ERRORS IN THE FISHING EFFORT SURVEY: MAINTAINING A RATIONAL RESPONSE

 

When news broke that the Fishing Effort Survey, a crucial component of the Marine Recreational Information Program’s efforts to gauge anglers’ impacts on marine fish stocks, was overestimating recreational effort, and thus also recreational catch and landings, it understandably sent a small wave of panic through folks involved in the fishery management process.

I know that I felt it myself.  If managers couldn’t rely on MRIP estimates, I thought, how were they going to credibly constrain recreational landings, which comprised the greatest source of removals in many important coastal fisheries?

It wasn’t hard to predict that the “anglers’ rights” crowd was going to use the error as an excuse to attack the fishery management process, and call for relaxed regulations that might well put the health of fish stocks at risk.  The other side of that coin was that, if managers lost MRIP, their only tool for estimating recreational landings and release mortality on a coastwide basis, the resultant management uncertainty might force them to adopt very restrictive management measures as a precautionary response to the lack of reliable data.

The good news, so far at least, is that managers seem to be finding a way between the two extremes, recognizing that, although a pilot study suggested that angler effort might be overestimated by 30 to 40 percent, we don’t know whether that initial finding reflects the true magnitude of the error.  We won’t know that until a far more extensive study, intended to run through all of 2024, reveals its findings.

Probably the first test for fishery managers came at the August 2023 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board, when 2024 specifications for the summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass fisheries were on the table.  A management track update of the summer flounder stock assessment had just found that the stock had experienced overfishing in 2022, and it seemed likely that representatives of the recreational fishing industry would challenge those findings, arguing that the error in the Fishing Effort Survey was enough to cast them into serious doubt.

Fortunately, before summer flounder discussions began, Michael Luisi, the Maryland fisheries manager who was chairing the meeting on behalf of the Council, managed to head off any knee-jerk responses and speculative challenges, thus helping to assure the rationality of the discussions that followed.  Noting that NMFS had just announced the Survey error the day before, Mr. Luisi advised that

“I knew that there would be people around the table, members of the public, and others who would be expressing their concerns regarding how we take the next steps based on our agenda for establishing specifications for species when we’re being told that there’s some error and some bias in the information that we are using for those purposes.  I don’t know that now is the time to get into the details about this, about the report that came out yesterday.  What I’d like to do is move forward with our agenda, get the specifications on the books and then there will be opportunity in the future for more detailed question and answer with [NMFS], and that’s going to be warranted in the future.”

While Mr. Luisi acknowledged that the 30 to 40 percent overestimate in effort suggested by the pilot study was substantial, and could impact the findings of stock assessments, he also made what might have been the most significant observation of the meeting:

“It’s not like this bias is understood.”

For those seven words hold the key to effectively navigating the Fishing Effort Survey issue.

The suggestion that angling effort is being overestimated by 30 to 40 percent came from a pilot study.  While it seems that a problem exists, the pilot study does not provide definitive information on either the extent or the magnitude of the error.  The overestimation might be restricted to just a few states, or may be a coastwide issue; the coastwide error rate, assuming that error exists, could be somewhere between 30 and 40 percent, but it could also be well over or under those values.

That being the case, those calling for immediate action of any kind are acting prematurely.  If you don’t yet understand the nature and extent of the bias in the survey, changes in current procedure, however well-intentioned, could just end up making things worse.

Thus, well-meaning calls for NMFS to do something right now to address Survey error, in order to prevent harm to fish stocks, are misguided.  When you think about it, the problem we’re facing is NMFS overestimating recreational catch, landings, and effort.  The error is actually adding a precautionary buffer to management measures—recreational removals are likely to be somewhat lower than what the MRIP estimates suggest.  So basing management measures on current MRIP estimates is unlikely to cause excessive fishing mortality accruing from the angling sector.

Those who try to use the supposed overestimates of recreational catch, landings, and effort to justify relaxing recreational regulations are equally mistaken.

