STRIPED BASS: ASMFC CONSIDERS COMMERCIAL QUOTA TRANSFERS

 

Last week, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission formally released Draft Addendum I to Amendment 7 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, along with a schedule of hearings on such draft addendum.

Addendum I addresses a single issue:  Should coastal states be allowed to transfer unused and unneeded commercial striped bass quota to other states that wish to land more fish than they would otherwise be allowed under the management plan?

That question has been around for a long time.  

In October 2014, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board considered such transfers in connection with its approval of Addendum IV to Amendment 6 of the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management  Plan.  It noted that such transfers were almost universally opposed in the public hearings leading up to the Management Board meeting, and when a vote on the issue was finally taken, Board members opposed quota transfers by a margin of 15 to 1. 

It is probably significant, for the purposes of the current discussion, that Delaware was among the majority of states which voted against quota transfers.

The issue next arose in the Public Information Document for Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, released in February 2021, which asked the public to comment on whether such transfers should be considered in the contemplated amendment.  

In her summary of stakeholder comments, Emile Franke, the ASMFC’s Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for Atlantic Striped Bass, noted that

“this issue had fewer comments overall.  The majority of commenters on this issue support updating the commercial quota allocation to a more recent timeframe to better align with current fishery conditions.  A small number of commenters noted this issue should not be addressed in Amendment 7 or that commercial allocation should not be changed at this time.”

Ms. Franke did not directly address the question of quota transfers in her memo to the Management Board, as that point was raised by very few stakeholders.  A review of the written comments received shows that out of more than 3,000 comments, only three appeared to directly address the quota transfer issue.  One, from the Long Island [New York] Commercial Fishermen’s Association supported such transfers.  Two others, from individual anglers, seemed to oppose them.  On the whole, there were few strong sentiments either way.

The Atlantic Striped Bass Advisory Panel exhibited a similar indifference, with one member supporting quota transfers, one member opposing them, and the others voicing no opinion.  When the Management Board considered a motion to include the issue in the Draft Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass For Public Comment, the motion failed to attract a majority, with six in favor, six opposed, two abstentions, and a null vote.

However, prior to the August 2021 Management Board meeting, Toni Kearns, the ASMFC’s Interstate Fishery Management Program Director, presented a memo that began

“At the May 2021 Board meeting, the motion to include the commercial allocation issue in Draft Amendment 7 failed for lack of a majority.  Many Board members recognized that Delaware has raised this issue for several years now and Delaware asserts their current allocation is not equitable…

“The Board Chair requested staff from the Commission and the State of Delaware prepare options and timelines for how this issue could be addressed moving forward.  In response to the request, Commission staff and Commissioners from the State of Delaware prepared this memorandum for discussion at the August meeting.”

Four different options were presented, including no action, commercial quota transfers, a reallocation of commercial quotas based on various historical factors, and a reallocation based on the contributions of each spawning estuary to the spawning stock.

At the meeting, John Clark, the Administrative Proxy for Delaware, supported the transfer option, saying

“…Tried to keep it very simple, and tried to look for a option [sic]…the first option is for voluntary transfers.  We are not trying to do a full reallocation everywhere, because we now how fraught that process would be.  Just looking to get more in the simplest way possible here.

“We also understand that there might be some concern with just voluntary transfers, because it could end up with more questions of states asking for transfers that they maybe don’t really need, or what have you.  We added some criteria…to at least make sure that transfer would only go to states that had filled their quota the previous year…I’m sure if anybody who has read through it saw that really the only state that would qualify under all three criteria would be Delaware…”

Eventually, Mr. Clark put a motion on the table, to initiate an addendum to the management plan that would permit voluntary transfers of state striped bass quota.  Such motion passed by on a vote of eight in favor, seven opposed.  Thus, work began on what was originally Addendum VII to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass and, after Amendment 7 was adopted, was redesignated as Addendum I to that amendment.

Unfortunately, Addendum I has expanded far beyond the original intent of the document, which was to provide a few more fish for the State of Delaware.  It now contemplates transfers among any coastal states, transfers which could lead to a meaningful increase in fishing mortality.

That would be problematic at any time, but becomes a particular issue as managers are attempting to rebuild the overfished striped bass stock.  As noted at the start of this essay, the quota transfer issue is nothing new.  It has been periodically visited by the Management Board, and to date, the Management Board has always decided that such transfers were a bad idea. 

During the debate over transfers at the August 2021 Management Board meeting, someone asked why quota transfers are not allowed in the striped bass fishery, when they are routinely accepted in fisheries for other species.  In response to that question, Robert Beal, the ASMFC’s Executive Director, said that

“my recollection is that they were not allowed while we were, even before my time the Board was trying to rebuild the striped bass stock.  Then once it was rebuilt, the Board sort of felt comfortable with not allowing transfers.  Part of it had to do with where those fish came from.

