overfishing is promptly remedied, and that make the ASMFC legally accountable if such things aren’t done.

Such fix won’t occur overnight, but it is still something worth working for.