After looking at the recent stock assessment update for summer flounder, which incorporated MRIP estimates (and so the presumed overestimates of recreational catch, landings, and effort), the Council and Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board voted to reduce 2024 commercial quotas and recreational harvest limits by about 40 percent.  In response, a recent piece in The Fisherman magazine, an outlet that has long opposed conservative fisheries management in favor of increased exploitation, commented that

“the MAFMC and ASMFC voted jointly on August 8 to reduce the recreational harvest limit on fluke by roughly 40% in 2024, which coincidentally is the same high-end disparity in fishing effort surveys coordinated by NOAA fisheries,”

and in doing so implied that such cut might not have been needed.  

The same piece in The Fishermen also tried to cast doubt on the need for the emergency regulations adopted by the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board last May, and extended at the Board’s August meeting, which imposed a 31-inch maximum size on recreationally-caught striped bass.  Such piece observed that

“ASMFC’s bombshell vote in the spring was based on recreational harvest surveys being called into question by the federal fisheries agency.  A final vote in favor of the Massachusetts emergency action was approved by a 15-1 vote, with the sole opposition coming from the state of New Jersey.  Then on August 1, the emergency 28- to 31-inch slot measures were upheld into 2024 throby ugh another vote by the ASMFC Striped Bass Management Board that passed 14-2, with both New Jersey and the District of Columbia voting in opposition…

“In terms of the ASMFC decision and the fact that NOAA Fisheries cast yes votes at the commission to continue the emergency regulations for striped bass, despite knowing about this effort and harvest announcement to come, Howell [Director of NOAA Fisheries Office of Science and Technology] said, ‘We have this in hand now, it is probably going to be part of discussions, I don’t see it going into action any time soon.  We still have to use the information that we have.’”

Again, there is implied criticism of the striped bass management measures.

But such criticism ignores a key fact.  While the pilot study suggests that the current MRIP estimates overstate recreational catch, landings, and effort, the trends identified in such estimates remain the same.  Thus, 2022 recreational striped bass landings were still nearly twice the level of landings in 2021, and still indicate a sharp increase in fishing mortality.  As NMFS noted in a recent release,

“If the agency shifts to a revised design—based on the findings of the follow-up study—the magnitude of historical estimates may change, but critical catch and effort trend information are expected to remain similar.  It’s important to note that stock status determinations are relatively consistent when trend information hasn’t changed.

“We will work closely with our partners to make informed decisions on how to proceed in light of the pilot study findings.  Until we have the full-scale study results in hand, data from the Fishing Effort Survey remains the best—and sometimes the only—available science for tracking relative year-to-year and long-term effort trends.  [emphasis added]”

Thus, while the presumably inflated estimates provided by the Fishing Effort Survey will inevitably increase management uncertainty, such estimates should still provide reasonably good guidance to managers and provide some assurance that recreational management measures based on such estimates will not cause harm to fish stocks.

Although it might seem a little counterintuitive, when higher recreational landings are input to some fish population models, they result in a higher estimate of spawning stock biomass. The easiest way to explain that is while anglers might be removing more fish from a population than previously believed, the model assumes that the population must also be larger than managers had thought, in order to absorb such removals without suffering a significant decline in fish abundance. 

After the 2018 benchmark striped bass stock assessment considered MRIP data derived from the Fishing Effort Survey, it estimated spawning stock biomass to be about 68,476 metric tons, higher than the approximately 61,000 metric ton estimate from the 2013 benchmark assessment.  Yet, unlike the 2013 benchmark assessment, the 2018 assessment found the stock to be overfished, because the MRIP data also contributed to an increase in the estimate of the spawning stock biomass target, to 114,295 metric tons, compared to 72,032 metric tons in 2013.

We saw the same thing occur in the 2019 operational stock assessment for bluefish, where inclusion of Fishing Effort Survey-derived MRIP data contributed to an increase in the biomass target from 101,343 metric tons to 198,717 metric tons.

Thus, at least for some stocks, estimates of spawning stock biomass and SSB targets will vary in rough proportion to the estimates of recreational landings, significantly reducing the impact of overestimates of recreational catch, landings, and effort on stock status assessments.

However, commercial quotas might still cause some problems.

