TECHNICAL COMMITTEE: HIGH RECREATIONAL LANDINGS THREATEN STRIPED BASS REBUILDING

 

Last November, a stock assessment update revealed that, if fishing mortality did not exceed 2021 levels, there was a 78.6% chance that the striped bass stock would fully rebuild by 2029.  

2029 is an important rebuilding deadline, because the last benchmark stock assessment found the striped bass stock to be overfished, and Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, like Amendment 6 before it, requires that

“If female [spawning stock biomass] falls below the threshold, the striped bass management program must be adjusted to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above the target within an established timeframe [not to exceed 10 years].  [emphasis added]”

The benchmark assessment was accepted for management use in 2019, which started the rebuilding clock.

Unfortunately, last year’s big spike in recreational landings has completely changed the rebuilding outlook.  The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee met this morning, to review new projections that consider both the big increase in recreational fishing mortality and the possible increase in commercial harvest that would occur if the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board adopts any version of Addendum I to Amendment 7 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan.

The news was not good, although it could have been worse.

In 2022, removals of striped bass from the population increased by 33.5% when compared with 2021.  That equates to a fishing mortality rate of 0.1873, just about splitting the difference between the fishing mortality target of 0.1679 and the fishing mortality threshold of 0.2013.  Thus, while the fishing mortality rate is clearly above the target, the stock is not experiencing overfishing.

The bad news is that, as one might expect from such a fishing mortality rate, it is highly unlikely that the stock will fully rebuild.  Note that I didn’t say that it was “highly unlikely that the stock will fully rebuild by 2029,” but rather “highly unlikely that the stock will fully rebuild.” 

Ever.

Or, at least, not until the fishing mortality rate is reduced to a more appropriate level.

If the fishing mortality rate does not change, the stock is likely to rise above the spawning stock biomass threshold this year, meaning that the stock will no longer be overfished.  However, it is not expected to reach the spawning stock biomass target.  Instead, the recovery will most likely stall somewhere between the two values, with the stock showing a very slight decline by 2029 due to low recruitment in recent years.

As usual, the Technical Committee looked at a number of alternative scenarios when projecting the future of the stock; such alternatives included two different assumptions of the future fishing mortality rate and multiple assumptions of what the Management Board might do with respect to Addendum I.

The rosiest projection—which is far from rosy, from a stock rebuilding standpoint—gives the bass a 14.6% probability of rebuilding by 2029.  It assumes that the fishing mortality rate will remain constant, at an average of the level experienced during the years 2019, 2021, and 2022 (F=0.1837), and that the Management Board will not approve any of the Addendum I options.  Given such assumptions, there is also a 93.9% probability that the stock will not be overfished in 2029.

The least optimistic projection gives the stock only a 3.4% chance of rebuilding by 2029.  It assumes that the recreational fishing mortality rate will remain at its 2022 level, that the Management Board will approve Addendum I, and that all available commercial quota will be caught.  Such projection would also lower the likelihood that the stock would not be overfished in 2029 to 75.8%.

An array of options lies between those two extremes.

In the end, the Technical Committee decided to reduce the number of options it would present to the Management Board to just three; all would be based on a three-year average fishing mortality rate, which would be 0.1837 if Addendum I was disapproved, 0.1992 if the full commercial quota was caught, and 0.1987 if the full commercial quota was caught, with the exception of New Jersey’s, which is reallocated to the recreational sector.

It's hard not to notice that the latter two projections come uncomfortably close to the fishing mortality threshold of 0.2013, and hard not to remember that any projection includes a certain degree of uncertainty.

It’s not particularly clear why the Technical Committee decided to use a fishing mortality average from 2019, 2021, and 2022; in some ways, the decision seems difficult to defend. 

In 2019, recreational fishermen were still fishing under management measures developed in Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, which with few exceptions meant a 1-fish bag and 28-inch minimum size on the coast, and a 2-fish bag and 18-inch minimum size in the Chesapeake Bay.  Such management measures did not prevent the stock from experiencing overfishing, and were replaced by the current 28- to 35-inch slot limit, and complementary measures in the Chesapeake Bay, when Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan went into effect at the beginning of 2020.

Thus, the 2019 fishing mortality rate would seem irrelevant to the current striped bass fishery.

In 2021, fishermen were governed by the current management measures.  Yet at this morning’s meeting, Dr. Katie Drew, a respected, long-time member of the Technical Committee, noted that managers recognized that 2020 and 2021 landings were unusually low, probably due to some combination of COVID and new regulations, and that the increase in 2022 most likely reflected a return to the norm, strongly abetted by the wide availability of bass from the 2015 year class, which fell within the bounds of the slot limit.

Given such considerations, basing projections on the 2022 fishing mortality rate would arguably have been a better choice; however, there isn’t that much difference between the two, and the reality is that the Technical Committee made the call to use the three-year average when it provided updated information to the Management Board.

The big remaining question is what the Management Board is going to do with the information, once they receive it.  Right now, nothing compels them to take any action.

Some of that flows from a sort of loophole in the ASMFC’s management process.  The projections described above are just that—projections—and do not constitute a formal stock assessment or stock assessment update.  Therefore, they do not necessarily spur any sort of management action.

Even if they were derived from an assessment, they wouldn’t have tripped any of Amendment 7’s management triggers, as the fishing mortality rate hasn’t risen above the fishing mortality threshold, and even though the current fishing mortality rate is above the target level, Amendment 7 requires that it remain above target for two consecutive years (while spawning stock biomass remains below target) before any management action is required.

On the other hand, Amendment 7 does require that the stock be rebuilt by 2029, and the latest projections make it clear that such rebuilding is very unlikely to happen unless fishing mortality is reduced. 

So the Management Board is going to have a decision to make.

It can begin a management action at its upcoming May meeting, which will reduce fishing mortality and make it more likely that rebuilding will occur.  Given that the fishing mortality rate isn’t all that far above its target level, it’s likely that a relatively minor action—perhaps slicing a few inches off the top of the slot limit, and so putting much of the 2015 year class off limits to anglers—could get things back on track.

Or, the Management Board can sit on its hands and do nothing, until after the 2024 stock assessment update is completed.  At that point, given this morning’s revelations, it will probably take substantial restrictions, perhaps including closed seasons, to accomplish rebuilding in the two or three years that will remain to get the job done.

