STAKEHOLDERS OVERWHELMINGLY OPPOSE INTERSTATE TRANSFERS OF STRIPED BASS QUOTA

 

On Wednesday, February 1, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will decide whether the interstate transfer of unused commercial striped bass quota will be permitted, when it contemplates the Draft Addendum I to Amendment 7 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan.

Every time the question has been addressed before, the Management Board has decided that such transfers would be a bad idea.

At the August 2021 Management Board meeting, Robert Beal, the ASMFC’s executive director, remarked

“my recollection is that [such transfers] 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.”

Unfortunately, his comment didn’t convince the Management Board to cease work on Addendum I, even though the striped bass stock is currently overfished, is hopefully in the midst of rebuilding, and the same logic would seem to apply.

We could also go back to the Management Board’s October 2014 meeting, when the same issue arose with respect to Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, and Charlton Godwin, then the Chair of the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee, advised the Board that

“The technical committee recommends taking the harvest reductions from the 2013 total commercial harvest and let the board reallocate as they see fit.  Relative to the relative to the [sic] commercial quota transfer, the technical committee is concerned that at a time when we’re needing to take reductions, if the present reductions are taken from Amendment 6 quota instead of the 2013 level of harvest, allowing commercial transfers in conjunction with that could have to potential to increase harvest.  The technical committee also wants to point out that if transfers are used, conservation equivalency would need to be maintained between states if they have different size limits.  [emphasis added]”

Although the same concerns are valid today, the current Management Board has, so far, refused to accept the wisdom of the past, and may well decide to allow interstate quota transfers despite the near certainty that fishing mortality will increase, and without any meaningful consideration for the effects of transferring fish from one state to another regardless of where such fish were spawned or the commercial regulations that each state has in place.

It’s not clear why the Management Board would want to do so; the states that host coastal commercial striped bass fisheries, other than the State of Delaware, have expressed no discontent with their current quotas and have often failed to land their existing quotas in recent years, although the aging 2011 and 2015 year classes are now leading to higher harvests.  

Delaware may have a legitimate argument that, pursuant to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, it was the only coastal state not allowed to resume the commercial harvest of striped bass at historical levels, but if that is the case, the Management Board should, as Mr. Godwin suggested back in 2014, merely readjust the commercial allocations to provide Delaware with the fish that it was denied under Amendment 6.

Until the striped bass stock is fully restored, the Management Board should not be considering any management action likely to increase fishing mortality.  (At this point, some may point out that 2022's substantially increased recreational landings far overshadow any increase in commercial landings attributable to Addendum I; while such point is valid, such increase in recreational landings does not justify further compounding the damage by adopting Addendum I.  Instead, once the full magnitude of the recreational landings have been determined later this spring, the Management Board must initiate another action to reduce recreational fishing mortality to a level that will allow the stock to rebuild by the 2029 deadline, and do so as quickly as possible.)

The Management Board held hearings and invited public comment on Addendum I, and it is clear that the vast majority of stakeholders agree with that proposition.

Although the comment period only closed on January 13, Emilie Franke, the ASMFC’s Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for Atlantic Striped Bass, had all of the comments tabulated and summarized by the 17^th.  That was a remarkably quick turnaround, for Ms. Franke had received 2,147 individual comments addressing Addendum I, along with 18 other comments that addressed striped bass, but were irrelevant to the addendum’s core issues.

Of the relevant comments, 186 were made at one of the hearings held, either live or online, in states between North Carolina and Maine, while 1,961 were provided in writing.  Of all of those comments, 2,105—a little over 98 percent—opposed any form of commercial quota transfer.

Breaking the numbers down a little more, of the 741 written comments sent in by individuals who addressed the core issues of Addendum I (another 18 individual comments did not address such issues), 731—98.65 percent—opposed commercial quota transfers, as did 29 out of the 30 letters submitted by organizations and 100% of the 1,190 comments sent in via any of the six form letters that were circulated by various organizations.  155 out of the 186 people commenting at the various hearings—83.33 percent—also opposed quota transfers, although that percentage was skewed downward by the 12 Delaware commercial fishermen who, quite naturally, favored virtually unrestricted transfers of quota.

Those who favored some sort of quota transfer had four options to choose from.  Option B allowed unrestricted transfer of unused quota, although it did impose a 5 percent “conservation tax” when the stock was overfished, while Option C would not allow any transfers under such circumstances, but placed no restrictions on them otherwise.  Options D and E called for the Management Board to determine whether transfers would be allowed in any given year, and gave the Board full discretion to impose any restrictions on transfers that it deemed appropriate; like the previous pair of options, when the stock was overfished, Option D would impose a 5% conservation tax while Option E would permit no transfers at all.

Of the 42 comments favoring commercial transfers, a clear majority of 25 persons—59.5 percent—favored Option B, the most permissive choice; once again, the 12 Delaware commercial fishermen skewed that result.  Option E, the least permissive, scored a distant second place, being the choice of just 8, or 19 percent, of transfer supporters.

So what will the Management Board do?

Right now, it’s difficult to say.  Given that most Management Board members don’t stand to benefit from quota transfers of any kind—Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia don’t permit commercial striped bass fishing, the Potomac River Fisheries Commission has no coastal commercial fishery, North Carolina has a coastal commercial fishery but has had no commercial landings in recent years, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service do not directly oversee commercial striped bass fishing—it would seem logical that the overwhelming stakeholder response would seal the fate of commercial quota transfers before the Management Board meeting was called to order.

Unfortunately, the Management Board doesn’t always operate on logic.  There are interpersonal dynamics going on, that make it difficult to handicap many issues.  Some state fishery managers might feel sympathy for their Delaware counterpart, knowing how much they’d hate being in his position, with an inequitably small share of the quota and fishermen calling for more.  That sort of sympathy can easily lead to such managers approving one of the transfer options, justifying it to themselves by thinking “We allow transfer quotas for other species,” and “It’s a quota we’ve already approved,” while doing their best not to think about the effects of any fishing mortality increase on the striped bass recovery effort.

Cooperative considerations play a role, too.  What happens in the Delaware River and Delaware Bay directly impacts three states:  New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, which often work together to resolve issues impacting the estuary.  If increasing its commercial striped bass harvest is sufficiently important to Delaware—and Delaware has made it very clear that it is—will neighboring states support quota transfers as a way of strengthening interstate partnerships?

It's possible that they will.

Stakeholders often view the public hearing process as a sort of referendum, in which the option that gets the most votes ought to win, but that’s not exactly how it works.  Public comment can be, and often is, very important—it played a critical role in winning a favorable outcome on Amendment 7 to the striped bass management plan—but it is not always the decisive factor.

And that’s not always a bad thing.  We wouldn’t, for example, want the Management Board to ignore scientific advice, just because a majority of the comments called for them to do so.

However, that’s not the issue here.  The science, if anything, calls for keeping striped bass mortality as low as practicable, in order to facilitate a timely recovery.  What we’re dealing with in Addendum I is, for the most part, not science, but policy.  And when it comes to setting policy, public opinion should be at the forefront of managers’ minds.

For striped bass, like other marine resources, are public resources; although the ASMFC isn’t bound by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, one key tenet of Magnuson-Stevens should arguably guide every fishery management decision, no matter who makes it or where it is made:  Such decisions should promote the greatest overall benefit to the nation as a whole, rather than to any particular user group.

Right now, the public, and the nation, are more likely to suffer harm, rather than enjoy any benefit, if striped bass fishing mortality increases.  

Thus, the Management Board’s duty is clear.