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.