The former option seems to make the most sense.  It would provide a couple more years for the bass to rebuild, and shield bass fishermen from potentially draconian rebuilding measures.  We can only hope that the Management Board sees things the same way.

 

 

 

 

MID-ATLANTIC FISHERIES AT THE TIPPING POINT

 

We’ve seen more than one fishery die.  A few of them, like striped bass after that stock collapsed in the late 1970s, eventually came back.  Others, like rainbow smelt in Long IslandSound and the southern New England stock of winter flounder, seem to be gone for good.

Having been an unwilling witness to all three of those collapses, I can’t say that there was ever a time when we ever said, “This is the point of no return.” 

Winter flounder provide a good example.  They had been overfished for years, perhaps decades.  Looking back over the data that we have today, it’s pretty clear that the fish had been in trouble for quite a few years.

In 1969, a biologist named John Poole, who worked for the New York State Conservation Department, the agency we now know as the Department of Environmental Conservation, published a paper titled “A Study of Winter Flounder Mortality Rates in Great South Bay, New York” in the journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.  In such paper, he states that

“Recent studies…have estimated that the annual landings [of winter flounder] in Great South Bay by sport fishermen to be 1,300,000 fish.  Although comparative landings for other species sought by salt-water anglers are not available, it can be said safely that the winter flounder is one of the most important fish to the marine sport fishermen in New York.”

After analyzing data from flounder tagging studies in Great South Bay, some of which dated from 1937-38 and some from studies that he conducted in the mid-1960s, Poole concluded that

“fishing mortality has not been excessive, for the current and recent past history of the fishery has been one of abundance.”

But he then observes,

“During the past 30 years, there have been changes in the fishery.  These are undocumented for the most part.  However, sport fishery techniques have undoubtedly improved.  There is evidence of a change in preference for use of fishing facilities.  Prior to 1950, rented boats were an important part of winter flounder fishing in the bay.  Since that time, the role of the rowboat has been taken over in large measure by the private boat and the open boat…”

He goes on to opine that an 8-inch minimum size for the recreational fishery (such a minimum was already in place for the commercial fishery) would produce the greatest yield of fish (when measured by weight), but states that because few fish under 8 inches in length are landed by sport fishermen, such limit was unnecessary at the time.

Such study was published when there were no even marginally reliable estimates of recreational landings; the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey would not be put into use until 1981.  Deciding on biological data was almost as much an art as a science; Poole decided that the flounder’s natural mortality rate was 0.50, not because it was calculated with any sort of precision, but because

“the rate for heavily exploited populations [is]…somewhere in the 0.10 to 0.13 range.  Fishing mortality for the winter flounder does not classify the population as heavily exploited, and it is therefore to be expected that the annual mortality rate would be relatively high.  The term ‘relatively high’ is an arbitrary one, but it appears that a rate of 0.50 would fit the term.”

Such reasoning might be the best that could be expected at that time, but it hardly inspires confidence in the conclusions reached by Poole.  More recent studies, which incorporated a current understanding of winter flounder mortality rates, suggest that Great South Bay’s winter flounder were already being overfished when Poole was conducting his research. 

At the same time, recreational winter flounder landings were ramping up.  Although landings data specific to Great South Bay is unavailable, for all of the state of New York, winter flounder landings peaked in 1984, at just under 14,500,000 fish.  While it probably can’t be said that such landings proved the proverbial straw that finally broke the camel’s back—1981 saw anglers remove nearly 12,500,000 flounder from New York’s waters, while landings were just below 12,000,000 in 1985—the gradual decline wrought by overfishing turned into a more sudden collapse, with landings falling to just 3,800,000 in 1989, and falling below 1,000,000 in 1994, when anglers took home a mere 667,000 fish.

New York’s winter flounder landings never rose above 1,000,000 fish again; last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service estimates that only 119 were landed statewide, although with flounder at such a low level of abundance, such estimate is little more than a guess.

I can't say when the collapse of winter flounder became inevitable.  Was it in 1984, when recreational landings reached an all-time high?  Was it in 1988, when the state adopted recreational regulations to weak to halt the stock's decline?  Or in 2010, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission threw in the towel, and extended the recreational fishing season from 60 days to 10 full months?

But at some point between 1984 and 2010, the die was certainly cast.

There’s an often-quoted line in Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, spoken by a character who responds to a question of how he went bankrupt.  His answer was,

“Two ways.  Gradually, then suddenly.”

It seems that when fish stocks collapse, it happens about the same way.

But what might it take for not just one stock, but the region’s entire recreational fishery, to collapse?

Perhaps not as much as one might think.

A recreational fishery is a complicated thing.  It encompasses not only fishes and fishermen, but the various businesses supporting and supported by anglers, including the party and charter boat fleets, tackle shops, marinas, boat dealers, marine supply shops, gas docks, and even things we might not think so much about, like angling-related publications and the delicatessens and small restaurants located next to active ports, which are heavily dependent upon anglers for their business.

A friend who has run a very successful charter boat operation for many years recently reminded me that he can’t make a living working part of the year.  While his clients tend to target only a handful of species, they are species that allow him to fish—and make money—from early in April well into December.  Although the two ends of his season are hardly prime times, if he lost two or three months of fishing, he’d likely go broke.

We lost the smelt in ’69.  It was a popular fishery up in Long Island Sound, and while it didn’t generate that much revenue for the shops—after all, you didn’t need much more than some bloodworms, some hooks, and a cane pole—it was something that kept the cash registers turning over until the harbors froze over.

Striped bass collapsed in the late 1970s, and sent a shudder through the recreational fishing industry.  Tackle shops felt the loss, as did the charter boat fleet.  But bluefish were big and abundant, weakfish were doing well, and just about all of the bottom fish—cod, pollock, winter flounder, scup (“porgies”), black sea bass, tautog (“blackfish”), summer flounder (“fluke”) and such were doing pretty well, and took up much of the slack.  The movie Jaws generated a wave of new patrons for the charter boat fleet, the inshore tuna fishery was doing well, and out in the canyons, boats were finding enough tuna to make up for the loss of striped bass.

Then the whiting tanked in the early ‘80s, ending a winter fishery that kept the party boats busy well into the winter, and let the shops sell some bait to those who fished from New York Bight piers.  The late spring run of Block Island pollock died at about the same time, leaving the party and charter boats on Long Island’s East End (not to mention eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island) one less thing to fish for before the fishing for sharks and striped bass heated up later in June.