That’s because such quotas essentially allocate a fixed percentage of the spawning stock biomass for commercial harvest, and such commercial harvest is measured, in near real time, from vessel trip reports and weigh out slips that represent the actual poundage of fish caught, and not merely estimated.  If, because of inflated MRIP estimates, a stock’s spawning stock biomass is estimated to be 30 percent higher than it actually is, then the commercial quota will be about 30 percent higher than it should be, given the actual size of the stock. 

That may be the only Fishing Effort Survey-related issue that might need more immediate remediation to assure the health of fish stocks.

Otherwise, NMFS is doing the right thing when it takes things slowly.  As Dr. Howell notes,

“The findings from this limited pilot study should not be taken as a final answer, and the results cannot be generally applied to all fisheries and fishing areas.  We have to do our due diligence in conducting a full-scale study prior to assessing the need for FES design changes or making large-scale changes to assessments or management measures.”

NMFS hopes to incorporate changes indicated by the large-scale study into the Fishing Effort Study by 2026.  In the meantime anglers, and the angling industry, should emulate the agency by approaching the issue with reason, not with emotion, and by refraining from suggesting purported fixes until we have enough data to know what aspects of the Survey require repair.

 

 

WILL NEW YORK'S SALTWATER ANGLERS PUT THEIR MONEY WHERE THEIR MOUTH IS?

 

It doesn’t much matter where you run into anglers: at the dock, in a shop, at a club meeting or even in internet forums.  Talk to them for just a while, and you’ll start hearing the same complaints.

There are too many poachers, and far too few conservation officers to discourage the practice.

They’re losing beach access, and can no longer get to places where they had fished before.

No one asks them about what they’re catching and landing.

Fish populations are waning, and no one seems to know why.

I probably hear, or at least read, one or more such complaints every day of the week, and in truth, I largely agree with the sentiments behind them.  I also talk to fishery managers on a fairly regular basis, and know that they share many of the same concerns.  As frustrated as anglers might be about such problems, their frustration doesn’t match that of many in state fisheries agencies, who want to address such problems, but aren’t able to because of one little thing:  Fielding enough conservation officers to put a dent in the poaching problem, acquiring beach access, engaging in angler surveys and conducting fisheries research all cost money.

And money is one thing that, at least here in New York, fishery managers just don’t have.  Or, to be more accurate, they have enough money to get the basic work done—field some enforcement staff, occasionally develop a boat ramp, and comply with the monitoring requirements set by organizations such as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission—but they don’t have enough to go beyond the bare minimums, and create the sort of enhanced angling environment that New York anglers seem to think they deserve.

And yes, that wording was intentional.

Because anglers seem to think that they deserve a lot—boat ramps, beach access, artificial reefs, law enforcement, abundant fish stocks and such—but when it comes down to the crucial question of funding such programs, their support doesn’t match their demands.

That's because, when all is said and done, the only way to fund a more effective management agency is through a user-paid license.

Freshwater anglers have been buying licenses for years, and don’t give them a second thought, realizing the benefits that accrue from angler-based funding.  And before I start hearing anyone bleat about freshwater hatcheries, I probably need to remind readers that not everyone fishing fresh water is looking for man-made fish.  Plenty of anglers—including me, when I fish in fresh water—spend far more time chasing bass, pickerel, pike, and panfish than they do chasing hatchery trucks and naive rubber trout.

Yet anglers who couldn't care less about manufactured trout still get quite a bit for their license money. 

New York has purchased fishing access rights to over 1,300 miles of riverbank, on 400 different waterways, where anglers can catch not only trout, but smallmouth, pike, walleye, and a number of other species.  The state has also developed over 500 boat launch sites, ranging from Suffolk County in the east to Erie County in the west, which allow anglers to access waters that hold just about every species of freshwater fish found in the state.  While law enforcement can’t stop every poacher, folks on every major water I’ve fished seem to have a healthy respect for the law, knowing that the “warden” might stop by at any time.  And the state regularly conducts research on important recreational freshwater species, whether humble panfish or the prestigious muskellunge.

Without the revenue that accrues from fishing license sales, and from the federal matching funds that are tied to such sales, such things would be beyond the agency’s reach.