“If you move fish from North Carolina to Maine, well North Carolina to Massachusetts, that’s probably the farthest commercial quotas.  You know with that impact differentially, where those fish came from and the spawning populations and that sort of thing.  But again, most of it is a holdover from the rebuilding days of the early ‘90s.”

Roy Miller, Delaware’s Governor's Appointee, reinforced Mr. Beal’s recollection, saying

“I just wanted to agree with what Bob said regarding the history of this process.  We were in a rebuilding mode from the 1980s until the mid-1990s.  This is from someone who was there during that time.  It carried over into the restoration of the coastwide stock, and even the Delaware stock in the mid-1990s.  It’s just something that we haven’t dealt with since then, so those transfers when we were in a rebuilding mode, no one wanted to consider transfers.  Once the stock was declared restored, the subject hadn’t come up again until very recently.

Such comments are probably accurate, as far as they go.  But they’re missing one very, very important point:  We are in rebuilding mode once again.  Managers aren’t dealing with a rebuilding stock, but rather with a still overfished stock, which remains at early 1990s abundance levels.  Thus, the same arguments against quota transfers that applied during the earlier rebuilding period are equally valid today.

But that isn’t the only argument against coastwide quota transfers.

Transfer supporters often argue that striped bass are the only ASMFC-managed species that are not subject to quota transfers.  And that seems to be true.

However, striped bass are also one of the few ASMFC-managed species that sees annual landings fall far below the annual quota.  For example, 2021 commercial bluefish landings were 2.38 million pounds, about 86% of the 2.77 million pound quota.  In the same year, commercial summer flounder landings equaled about 82% of the overall quota. 

Striped bass don’t see such a high level of quota utilization.  Between 2012 and 2021, commercial striped bass fishermen caught between 51% and 76% of their annual quotas, with an average utilization rate of just 66.6%. 

That has an impact on the potential efficacy of management measures intended to reduce striped bass fishing mortality.  Because there is no hard-poundage annual catch limit imposed on the recreational striped bass fishery, recreational management measures are designed to reduce fishing mortality from its actual level.  On the other hand, fishing mortality reductions in the commercial fishery are supposedly achieved by reducing quota, not actual commercial landings. 

Thus, in a fishery where landings typically fall more than 30% of quotas, reducing such quotas by 25% (Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Fishery Management Plan) or by 18% (Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Fishery Management Plan) is not guaranteed to reduce fishing mortality by as much as a single striped bass.  2015 commercial landings of 4.82 million pounds represented only a 19% reduction from 2014 landings levels, and not the 25% targeted by Addendum IV; landings levels in subsequent years also fell short of the 25% target, yet remained well within the quota.  While the overall fishing mortality reduction of 25% was, in fact, achieved the year after Addendum IV went into effect, such reduction fell largely on the shoulders of coastal recreational fishermen.

The commercial fishery also failed to achieve the full 18% reduction contemplated by Addendum VI.  While it came close in 2020, when its landings of 3.52 million pounds were 17% less than its landings in 2019, 2021 commercial landings of 4.29 million pounds, representing an 18% increase over 2020 landings, largely negated Addendum VI’s efforts to reduce commercial fishing mortality.  Yet, despite such increase, 2021 commercial striped bass landings were only 76% of the commercial quota.

Permitting states that underfished their striped bass quota to transfer unused quotas to other states which are facing possible overages, and so allowing such states to land even greater amounts of fish, could only make it more difficult to maintain fishing mortality at a level that will conserve and rebuild the spawning stock.

Such a situation was contemplated by Charlton Goodwin, then Chair of the Technical Committee, in October 2014, when he told the Management Board,

“Relative to the commercial quota transfer, the technical committee is concerned that at a time when we’re needing to take reductions, if the percent reductions are taken from Amendment 6 quota instead of the 2013 level of harvest, allowing commercial transfers in conjunction with that could have the potential to increase harvest.  [emphasis added]”

Such concerns are equally valid today, when fishing mortality must be kept at or below the F=0.17 target if the stock is to be rebuilt by the 2029 deadline.

Commercial transfers may also undercut current conservation measures by other means.

While the efficacy of so-called “gamefish status,” which limits striped bass harvest to the recreational sector, may well be debated, such prohibitions of commercial harvest probably do result in lower state landings than would have occured if an active commercial fishery existed in "gamefish" states.  However, such gamefish states currently retain their commercial quotas, even though they don’t have commercial fisheries.  Allowing states to transfer such unused quota, perhaps in return for a previous donation of bluefish or menhaden quota, undercuts whatever conservation benefit may result from such “gamefish” provisions.

Certainly, transfers of commercial quota from gamefish states have been contemplated by representatives of the commercial fishing sector, as exemplified by the previously-referenced comment letter submitted by the Long Island Commercial Fishermen’s Association at the start of the Amendment 7 process.  Such letter said, in part, that

“Commercial allocation transfer would be particularly useful to achieve [optimum yield] for those states that, through game fish status or lack of an inshore fishery, would be unable to utilize their quota.”