Bankruptcy happened gradually, at the start.  The question is, how many more fisheries can we lose, in whole or in part, before it begins to happen suddenly.

That's a key question, because today, New York’s recreational fishery—and it’s recreational fishing industry—is heavily dependent upon striped bass.  In 2022, anglers made a little over 5,700,000 trips primarily targeting striped bass, making striped bass the most sought-after marine recreational fish species in the state, far outstripping summer flounder (3,150,000 directed trips), scup (1,770,000 directed trips), or black sea bass (634,000 directed trips).

Yet the striped bass stock remains overfished, and a spikein 2022 recreational landings could delay, or even prevent, the stock’srebuilding, unless fishery managers adopt remedial measures.

If striped bass fishing declines, only the currently abundant black sea bass and scup remain to keep the recreational fishery’s head above water.  Winter flounder are gone.  Atlantic mackerel are no longer a significant fishery.  Weakfish are somewhat more abundant than they were a decade ago, but their abundance is still a shadow of what it was in the late 1980s.  Bluefish biomassis 60% of its target level, with fishing spotty and concentrated in scattered locations.  Summer flounder looks better on paper, at 86% of its biomass target; however, the 2018 benchmark stockassessment reduced that target due the stock’s declining productivity.

Offshore, things aren't too bad.  Fishing for both bluefin and yellowfin tuna seems to be improving, and dolphin are just about a sure thing on most offshore trips.  On the other hand, bigeye tuna numbers are down, and the once-abundant albacore has all but abandoned local waters.  Billfishing is much worse than it was two or three decades ago.  However, the biggest offshore declines are probably in the shark fishery, where shortfin makos have grown so scarce that a complete prohibition on landings has been adopted; as a result, the number of recreational fishing trips targeting sharks has declined steeply.  Interest in shark fishing is much lower than it was in its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s.

Given the current state of fish stocks in the Northeast/upper Mid-Atlantic, it becomes very clear that striped bass are the key to the health of the recreational fishery, and the health of the recreational fishing industry.  Should the history repeat itself, and the should the stock collapse to levels that it reached in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there is good reason to believe that the region’s recreational fishery, and recreational fishing industry, would collapse as well

This is not the 1980s.  There are no bluefish, no weakfish, no winter flounder for anglers to turn to, as they did forty years ago, after the striped bass collapsed.  The shark fishery no longer lures charter boat patrons.  Scup and black sea bass can only carry the tackle shops, the party boats, the gas docks, and the charter boats so far. 

Bankruptcy could be sudden, indeed.

STRIPED BASS: WISHFUL THINKING WON'T MAKE THINGS RIGHT

It’s a refrain that I’ve heard more and more over the past year:  “Yes, striped bass recruitment in the Chesapeake Bay might be tanking, but as the climate gets warmer, the Hudson River is taking up the slack.”

The people saying such things tend to fish somewhere in or around the New York Bight, or know anglers who do, and tend to point to recent years’ fast early spring fishing in Raritan Bay, and last year’s strong end to the season in the New York Bight, as evidence that the center of striped bass recruitment might be shifting north.

The most recent example of such thinking was an article titled “Where have the striped bass gone?,” which appeared in the Cape Gazette, a Delaware news source.  The article read, in part,

“Today, there is another drop in the young of the year numbers in the Chesapeake Bay.  The reason for this drop may have more to do with global warming than anything else.

“My friend…describes the number of striped bass in the Raritan River and its tributaries as tremendous.  He has records that include fish to 25 pounds that were available all the way up to New Brunswick [New Jersey].  [He] has fished this region for 40 years, and this is the best action he has ever seen.

“I have other friends who run charters on Raritan Bay, and they carry two parties a day.  They look for breaking fish feeding on huge schools of menhaden and then cast to them.  Most anglers use plugs or bucktails, but fly fishermen also do well.  My son…gets in on the action trolling plugs from his kayak.

“[My friend] believed the scientific world needs to look at the young of the year numbers from the Hudson River stock.  With more and more females moving into the Hudson and its tributaries, such as the Raritan River, he thinks, and I agree, that river system has got to be producing a substantial number of young of the year striped bass.

“So why are these females moving from the Chesapeake Bay to the Hudson River?  Could it be that the ocean is becoming warmer than they like and they prefer cooler water farther to the north?  I have no idea, but I do know we are catching warm-water fish in Delaware that we never caught before…”

It’s a nice theory, and it even makes some logical sense, as the ocean is certainly warming, and fishes are extending their range farther north.

It’s such a nice theory, that it’s almost too bad that it’s wrong.  But facts must be given their due.

We can begin by debunking the notion that there are “more and more females moving into the Hudson and its tributaries,” and all of “these females moving from the Chesapeake Bay to the Hudson River,” for not only is there no science suggesting such movement, but there is recent research demonstrating that such movement of fish from the Chesapeake to the Hudson just isn’t happening.

Back in 2020, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries released the results of a coastwide study, which found that there are six genetically distinct spawning populations of striped bass (leaving aside the non-migratory, local populations that exist in some southeastern states’ rivers).  Three of those populations spawn in Canadian waters, three in the waters of the United States.  Of the populations that spawn in the US, one is unique to the Hudson River (and to the Kennebec River in Maine, where Hudson-stock fish were transplanted a few decades ago), one is unique to the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River (the original Delaware population probably having been extirpated as a result of pollution during the 20^th Century, and then replaced by Chesapeake fish colonizing the Delaware spawning reaches after travelling through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal), and one unique Roanoke and Cape Fear rivers in North Carolina.

Note that the genetic markers used to differentiate the different spawning populations truly are unique.  Ben Gahagan, the Massachusetts biologist spearheading the project, noted that

“For a given striper, we are able to determine the group it belongs to with 99 percent accuracy.”

The hope is that such ability will eventually allow biologists to manage individual striped bass spawning stocks, adopting management measures appropriate to each stock’s condition, rather than managing all striped bass on the coast as a single unit.

But the immediate upshot is that all striped bass clearly do not form a single, fungible unit; a female from the Chesapeake Bay belongs to a population distinct from females in the Hudson River, and is not going to abandon her ancestral home waters for cooler seas when the Chesapeake begins to warm.

