FALSE ALBACORE: ANGLING INDUSTRY RESEARCH DONE RIGHT

 

There isn’t enough money available for fisheries research, and there probably never will be.  There are just too many stocks of fish, and too many other budget priorities.

The National Marine Fisheries Service currently manages 460 fish stocks in the Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, and those are only the stocks that are typically found in federal waters more than three miles from shore.  Other important recreational and commercial fish species, including striped bass, menhaden, weakfish, red drum, and spotted seatrout, have no federal fishery management plans, and are managed solely by the states, which sometimes act independently and sometimes coordinate their actions through bodies such as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Then there are the species that support fisheries but are not managed at all, species such as Atlantic bonito, northern and southern kingfish, jack crevalle, and little tunny, the latter better known as “false albacore.”

Whether or not to manage a stock is largely a practical decision based on the species’ perceived value.  The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act states that one of the duties of each regional fishery management council is

“for each fishery under its authority that requires conservation and management, prepare and submit to the Secretary [of Commerce] a fishery management plan and amendments to each such plan that are necessary from time to time…  [internal formatting omitted]”

Magnuson-Stevens goes on to explain that

“The term ‘conservation and management’ refers to all the rules, regulations, conditions, methods, and other measures which are required to rebuild, restore, or maintain, and which are useful in rebuilding, restoring, or maintaining, any fishery resource and the marine environment; and which are designed to assure that a supply of food and other products may be taken, and that recreational benefits may be obtained, on a continuing basis; irreversible or long-term adverse effects on fishery resources and the marine environment are avoided; and there will be a multiplicity of options available with respect to future uses of these resources.  [internal formatting omitted]”

But that definition doesn’t shed much light on how a regional fishery management council can, as a practical matter, determine whether a stock “requires conservation and management,” and is thus  in need of a management plan.

Another section of Magnuson-Stevens provides something close to an answer, saying

“If a Council determines that additional information would be beneficial for developing, implementing, or revising a fishery management plan or for determining whether a fishery is in need of management, the Council may request that the Secretary implement an information collection program for the fishery which would provide the types of information specified by the Council.  The Secretary can undertake such an information collection program if he determines that the need is justified…”

Still, species that might require conservation and management can easily go ignored, because the budget for research is limited.  Research funding typically goes to species that support large and economically important commercial and/or recreational fisheries—and, ideally, species that support both important commercial and important recreational fisheries. 

NMFS is generally willing to fund research, including regular stock assessments, for Atlantic cod, red snapper, summer flounder and the like, which have large and often vocal commercial and recreational constituencies.

But when it comes to the species that aren’t valued as food and don’t have high commercial and recreational landings, the likelihood of federal funding for research is low, and a sort of Catch-22 exists:  There is no fishery management plan because no one knows whether the species requires conservation and management, no one knows whether the species requires conservation and management because there is not enough information to make such determination, and there is no way to obtain the needed information because there is no money available to gather information on a stock that doesn';t generate a large economic return.

That’s where cooperative management comes into play, when individuals and organizations with an interest in a particular fish stock team up with government or private sector scientists to develop needed management information.  The individuals and organization provide funding, logistical support, and/or labor, while the scientists provide technical facilities and expertise.

Unfortunately, when such arrangements are made, the research is often agenda-driven. 

Thus, in the upper mid-Atlantic, we saw a group that called itself the “Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund,” which stated that

“We seek to safeguard and improve fishing access to summer flounder, for those who enjoy it and to ensure the survival of those who depend on it, through scientific and legislative means,”

support research that, the organization hoped, would reach conclusions beneficial to the recreational fishing industry, as opposed to research that might primarily benefit the summer flounder themselves.

More recently, in the Gulf of Mexico, a coalition of industry-associated organizations convinced federal legislators to provide funding for a project that has come to be called “The Great Red Snapper Count.”  While that project did uncover new scientific information, concluding that the Gulf red snapper population was three times as large as previously believed, primarily because most of the fish were widely scattered over low-profile bottom, instead of sitting on the reefs, rockpiles, and wrecks where everyone fished for them, the underlying purpose of the study was to convince regulators to adopt more liberal red snapper regulations that would lead to a larger red snapper harvest. 

That became obvious immediately after the preliminary results of the Count were released, when the Texas chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association immediately attacked federal red snapper managers, braying that

“This week, the public and Congress finally heard why nothing seemed to add up in federal management of Gulf red snapper.  It turns out that NOAA just doesn’t count snapper very well…

“NOAA has had decades to get red snapper right.  In the end, the states, Congress and independent marine science institutions had to step in and clean up their mess.  After decades of enduring the chaos of a fishery managed on so much wrong, we finally have a chance to start over and manage it right.”