Yet, for some reason, saltwater anglers are slow to understand the concept of “You get what you pay for,” and many still oppose the idea of a saltwater license.

At the same time, such anglers are envious of programs in other states.  I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard anglers praise Florida’s saltwater management program, or the maze of artificial reefs off Alabama, or—from a few in the know—the quality of North Carolina’s angler catch surveys.  But all of those things—and more—are funded by other states’ recreational saltwater fishing licenses.

It’s well past time that New York’s anglers stop complaining and start pitching in, to make things better for everyone.

New York had a recreational fishing license once, beginning in October 2009, but the rollout went badly, largely because some members of the recreational fishing industry, and some government officials, did their best to sabotage the licensing effort.  I was sitting on both the Marine Resources Advisory Council and the more informal group advising on the license back then, and saw the whole thing unfold.

First, there was the question of cost.  Freshwater licenses cost around $20 in 2009, but the industry representatives claimed that was too much to pay for saltwater angling, and that it would hurt business.  They convinced both the Department of Environmental Conservation and the state legislature that, at least to start out, a $10 fee was more appropriate. 

Back then, all of the state sporting licenses expired on September 30, but representatives of the tackle shops complained that having a saltwater license expire at the beginning of the fall striped bass and bluefish run, so they argued that the license should instead expire on December 31, when few were fishing in the ocean.  The state belatedly agreed with that argument, to the great annoyance of many saltwater anglers who found themselves paying for a license that was only good for three months.

Industry members fueled such annoyance by spreading the false rumor that license moneys were going to go into the state's general fund, rather than their true destination, a dedicated saltwater account within the state's Conservation Fund.

Then, some of the towns on eastern Long Island, including both East Hampton and Southampton, sued the state, claiming that the DEC had no authority to license those towns’ anglers, because such authority was vested solely in the Trustees of each town by the so-called Dongan Patent, a colonial grant that was issued in 1686, nearly a century before the United States won its independence from England.

Things got a little strange at that point.  

Andrew Cuomo, who was then New York State’s Attorney General and, as such, was responsible for defending state agencies in court, didn’t support the saltwater license as a supposed matter of principle, and refused to appear on the DEC’s behalf, forcing it to find other counsel and pay for such representation out of its own budget.  The trial judge, who lived in one of the plaintiff towns and was elected by its residents, decided against the DEC, writing

“Considering the issuance of a saltwater fishing license, the statute as applied to the respective plaintiffs is in violation of the rights of the people of the respective Towns [which rights were created by the Dongan and other colonial patents] and may not be enforced against those who seek to fish in the waters regulated by the respective Towns.”

His decision was largely based on an earlier appellate court decision, State v. Trustees of Freeholders and Comminality of Town of Southamption, which respect to which the court noted

“In 1984 the Town of Southampton enacted a set of rules and regulations as to freshwater fishing limiting such fishing to residents and student residents.  The State of New York and the Commissioner of Environmental Conservation commenced an action against the Town to the effect that the State pre-empted the Town’s rights to legislate fishing within the Town.  The Appellate Division, Second Department…reversed the lower court’s grant of summary judgment in the State’s favor, finding that ‘absent some countervailing consideration, the State may not interpose the legislation in issue here upon the people of the Town of Southampton.’  The instant case presents a similar issue, albeit, it involves saltwater fishing.  [emphasis added]”

It was a bad decision, in part because the phrase so easily thrown out by the court, “albeit, it involves saltwater fishing,” ignored the crux of the earlier decision, which found that

“There is no proof submitted herein regarding the specific waterways involved, the nature thereof, and the abilities of the fish in question to pass freely in and out of them.  The only assertion pertaining to those issues is the contention of defendants’ counsel in an affidavit that acceptance of plaintiffs’ arguments would permit State legislation with respect to a fishbowl.  If in fact the waterways involved are, in effect, very large fishbowls, from which the fish in the wild, ferae naturae, can neither enter nor escape, and their population is maintained solely through stocking and spawning therein, as appears to be the case, we see no need for State management.  [emphasis added]”