Having said that, warming waters may very well be having a negative impact on striped bass reproduction in the Chesapeake Bay.  Scientists have determined that weather-driven conditions in spawning rivers determines the success of the Chesapeake striped bass spawn.  A cool winter and cool, wet spring tend to support strong recruitment, while a warm winter and warm, dry spring can lead to recruitment failure. 

Climate change may very well be stacking the deck against the Chesapeake’s striped bass, but that doesn’t mean that the Hudson River is taking up the slack.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has published a chart of the Hudson River striped bass juvenile abundance index that dates back to 1985.  While a precise value is not given for each year, the chart does show how each year’s juvenile abundance index compares with both the long-term average and with the 25^th percentile of the time series, which is used to determine the need for management action under the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s striped bass management plan.

If we look at the indices in 5-year intervals beginning in 1988 (leaving off the earliest three years just to make the data more convenient to handle), this is what we find:

·        In the first five-year interval, 1988-1992, the JAI was above the long-term average three times, and below the 25^th percentile once.  The highest juvenile abundance index for the entire 37-year time series occurred in 1988.

·        In the second interval, 1993-1997, the JAI was again above the long-term average three times, just about equal to the long-term average once, and very slightly above the 25^th percentile once.

·        In the third interval, 1998-2002, the JAI was above the long-term average twice and below the 25^th percentile once.

·        In the fourth interval, 2003-2007, the JAI was above the long-term average twice, below the 25^th percentile twice, and just about equal to the 25^th percentile once.  The second-highest JAI in the 37-year time series occurred in 2007.

·        In the fifth interval, 2008-2012, the JAI was above the long-term average once and just about equal to such average on another occasion, below the 25^th percentile once and just slightly above such percentile in another year.

·        In the sixth interval, 2013-2017, the JAI was above the long-term average twice and below the 25^th percentile twice, with the third-lowest JAI in the 37-year time series occurring in 2013 (the lowest and second-lowest JAIs occurred in 1985 and 1986, respectively).

·        Finally, in the seventh interval, 2018-2022, the JAI rose above the long-term average twice and just about equaled that average on another occasion, while falling below the 25^th percentile once.

Just what does all of that information tell us?

First, it tells us that there is no big spike in Hudson River striped bass recruitment in recent years. 

Striped bass recruitment in the Hudson River is very irregular, with above-average years often adjacent to years when recruitment falls below the 25^th percentile of the time series.  Sometimes, annual spikes in Hudson River recruitment align with those in the Chesapeake Bay; that happened in 2021, 2023, and 2015, but it did not happen in 1996 nor in 2011, when Chesapeake recruitment was very strong, but Hudson River recruitment was at or near the 25^th percentile level.

If anything, Hudson River recruitment is, on average, lower than it was 30 or so years ago.  The Hudson produced four consecutive above-average year classes in 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1990, with the 1988 year class the largest in the time series.  The river hasn’t produced four consecutive above-average year classes since, and has produced two consecutive above-average year classes on only two occasions, once in 1993-1994 and again in 2014-2015; on both of those occasions, the JAIs rose only modestly above the long-term average, never reaching the level of even the smallest year class produced between 1987 and 1990.

If anything, Hudson River striped bass production has been on a declining long-term trend, and not increasing as some have suggested.

So why has fishing been so good in Raritan Bay over the past few years, and why was the end of the season so hot in the New York Bight?

The answer can be found by examining the occasions, over the last 20 years or so, when big year classes were produced, both in the Hudson River and in the Chesapeake Bay. 

The Maryland section of Chesapeake Bay produced a very large year class in 2001, and other smaller, but still strong, year classes in 2003, 2011, and 2015.   The Hudson River produced a very strong year class in 2007, strong year classes in 2001 and 2003, and slightly smaller, but still well above-average, year classes in 2010 and 2014 (although the 2020 year class was also very strong, the resulting fish are still too small to be relevant to this discussion).

The spring striped bass fishery in Raritan Bay appears to occur largely at the expense of females staging there before ascending the Hudson River to spawn.  Given that a 50-pound striped bass is approximately 20 years old, the above-average 2001 and 2003 year classes from the Hudson River can easily account for the very large bass caught in Raritan Bay in recent years, while the 2007s and 2010s make up the mid-sized fish and the 2014s constitute bass that have recently entered the 28- to 35-inch slot.

The end of last year’s fall run saw the same Hudson River fish joined by 2001s, 2003s, 2011s, and 2015s from the Chesapeake Bay, to provide spectacular fishing in the New York Bight. 

It's not necessary to make up theories about female bass from the Chesapeake suddenly migrating to the Hudson River to spawn to explain the good fishing.

It’s not necessary to imagine a suddenly more productive Hudson River, when the data clearly says otherwise.

But it is necessary to take action to protect the Chesapeake Bay's striped bass population.  It’s currently overfished, recruitment has been chronically low, and a spike in 2022recreational landings threatens to cripple its chance at rebuilding.

Wishful thinking about the Hudson River isn’t going to change those facts.  Only timely, concerted, and decisive action stands a chance of making things right.

 

 

  

INVASIVE CATFISH THREATEN MID-ATLANTIC FISH STOCKS--INCLUDING STRIPED BASS

 

Our coastal waters have endured invasions of foreign species for a very long time. 

European green crabs first began showing up on the U.S. Atlantic coast sometime during the 19^th Century, probably hitching a ride in the ballast water of cargo ships; they have more recently appeared on the Pacific coast, and now range as far north as Alaska.  Green crabs have been here so long that many anglers, who use them as bait, don’t realize that they’re not a native species, but an invasive, which can cause considerable damage to shellfish beds and inshore habitats, and out-compete native crustaceans.

Ballast water is suspected as the vector by which more recent invasive crustaceans, such as the Asian shore crab and the Chinese mitten crab, reached North American shores although, because the latter species is also a traditional food source, intentional releases into coastal waters may have played a contributing role.

Off the south Atlantic and Gulf coasts, invasive lionfish, most likely dumped into coastal waters by private aquarists ridding themselves of unwanted specimens, have become a serious threat to native fish populations.  Fortunately, because lionfish are a tropical species, they seem unable to overwinter farther north than the Carolinas, sparing the northeast from their ill effects.

But now, native marine life in the Chesapeake Bay is facing a new threat, and that threat could impact fisheries throughout the northeast.  It is the blue catfish.