So there are many reasons to believe that permitting the interstate transfer of striped bass quota is not a good idea, particularly in the face of an overfished stock.  Such reasons are not new, and are not a knee-jerk response to Addendum I, but are rather the result of multiple individuals considering the transfer issue over a period of years.

Unfortunately, Addendum I seems to have some momentum, and the hearings are nearly at hand, with New York holding the first one on the evening of December 7.  In light of that fact, how should concerned stakeholders respond?

First, before stakeholders can do anything, they need to know what Addendum I says.  To quote from the draft,

“Draft Addendum I presents options that would allow for the voluntary transfer of commercial quota in the ocean region between states that have ocean quota.  However, commercial quota that has been reallocated to a state’s recreational fishery (i.e., for a recreational bonus program) is not eligible to be used for commercial quota transfers…

“If quota transfers are permitted, quota would be transferred pound-for-pound from the donor state to the receiving state.  There would be some inherent uncertainty associated with transfers associated with states that harvest different sized striped bass.  State commercial fisheries catch different sized fish due to multiple factors, including variability in striped bass size distribution along the coast and state management programs (different size limits, gears, seasons).  Further, through [conservation equivalency], states have been able to adjust their commercial size limits from the historical standard, which results in changes to their respective commercial quotas…Stated more simply, a pound of striped bass commercial quota is not equal across all states.”

Addendum I then offers five different options for addressing the quotas transfer issue.

Option A is the status quo option, that would continue the prohibition on interstate transfers.  It is the simplest and, for the reasons set forth above, the most desirable of all the options provided.  However, given the time that has been invested in Addendum I, and Delaware’s insistence that some action be taken, the Board will probably favor one of the other four choices.

Option B would allow unrestricted transfer of quota between states.  However, if the striped bass stock is overfished at the time of transfer, a 5% transfer tax would be applied to address all related uncertainties.  Thus, for every 1,000 pounds transferred by the donor state when the stock is overfished, the receiving state would only get 950 pounds; if the stock is not overfished at the time the transfer takes place, even if it is badly depleted and on a downward trajectory, no such tax would be imposed.  Option B is clearly the riskiest and least desirable of the five options.

Option C would allow unrestricted transfer of quota between states, provided that the stock is not overfished.  While Option C is somewhat better than Option B, as it would prohibit transfers under a worst case scenario, it would still allow such transfers when the stock condition is deteriorating and the stock is on the verge of becoming overfished.  For those reasons, Option C is also undesirable.

Option D would give the Management Board broad discretion to allow transfers and set conditions on any such transfers that are allowed.  Transfers would not be permitted without express Board approval, and such approval could place limits on the amount of quota transferred, require the receiving state to show a clear need for the transfer, or establish other criteria that a proposed transfer would need to meet.  If this option was selected, like Option B, it would impose a 5% transfer tax on transfers that take place when the stock is overfished.  Taken as a whole, Option D is probably somewhat better than Option B, as the Management Board would be able to halt, or place conditions on, transfers, but not as good as Option C, as transfers could still take place as an overfished stock is struggling to rebuild.

Option E is much like Option D, in that it would give the Management Board broad discretion to permit or prohibit interstate quota transfers, and would also allow the Board the authority to place conditions on any transfers that do occur.  Option E would also prohibit all transfers during times when the stock is overfished.  Because it would not allow transfers to take place when the stock is overfished, and would also allow the Board to ban or place restrictions on transfers at other times, Option E is probably the best of the bad choices, and although less desirable than Option A, is clearly better than any of Options B, C, or D.

The most sensible comment strategy will probably be to express strong support for Option A, no quota transfers, and then also indicate reluctant support for Option E as an alternative, in the event that Option A is unacceptable to the Management Board.

The ASMFC will be accepting comments on Addendum I through 11:59 p.m. on January 13, 2023.  Comments may be mailed to Emile Franke, Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, 1050 N. Highland Street, Suite 200 A-N, Arlington, VA  22201, or emailed to comments@asmfc.org, with the subject line “Striped Bass Draft Addendum I.”  Comments may also be made at any of the state hearings listed in the link provided in the first paragraph of this essay.

In May 2021, concerned anglers and other stakeholders successfully convinced the Management Board to take most of the bad proposals out of the Draft Amendment 7, and in May of this year, convinced the Board to adopt a final version of Amendment 7 that improved the striped bass management program.  Addendum I is the final remnant of the Amendment 7 process, a loose end that was intentionally omitted from the amendment, but that must be addressed now.

What was initially conceived as a simple effort to give a few more bass to Delaware’s commercial fishermen, and clearly intended to only impact Delaware’s fishery, has since morphed into a much more far-ranging addendum, with the potential to complicate and degrade the current striped bass recovery, and make it somewhat more difficult to effectively manage striped bass in the future. 

Everyone who came out over the last two years to fight for good striped bass management are urged to come out one more time, oppose the badly-conceived transfer program, and put the last of the draft Amendment 7’s bad ideas behind us.