It was also a bad decision because it ignored the Appellate Division’s decision in Seacoast Products v. City of Glen Cove, a matter arising out of the city’s efforts to regulate menhaden fishing within its waters.  In that matter, the appellate court found

“Appellants concede that legislative power to regulate fishing resides in the State…and that migratory fish, as ferae naturae, are the property of the State.  Accordingly, there is no merit to appellant’s contention that section 13-0333 of the Environmental Conservation Law is in derogation of the rights conferred upon the towns of Long Island by the Kieft Patent of 1644 and the Dongan Patent of 1686.  [citations omitted]”

Since the recreational saltwater license was a tool used to manage migratory fish, and not lacustrine fish living in what “are, in effect, very large fishbowls,” the Seacoast Products decision, and not the 1984 Southamption matter, should have governed the court's decision regarding the legitimacy of the saltwater license.

The DEC appealed the trial court;s decision, expecting to prevail, but by that time Andrew Cuomo was governor, and ordered the agency to abandon the matter.

Shortly thereafter, with the license not yet enforceable along much of New York’s shoreline, then-state Senator Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley), already an anti-regulation zealot, introduced legislation to repeal the license requirement and, once that legislation passed and was signed by Governor Cuomo, to refund license fees to anglers.

Since then, New York has been one of only three, out of twenty-six, coastal states without a saltwater fishing license, and its anglers and its fisheries have suffered as a result.

Now, the state is considering putting a new saltwater license in place, and we’re already seeing the old lines of opposition and support begin to reform.

The New York Fishing Tackle Trades Association, the group who could probably claim the greatest role in scuttling the last license, is already asking anglers

“Fishing Tax Anyone??????”

and directing them to a DEC website where they can comment on the issue.  Given the “tax” reference, there’s no question what sort of comments it’s hoping to see.

Comments on at least one angling website indicate that at least some anglers are also opposed, although the opposition seems to arise out of generalized anti-government grumbling rather than any reasoned opposition.  Thus, we see comments such as

“lol another $ grab from the state.  Anyone actually believe the funds will go where they say they will?”

“Haha, why do I have absolutely no faith that a penny of the money would go to protecting the resource.  I guess they are out of red light camera locations,”

and

“Tax and spend.  All taxes are theft.”

There are rational comments, too, in support of the license, and we can only hope that the rational side will prevail.

To that end, the DEC is seeking stakeholder comments on the proposed license, asking how anglers would like to see license money spent, how much a license would cost, how license money should be administered, and other relevant questions—including whether there ought to be a license at all.

The questionnaire can be accessed at https://arcg.is/Oy5Ca1.

Whether you’re for or against the license—and if you’re against, please don’t complain about poachers, or access, or anything else a few dollars might cure—you ought to make your feelings known.

 

THE PROBLEM WITH ANGLER-PROVIDED INFORMATION

 

I’ve attended a lot of meetings related to recreational fisheries management.  One of the hot issues has always been the need to improve the precision of recreational fishing data, and one of the proposed solutions, at least over the past decade or so, has been supplementing, or even replacing, the existing catch and effort surveys with data gathered directly from anglers.

To many, it seems like a good idea.  In the age of computers and smartphones, it would seem a simple task to create an application that would compile angler-provided information, and provide fishery managers with a much clearer picture of where, when, and how anglers fish, as well as the size, numbers, and composition of their catch.

The idea gained enough support that the Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act, which was signed into law on the last day of 2018, calls on the Secretary of Commerce to prioritize

“the evaluation of electronic data collection, including smartphone applications, electronic diaries for prospective data collection, and an internet website option for…the public.”

It all sounds very modern and appropriately high-tech, but there is just one glaring problem:  There is no evidence that any such angler-based program would work.  

Looking back at past efforts to obtain information directly from anglers, there is plenty of evidence that suggests that any such effort, if applied to the broad community of recreational fishermen, is more likely to fail than succeed.

It all comes down to the fact that recreational fishermen venture out on the water seeking—not surprisingly—recreation.  They are not scientists who record the size, weight, time, and location of every fish caught; while some keep logs of their trips, most are far more casual.  Any information they have is collected without any sort of statistical rigor, and is generally recorded only in fallible memory.