Unlike most invasive species along our coast, the blue catfish didn’t arrive in the Chesapeake accidentally.  It didn’t hitch a ride in a ship’s ballast water, and it wasn’t unceremoniously dumped into the coastal sea by an aquarium hobbyist.  The blue catfish now threatening native fish stocks was intentionally introduced into the Chesapeake watershed by the state of Virginia, another in a long string of intentional, non-native fish introductions that span a spectrum ranging from European carp to brown trout, and have totally disrupted native North American ecosystems.

The story is always the same; some state natural resources agency decides that, for one reason or another, the local fish populations can’t keep anglers sufficiently entertained, so they go out and find some fish that lives elsewhere, and dump it into the state’s waters for anglers to, hoipefuylly, enjoy. 

Sometimes it works out pretty well for the anglers.  If you fish in fresh water, there’s a very good chance that the ancestors of the largemouth and smallmouth bass that you’re catching today were spilled out of a hatchery bucket.  The same is true of rainbow trout caught anywhere east of the Rockies; rainbows have such a long history of hatchery propagation that one book about them was titled “An Entirely Synthetic Fish.”  

Of course, such planned invasive-dumping doesn't always work out too well for native species, which have no natural defenses against the invader.  Brook trout are one example of a fish that has suffered, and suffered badly, from the practice.

Sometimes, it doesn’t work well for anyone, and the blue catfish introduced by Virginia appear to fall into that category.

It seems that Virginia failed to do its homework before dumping blue catfish into rivers that feed the Chesapeake Bay.  The state fisheries folk assumed that, because the catfish lived in fresh water, they would stay in the rivers where they were dumped.  

Like many assumptions, that one proved to be wrong.  It turns out that blue catfish can tolerate at least moderate levels of salt, and when heavy rains lowered the salinity of coastal waters, the catfish had no problem spreading out across the Bay and ascending other waterways.  The catfish are now found in just about every tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.

That’s not a good thing.

Last January, a video taken on a Maryland river was making the social media rounds.  It depicted a quiet night, and a school of blue catfish that seemed nearly as dense as a school of menhaden.  But unlike menhaden, the catfish don’t just eat plankton.  They feed on fish and crabs and just about anything else they can fit in their mouths.  And because blue catfish can, on occasion, weigh over 100 pounds, their mouths can get very large, and fit most things that live in coastal rivers.

There is now real concern that the Chesapeake Bay’s blue crabs, shad, river herring, menhaden, and even striped bass are at serious risk, because of the catfish explosion. 

No direct scientific link has yet been established between catfish predation and declines in important fish species in rivers flowing into the Bay.  However, Maryland has noted that seven of its most important commercial species, all of which share habitat with the blue catfish, have fallen into steep declines in recent years, with catches falling between 27 and 91 percent.  Blue crabs, striped bass, yellow perch, white perch and eels are among the species affected.

As a result, last week, Maryland governor Wes Moore called on the United States’ Secretary of Commerce to respond to not only the threat posed by blue catfish, but introduced flathead catfish and snakeheads—both of which, fortunately, lack the blue catfish’s tolerance for salt—as well, by declaring an ongoing commercial fisheries emergency.  If she does so, it will qualify Maryland fishermen for federal disaster assistance.

An article in Inside Climate News quoted Thomas Miller, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, who noted that such fishery disaster payments

“usually provide relief that could be targeted to direct income support.”

However, they can also help fishermen impacted by a declining resource move into other fisheries.

“If you were a crab fisherman, for example, it’s not easy to become a straight bass fisherman because of the cost of the gear and the investment that you’ve made in a particular boat or particular licenses.  So, disaster relief has been used to do that.”

Of course, shifting fishing effort from one species that's been depleted by catfish predation to another species that's also on the blue cats' menu may not be a long-term solution.

A bill. passed by both houses of the Virginia legislature, more directly addresses the blue catfish problem.  Taking an “if you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em” approach to the issue, the legislation would authorize the Virginia governor to provide up to $250,000, in the form of both grants and loans, to improve and develop shoreside facilities that will support a ramped-up commercial blue catfish fishery.  The bill is now awaiting the governor’s signature.

Although it hasn’t yet been conclusively proven, it seems very likely that blue catfish are having a significant, negative impact on the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem.  But fishermen tend to be parochial, and neither a surfcaster up on Cape Cod nor a light tackle guide on Long Island Sound is likely to spend too much time worrying about whether blue catfish are causing real harm to yellow perch populations in Maryland’s tidal creeks.

Even so, such northeastern anglers ought to take some time to ponder just how the Bay’s blue catfish will impact them. 

After all, the Maryland portion of Chesapeake Bay is the single most important nursery area for striped bass on the entire coast.  And a Year 0 striped bass, six or eight inches long, would make a fine meal for a hungry blue catfish. 

At a time when striped bass recruitment is dismayingly low, a time when a changing climate may be making the Chesapeake watershed less likely to produce big year classes of bass, the last thing that we or the striped bass need is additional stress on the resource, whether that stress comes from increased recreational landings or from an increasing population of invasive, predatory blue catfish.

Unfortunately, it appears that, right now, we're going to be forced to deal with both.

 

MARINE FISHERIES MANAGEMENT: THE ILLUSORY BALANCE

 

“Fishery management” is an unfortunate term, because it suggests that the regulatory agencies charged with maintaining the health of fish stocks have some meaningful control over the fish themselves.  That’s really not true.

Fish will do what they have always done, driven by the dictates of nature.

In the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay, the success of striped bass spawns is largely driven by weather in the months immediately preceding the spawning run.  If the late winter turns out to be sufficiently cold, and the spring sufficiently cool and wet, good recruitment will likely ensue.  A warm winter, coupled with a warm, dry spring, on the other hand, is likely to result in an unsuccessful spawn.

There was little surprise when the warm, largely snowless winter of 2011-2012 resulted in the lowest juvenile abundance index, 0.89, ever recorded by the State of Maryland in a time series that reaches back to 1957.  There was also nothing that fisheries managers could have done to improve the results of that spawn; even halting all fishing in prior years would have done close to nothing, as striped bass spawning success is not at all dependent on the size of the spawning stock.

At the same time, the same 2012 winter-that-wasn’t which tanked the striped bass spawn was good for black sea bass.  Black sea bass recruitment is largely dependent on the temperature and salinity encountered by Year 0 fish during their first winter at the edge of the continental shelf.  Warm and saline water tends to support strong recruitment; thanks to the conditions encountered during its first year, the 2011 year class of black sea bass was the largest ever recorded off the mid-Atlantic coast.