Managing red snapper “right” meaning that managers should increase the recreational kill to a level far larger than the biologists on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee recommend.

That’s why recent news about a collaborative research project between the American Saltwater Guides Association and the New England Aquarium was so refreshing. 

Last June, the Guides Association announced that it was teaming up with the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.  Some of the association's guides would work with scientists from the Aquarium to implant acoustic tags in false albacore caught off southeastern Massachusetts, with the work primarily underwritten by the wind energy company Orsted and sunglass manufacturer Costa del Mar.

False albacore are a logical research subject for the Guides Association, as the species is very important to the association’s members.  Particularly now, with striped bass and bluefish stocks overfished, false albacore are a primary target of fly and light tackle anglers fishing anywhere between Massachusetts and North Carolina; even as far south as Florida, where a number of species vie for the light tackle fisherman’s attention, they remain important to guides and their customers.

Yet, as the association explains on its website,

“Despite their popularity, we know almost nothing about false albacore biology and movements, likely due in large part to their lack of commercial value.  For example, are the fish anglers target off southern New England a separate sub-population from the fish found off North Carolina and Florida, or do they all represent a single well-mixed group?  Do schools of fish ‘set up shop’ in a general area for weeks at a time or are they always on the move?  Better understanding the degree of population connectivity is especially urgent given emerging potential threats to this species—for example, a fishery in south Florida to supply the bait market and the rapid expansion of offshore wind energy projects in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

“An additional unknown when it comes to albies is the impact of recreational fishing on the species.  According to NOAA Fisheries, over the past decade, anglers along the Atlantic coast have caught and released between one and two million false albacore annually.  However, no research has been conducted to estimate the percentage of fish that survive after release or inform what steps anglers can take to maximize the chance of survival.”

The paragraph quoted immediately above highlights what is truly unique about the Guides Association’s false albacore study.  While other angling groups support research that might lead to a smaller summer flounder size limit or a larger red snapper bag, the Guides Association willingly initiated a research project that could potentially cast their members, and their members' clients, in a bad light.

That sort of altruism is far too rare among today’s recreational fishing organizations.

And, as things turned out, preliminary data suggests that the angling community has nothing to fear or to hide when it comes to false albacore.

When the acoustic tagging program was announced, it was met with some degree of skepticism.  Some fishermen believed that false albacore didn’t take handling well, and that many—perhaps most—died shortly after being released.  Others believed that, due to the species’ fast metabolism and high oxygen requirements, false albacore would not be amenable to tag implantation, and that few would survive the process.

But the preliminary data strongly suggests that the skeptics were wrong.  The tagged fish, once released, lit up the acoustic receiver arrays off Massachusetts, with 57 of the 63 albacore tagged being repeatedly detected.  That translates to a release mortality rate of just 9.5%, similar to the mortality rate for striped bass and summer flounder, and well below the release mortality rate for bluefish, black sea bass, and scup.

It was a good start, and both the Guides Association and the scientists working with them are looking forward to future data dumps, to see what new information the tags will provide.

Are the false albacore caught off Massachusetts the same fish that show up off New York and New Jersey?  How far do the Massachusetts fish migrate?  Do they make it as far south as North Carolina, or perhaps even Florida?  Or, after leaving Massachusetts, do they fall off the grid, perhaps moving far offshore to find warmer water and escape autumn’s chill.  Once they leave Massachusetts, will the fish demonstrate site fidelity, and return to Nantucket Sound next year?  Or are the migrations haphazard, with fish summering off Martha’s Vineyard one year, and off Block Island or Montauk the next?

And if the false albacore do return to their waters around their tagging site, how many of the tagged fish will be among them, and how many will have fallen victim to fishing mortality and natural predation?  Will the acoustic tagging data allow the scientists to determine anything about stock structure and/or stock health?

The answers to those questions, and perhaps to other questions that the Guides Association may never even have thought to ask, lie in the future.

For now, it is enough that the Guides Association has facilitated research into a species that, despite its importance to the recreational fishery, remains data poor and largely an enigma to the fisheries management community.  Perhaps, with the investment of additional money and time, the information developed by the Guides Association and its partners will lead to an initial fishery management plan for false albacore, meaningful management measures, and a false albacore stock capable of generating recreational opportunities and economic benefits long into the future.

For conserving and managing the false albacore resource, regardless of what form the conservation and management measures must take, is what the Guides Association false albacore project is all about.

 

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DISCLOSURE STATEMENT:  I have a professional relationship with the American Saltwater Guides Association, and also have a number of friends among its leadership.  Notwithstanding such relationships, I personally share and endorse the Association’s goals with respect to false albacore and many other species, and believe that I would be reporting on its conservation activities whether or not such relationships existed.