The result is “data” that is unreliable at best, and very possibly completely worthless.

The latest example of that came earlier this month, when the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that they found a problem with the Fishing Effort Survey, an essential component of the Marine Recreational Information Program.  It seems that anglers responding to the Survey fell victim to “telescoping error,” misremembering when trips were taken, and thus claiming that they took more trips during the relevant period than they actually did.

It's not that the anglers were intentionally misrepresenting the number of trips that they took; NMFS even speculated that the error might have arisen because anglers were so eager to help that some reported a non-existent trip because they were reluctant to say that they didn’t fish at all—and so couldn’t help with the Survey—during the past two-month “wave.”

But it’s just that sort of bias, which can’t easily be detected by NMFS statisticians, which makes angler-generated data suspect.

At least in the case of the Fishing Effort Survey, the errors were not intentional.  There’s plenty of reason to believe that in other cases, anglers intentionally skew their responses.

Sometimes that might be because anglers are contemptuous of either the management process or, at least, of the surveys and surveyors.  When members of one popular striped bass-oriented website discussed fishery surveys earlier this year, it drew responses such as

“I’ve been interviewed a few times over the years.  Always some find [sic] of college program worked in conjunction with NYS and interviewers were usually set up (blocking) the point of entry/exit.  So yes there were ‘catch reports’ but in reality few and far between and were interviewers told the truth in the first place?  Never by anyone I ever knew.”

A follow-up comment to that one, written by a different angler, read

“A few times at boat launches and at a few state parks we were interviewed.  Always some college student always in the middle of the day and we always lied about types and size of fish caught.”

No one commenting on the issue ever suggested that such misreporting was wrong.

Such dishonesty seems to arise out of a general antipathy to MRIP, or perhaps the management process, but some members of the recreational fishing community also seek to tailor their responses to those which, they believe, are most likely to manipulate the management process in their favor. 

There used to be a website called Nor’East Salt Water, which was popular among party boat crew and the rest of the pirate wing of the recreational sector.  Its forums often contained lengthy discussions on what folks ought to tell callers from theCoastal Households Telephone Survey—the former, badly flawed predecessor to today’s Fishing Effort Survey—to best assure the least restrictive recreational fishing regulations. 

Speaking of the for-hire fleet, it’s no secret that some of their members intentionally understate the number of fish they release, in order to minimize regulators’ allowance for discard mortality, again to achieve the least restrictive regulations possible. 

Someone I know once filed a Freedom of Information request with New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, seeking to obtain the number of striped bass caught and released by the state’s for-hire fleet.  The identities of the boats remained confidential, but it was interesting to see that there were a number of for-hire boats that reported landing well over one hundred bass over the course of a season, but never reported catching even a single undersized fish that had to be released (this occurred during the days of the 28-inch minimum size rather than the slot limit), while other boats landing the same hundred-something fish, reported releasing at least as many bass as they retained; some of the vessels landing the largest number of striped bass reported releasing twice, or even three times, as many fish as they kept.

So any report of a vessel landing, say, 150 striped bass without releasing a single short is “fishy” data at best.  But when there is no way to ground-truth what anglers or boatmen report, that sort of thing is going to happen.

And then there are anglers who don’t provide bad data, but instead provide no data at all.

It’s not an unusual problem, despite supposedly “mandatory” reporting requirements.  Non-reporting is rife in the recreational bluefin tuna fishery, where it has been estimated that only about 20 percent of the fish landed are reported to the National Marine Fisheries Service. 

Down in Alabama, where recreational red snapper management has been a hot issue for a decade or more, state officials have complained that anglers weren’t complying with Alabama’s “Snapper Check” system, which also requires catch reporting, once it had been put in place.  In 2016, Alabama fishery officials believe that only 31 percent of red snapper anglers reported their catch; that figure fell to just 22 percent a year later.  While we can only hope that the compliance rate has increased since then, such rates of noncompliance clearly demonstrate why anglers can’t be trusted to provide accurate catch numbers.

And then there’s the matter of bias.