Fishery managers have no control over the vagaries of nature, nor do they have control over how fishes will react to a changing environment.  What fishery managers can control are the behaviors of the recreational and commercial fishermen who interact with the fishes.  They can control the size and number of fishes that are landed, they can control the gear that’s used to catch them, and they can control the times—the seasons—when such gear may be used.

Calling the process “fishermen management” might be far closer to the truth.

But while managing fishermen might be a far more practical task than managing fishes, it is far from easy, for fishermen, on the whole, are neither amenable, nor particularly well-adapted, to change, and tend to resist it, regardless of the species, the fishery, or the region involved.

That is nothing new.  When striped bass were collapsing in the late 1970s, and dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of fisheries management, most fishermen, whether recreational or commercial, took a very long time to acknowledge the problem. 

Out in New York’s storied Hamptons, haul seine crews ran their nets around the last schools of striped bass still migrating along the coast.  Montauk charter captains staged an episode of “civil disobedience,” landing bass in defiance of New York’s brief moratorium while, up on Cape Cod, some of the best-known surfcasters on the coast refused to admit that the bass were in trouble, because they were still experiencing memorable bites in their back yard, even though everyone else might have been starving.

Even fishermen who recognize that a stock is in need of new management measures tend to lend their support to those measures that will mostly impact someone else (“gamefish” for striped bass, anyone?) or, at worst, will not cause such fishermen any significant inconvenience or expense.

Thus, when I read a recent article in The Acadiana Advocate, a Louisiana news source, which addressed the sharp decline in that state’s speckled trout populations, I saw a familiar pattern repeating once again. 

The author started out on a good note, admitting that the fish were in trouble, and that Louisiana’s 25-fish bag limit, by far the most liberal on the coast, had to go.  But then he complained that

“Our state has an economy built around speckled trout, everything from fishing tackle to boats, motels, restaurants, baitshops and marinas,”

and suggested that the measures that state biologists wanted to adopt to rebuild the stock were unnecessarily restrictive, saying

“The fly in this curative ointment is that 13 ½-inch minimum size.  It’s something the agency’s biologists want to defend to the max, and the one thing that sparked the pushback from our Legislature’s committees…

“…the first working item must be to boost trout populations in both numbers and age classes.

“Then, the panel will have to decide the level of pain our tens of thousands of trout fishermen will have to endure to reach a goal of a sustainable trout fishery.

“Do we want to recover the population quickly with severe restrictions like 10-fish-a-day, 14-inch minimum size, or take longer with a 15-fish daily creel and continue a 12-inch minimum?

“Do we want to be able to keep only one fish per day longer than 19 or 20 or 21 inches?...”

The problem with that sort of thinking is that it leads folks to look at the wrong issues and ask the wrong questions. 

When you’re trying to rebuild a fish stock, and/or maintain at fish stock at healthy levels, the primary question isn’t what fishermen want, or what will best benefit fishing-related businesses in the short term, but what the fish stock needs to rebuild and remain healthy.

Biological requirements are far more inflexible than anglers’ preferences.

The author of the Acadiana Advocate piece wrote that Louisiana “has an economy built around speckled trout,” and there are undoubtably plenty of fishermen who would rather catch, and/or keep and eat, speckled trout instead of anything else.  But the state’s coastal waters support plenty of red and black drum, tripletail, sheepshead, and other fish avidly pursued by anglers, making it highly unlikely that needed changes to the speckled trout regulations will do significant, permanent economic harm to Louisiana’s angling industry. 

There will be some discontent and some inconvenience, and a few businesses might not survive until the stock rebuilds and regulations might again be relaxed.  However, any economic displacement resulting from more restrictive speckled trout regulations would be trivial compared to the economic harm that would ensue if the trout stock collapsed.

And if adequately restrictive regulations aren’t put in place soon enough, the possibility of collapse becomes real.

Ask the folks who fished for striped bass in the 1970s.  

If you hang around with a younger crowd, ask those who fished for winter flounder a couple of decades ago.  

Both stories start out the same, although, thanks to effective, if delayed, regulation, one had a far happier ending than the other.

At least for now.

An editorial in NOLA.com, which calls for effective management measures, helps put the speckled trout issue in context.  It notes that

“Most everyone agrees the state needs to do something.  Trout populations are declining, and over a generation, the average catch per angler has fallen off from six fish to three.

“The share of spawning-age female trout in the state’s annual recreational catch [sic] has dropped from about 20% to just 7% over the past 20 years in many parts of the coast…

“So if Louisiana wants to preserve the species, it is going to have to impose tougher limits on the size and number of fish anglers throw in the cooler…

“The reduction in catch limits to 15 fish hasn’t sparked much debate, but adding an inch and a half to the minimum size has proven more controversial, since many of the trout that wind up in coolers comply with the current size limit but would fall short of the new standard.”

The editorial quotes the head of the Louisiana Charter Boat Association, Richard Fischer, who said,

“I heard from many charter captains in the Lafourche area, Terrebonne area, that feel they don’t really come across too many trout in their areas that are above 12 inches.”

For that reason, the charter boat association was one of the primary opponents of the state’s plan to increase the size limit to 13 ½ inches, and helped to convince the state Legislature to disapprove the proposed regulations.  NOLA.com notes that some legislators talk about the

“need to balance the advice of scientists against the imperative to maintain a vibrant economy.”

That sort of thinking just clouds the debate.

The biological needs of a species are just that--strict requirements which, if not met, will force a stock into decline.  They are not amenable to compromise, for economic or any other reason.  Merely reducing the rate of overfishing, rather than completely eliminating the problem, will not allow the stock to rebuild, but merely slow its rate of decline, and ensure the eventual decline of the fishery’s economic value as well.

Any attempt at striking some chimeric balance between biology and economics is, in the end, a fool’s errand.  A thoughtful look at the key sticking point in the proposed Louisiana speckled trout regulations—the increased size limit—explains why.

The proposed 13 ½-inch size limit is facing opposition precisely because it will effectively reduce recreational landings and allow the speckled trout stock to rebuild.  Relatively few people objected to the reduced, 15-fish bag limit because it will have a minimal impact on the number of trout folks bring home.

The NOLA.com editorial notes that, in some areas, anglers catch few speckled trout more than 12 inches long, and observes that “many of the trout that wind up in coolers comply with the current size limit but would fall short of the new standard.”  Thus, an increase in the size limit would have a real impact on fishing mortality.

On the other hand, the editorial also reports that anglers only keep 3 speckled trout on a typical fishing trip, which would render a 15-fish bag limit largely irrelevant; under such circumstances, it would be an ineffective tool for rebuilding the stock.

Thus, the Acadiana Advocate article’s claim that Louisiana could “recover the population quickly with severe restrictions like 10-fish-a-day, 14-inch minimum size, or take longer with a 15-fish daily creel and continue a 12-inch minimum,” rings false.  There is no convincing evidence that a 12-inch size limit and 15-fish bag could recover the stock at all, regardless of the time involved, yet the notion holds some appeal for fishermen, and a fishing industry, that seeks to rebuild fish stocks without making the sort of meaningful, if temporary, sacrifices needed to do so.

The Louisiana speckled trout fishery isn’t unique in that regard.  Any time regulators propose adopting more restrictive regulations to rebuild a troubled stock, someone will predictably bring up economic concerns, and call for some sort of “balance.” 

We saw that in New York’s winter flounder fishery in the late 1980s, when the stock was in sharp decline but the party boats nonetheless called for bag limits liberal enough to create the “perception” that their fares could still have a “big day” and bring home a pailful of fish.  Last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service estimates that New York’s saltwater anglers took home a grand total of 119 winter flounder, down from 14,483,078 in 1984. 

We saw it in the Atlantic cod fisheries, when the New England Fishery Management Council refused to establish annual commercial quotas until Congress forced them to do so.  By then, cod stocks had been so badly overfished, for so long that, over a decade later, recovery has still not begun.

We saw it in the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s twenty-year failure to adopt meaningful tautog management measures; the stock was first found to be badly overfished, and subject to overfishing, in 1996, but needed measures were only adopted—and then only hesitantly—in 2017.

All were efforts to strike a balance between a species’ biological needs and someone’s economic concerns.

All of those efforts failed.

It’s impossible to have a healthy fishing industry in the long term, without having healthy stocks of fish.  Thus, the needs of fish stocks must be given priority over all other concerns.

As the NOLA.com editorial observed,

“We understand [a legislator’s] concerns and those of recreational fishers and especially of the charter captains, who need to show off a cooler full of fish when they bring their customers back to the dock.

“But the debate has gone on for three years, and Louisiana needs to act or there won’t be enough trout for the dinner table for future generations.”

Change “Louisiana” and “trout” for other jurisdictions, and other species, and that admonition will still ring true.

 

 

 

 

 

WHEN FOXES WATCH THE FISHERIES HENHOUSE

 

Marine fisheries management differs from most forms of wildlife management simply because it is the only form of management where non-professionals—typically non-professionals without formal scientific training, but with a direct financial interest in the resources being managed—can tell professional managers what to do.

If I go hunting for ducks, I’m subject to rules developed by biologists employed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.  If I’m fishing for trout, pickerel, or freshwater bass here in New York, my conduct is governed by decisions made by the Department of Environmental Conservation, which also determines what I can do while pursuing squirrels, pheasant, or bear.

In all of those cases, the professional managers might ask sportsmen for input, perhaps as to whether they’d prefer a longer season or higher bag limit.  And if regulations need to be altered, the proposed changes will be released for public comment before they go into effect.  But in all cases, professional managers make the final call, rather than individuals with an economic or other interest in the outcome.

But in marine fisheries, thingsdon’t work that way.  Instead, the regulated community—members of the commercial and recreational fishing industry, as well as recreational fishermen—can and do directly decide regulatory outcomes.

The other day, New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council met to discuss, among other things, the 2023 recreational rules for black sea bass.

Black sea bass regulation is always a touchy subject, because the fish are currently very abundant; a recent stock assessment update found that current spawning stock biomass was twice the target level.  Because they're more abundant than anything else, except possibly scup, people are catching a lot of them in a lot of places.  Anglers tend to concentrate effort on whatever is easiest to catch at the time, so many have focused their effort on sea bass, leading to ever high landings which in recent years, have exceeded the recreational harvest limits and required more restrictive regulations to keep anglers' landings a a sustainable level.

Anglers don’t understand why a seemingly abundant resource should be subject to increasingly restrictive regulations, and the angling industry is angered by rules that they consider both unnecessary and bad for business.  There are a lot of folks who don't believe that black sea bass regulations should change at all.

However, even when managers used a new approach to setting recreational regulations for black sea bass, which was recently adopted by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and designed to allow higher landings, they found that they had to reduce black sea bass landings by 10%, compared to what they had been in 2022.

New York offered three ways to do that.  The size limit could be increased from 16 to 16 ½ inches, the season start could be pushed back from June 23 to July 1, or the season start could be pushed back from June 23 to June 28 and the bag limit could be reduced from 3 fish 2 for the period June 28 through August 31.

The last alternative had little support, so vote came down to a choice between increasing the size limit or shortening the season.  Arguments could be made for and against both proposals; a questionnaire distributed by the state regulators found that private boat anglers preferred the shorter season, while the for-hire industry preferred the higher size limit; a representative of the fishing tackle retailers seemed to prefer the higher size limit, too.

That preference for the higher limit seemed somewhat surprising, since the previous increase from 15 ½ to 16 inches caused a lot of industry ire, and plenty of people from the for-hire fleet seemed opposed to the new increase when it had first been proposed.

But then, as the meeting went on, a speaker from the audience cast a little more light on the issue.

I’m not sure whether he was a commercial fisherman, or belonged to the for-hire fleet, although his comments suggested the latter.  He came up to the dais and told the Council that the recreational fishing industry would always prefer seeing the size limit go up a half-inch, rather than losing any days of the season, because on a boat where no one is watching, or on a party boat, fishermen aren’t going to pay attention to that extra half-inch anyway.

In other words, he supported changing the regulations to increase the size limit because, in the world as he viewed it, such increase didn’t represent any real change at all, because people would merely ignore it.

The Advisory Council, which is overwhelmingly composed of folks in the recreational and commercial fishing industries, recommended that New York adopt the 16 ½-inch size limit in a nearly unanimous vote. 

While the Department of Environmental Conservation isn’t compelled to accept the Council’s advice, such a lopsided vote will be nearly impossible to ignore, even if everyone recognizes that compliance with the new limit may be dismayingly low.  Because of industry dominance of the Advisory Council, there was never much doubt about how the vote—and almost certainly the regulations—would turn out, despite the compliance questions that such regulations raise

That’s true even though New York’s Environmental Conservation Law gives the DEC quite a bit of latitude to adopt management measures that are contrary to Advisory Council advice.  Section 13-010 5(c)(3) of that law only requires that

“In making the final decision on such regulations, the department shall be guided by the recommendations of the marine resources advisory council and, consistent with the marine fisheries conservation and management policy set forth in subdivision one of this section and the requirements of subparagraph three of paragraph (b) of subdivision one of this section, shall endeavor to incorporate such recommendations in the final rulemaking.  The department’s assessment of public comment published in the state register shall set forth the council’s recommendations and an explanation of the department’s final decision in regard to such recommendations and the requirements of this section.”

There have been multiple occasions when the agency has not followed the Advisory Council’s recommendations, when it determined that it would not be prudent to do so, although that probably won't be the case with 2023 black sea bass rules.

Federal fisheries managers, acting pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, have far less leeway to adopt regulations contrary to the recommendations of a regional fishery management council.  The Secretary of Commerce—which, as a practical matter, means the National Marine Fisheries Service—has the authority to act if a regional fishery management council fails to produce a management plan within two years after a stock is declared overfished, and may also act if an existing rebuilding plan is not making sufficient progress toward ending overfishing and rebuilding the relevant stock.  

Otherwise, the agency’s role is limited to approving a fishery management plan drafted by a regional fishery management council, disapproving such plan, or approving such plan in part while also disapproving one or more of its provisions.

As the regional fishery management councils are also dominated by representatives of the commercial and recreational fishing industries, industry concerns typically drive fishery management decisions.  While the provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, which require fishery management plans to prevent overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks within a time certain, and base management decisions on the best available scientific information, the regional fishery management councils have demonstrated real creativity in finding ways around the statutory requirements.

The New England Fishery Management Council, which for many years eschewed annual commercial quotas in favor of input controls such as limitations on days at sea, permitted cod and other northeastern groundfish to be overfished for many years, until a 2006 amendment to Magnuson-Stevens, largely inspired by the New England Council’s failures, required annual catch limits for all managed stocks.

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, in an action recently approved by NMFS, adopted a so-called “harvest control rule,” which allows managers to set annual recreational harvest limits that exceed both the recreational harvest limit and the sector annual catch limit.  In justifying the rule, NMFS put forward a very liberal interpretation of the definition of “overfishing,” which would condone management measures that permit the fishing mortality threshold to be exceeded in any given year, so long as such levels of harvest don't continue in the long term.  However, what might constitute “long term” overfishing was never defined.

Even so, Magnuson-Stevens provides at least some limits on council members’ discretion.  The same can’t be said for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s various management boards, which don't need comply with any legally-enforceable standards governing management actions.

Because such management boards may exercise unbridled discretion when adopting management measures, they have a history of questionable decisions.  In 2014, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board failed to comply with a provision of its own management plan, which required it to initiate a 10-year rebuilding plan after a benchmark stock assessment found that fishing mortality was well above its target, and spawning stock biomass below its target, tripping a management trigger. 

While it would probably wrong to argue that such decision led to the striped bass stock becoming overfished—a later assessment revealed that it was probably already overfished at the time—it’s difficult to argue that the failure to initiate the rebuilding plan didn’t lead to a further decline in the stock, leading to a more difficult rebuilding process.

Now, after 2022 recreational striped bass landings spiked 91% above those in 2021—and that’s if measured in individual fish; if measured in pounds, the increase is substantially larger—no one has too much confidence that the management board will act quickly to bring such landings back down to a level that will allow the stock to rebuild by the 2029 deadline specified in the management plan.

We saw something similar in 2013, when the Winter Flounder Management Board took action took action to liberalize recreational fishing regulations for the Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic stock, even though such stock had already collapsed.  In allowing states to expand what had been a 60-day fishing season, which ran from the 1^st of April through the 30^th of May, to a 10-month season stretching from March 1 through December 31, management board members argued that since the New England Fishery Management Council was permitting trawlers to land as much as 5,000 pounds of southern New England flounder as bycatch in the ocean fishery, it only made sense to liberalize inshore regulations, so that anglers could retain more of the troubled flounder, too.

At the same time, the ASMFC management boards have also made their share of good decisions; Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted last May, is a case in point.

The problem is that, because the ASMFC is not governed by any legally-enforceable standards, the quality of its decisions can vary depending on factors that might include sympathy for the regulated fishermen (no one wants to put people out of work, even if a collapsing stock might do the same thing), a fear of adopting measures that might be more restrictive than necessary (although the possibility that rules might be inadequately restrictive doesn’t seem to raise similar concerns), and a sense of interstate comity that can, at times, stay managers’ hands when action is needed, or lead to actions being taken even though they may not be in the best long-term interests of either the fish or the fishery.

The biggest determinant of management board actions tends to be the composition of the board itself, and the philosophy that each board member brings to the table.  We have seen board members who live in the past and reject scientific advice, and we have seen board members who work very hard to convince their colleagues to adopt conservative, science-based measures.  Some steadfastly look out for their own industry’s interests, while others take a more expansive view.  A change in only a handful of members can have a disproportionately large impact on board decisions.

Yet, whether talking about management at the state level, at regional fishery management councils, or at the ASMFC, the question remains:  Why shouldn’t marine fish be managed by professionals, more likely to base their decisions on the best available science and the health of fish stocks, rather than by fishermen and members of the fishing industry, who will inevitably be placed in positions where they will have to choose between the public’s interests and their own?

Why shouldn’t fishermen and the fishing industry be limited to advisory roles, where their concerns and experience can inform, but not dictate, management decisions?

In some ways, such questions are academic, for laws at both the federal and state levels have been in place for so long, and are so well established, that there is no realistic chance that the current system will be abandoned for one more closely resembling that used to manage other living natural resources.

At the same time, it is not impossible to hope that NMFS will place more people on regional fishery management councils who, if not disinterested, will still represent a more diverse array of interests than the industry members who currently dominate such panels.  It is not an impossible hope that states will make a better effort to appoint people who do not have vested economic interests in the fisheries that they help to manage to both state panels and to the ASMFC.

If that is not done, private interests will continue to dominate the management process, as they dominate the process today.

And the public interest will suffer.