We can debate the ideal form of a recreational data program, but there’s one thing that we ought to agree upon:  The data gathered must come from a representative sample of the angling community, or it has little value.

Thus, when folks talk about implementing a smartphone app to replace MRIP, the first question should be, “Do all anglers have smartphones?”  Or would data collected by such app underreport effort, catch, and landings by older anglers or less tech-savvy anglers, perhaps by less affluent anglers, and maybe by anglers who fish in remote areas or miles offshore, where cell phone reception is, at best, problematic.

There is also the issue of avidity.  That is, some people fish a lot more, and a lot more intently, than others.  Will the casual angler remember to log in their catch with the same consistency as the angler who fishes more intently and more often?  Will the hard-core “sharpie” report all of their fish, or hedge on landings and/or releases, in an effort to skew the regulatory process?

Finally, there is the issue of, for lack of a better term, literacy.  Will the willingness to report, and rate of reporting, be influenced by education, the ability to read and write English, or an understanding of the scientific process?  Will reporting truly be representative, or will it miss the folks who fish from the bulkheads and broken down piers, and from under roadways and bridges, and only reflect the activities of the more educated, computer-literate, and largely native-born angler?

We are a very long way from the day when some sort of electronic self-reporting will replace some sort of well-designed survey.  I strongly suspect that such day will never come.

At the same time, there is plenty of room for voluntary angler involvement in the recreational fishing process. 

I’ve participated in NMFS Cooperative Shark Tagging Program since the late 1970s; it’s the largest program of its kind in the world.  But my role is merely to tag sharks that I catch, and report the date and place of the catch, along with the sex, length, and condition of the fish, so that biologists can compare that information with similar information obtained if the shark is recaptured.  I don’t have to tag every shark that I catch, I don’t have to tell anyone about unsuccessful trips, and I don’t have to remember information about trips that were taken six or eight weeks before.  Everything is written down on a card that is mailed to the Program.

Things like that are well within most anglers’ competencies.  And no one is forced to take part.

Similar voluntary programs exist for billfish, tuna, and various inshore species, and provide real benefits to fishery managers. 

Many states also sponsor logbook programs, which see anglers volunteer to provide information on their trips for various species.  Such programs are not without bias, as the fishermen who participate in them are typically more experienced anglers, and it’s far from certain that their actions parallel those of the angling community as a whole, but they nonetheless provide insight into catch per unit effort (provided that anglers also report trips where nothing is caught) and how that changes from year to year, on the size and proportion of fish released (which became a hot topic in the bluefish debate a few years ago), and similar matters.

Recently, we’ve seen the release of smartphone apps that can act as virtual logbooks, provide additional environmental data and, because no pen or paper is required, are simpler for anglers to use.  Such apps have been embraced by some states as a boon to fisheries research.

After considering the successes and failures of using angler-sourced data in fisheries management, the key appears to be accepting its limitations.

Relying on large-scale collection of recreational fishing data, which is either requested or required from the general angling population but cannot be ground-truthed by managers, will almost inevitably take managers down a road paved with unintentional errors, purposeful misdirection, noncompliance, and bias.  Provided that enough samples are taken, MRIP’s Access Point Angler Intercept Survey provides relatively accurate landings figures, but only because surveyors can physically identify, count, and measure the fish filling anglers’ coolers.  Once surveyors are forced to rely only on anglers’ representations, inaccuracies are virtually assured.

Voluntary tagging and logbook programs, involving participants who choose to support the management process, can provide valuable information, provided that managers understand and account for sources of bias that will inevitably arise.

Ultimately, the problem with relying on angler-supplied information is that, in the end, managers are asked to accept fish stories as truth, and that’s seldom a good idea.

 

 

NMFS FINDS ERRORS IN RECREATIONAL FISHERIES DATA

 

It’s impossible to count every fish caught by recreational fishermen, yet accurate recreational catch and landings data are an essential part of the fisheries management process. Thus, saltwater fisheries managers are constantly seeking better estimates of anglers catch, landings, and effort. Currently, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) employs the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) to provide the needed information.

 

MRIP estimates are derived from data developed by four different surveys, which may be supplemented by state recreational data programs. The two most important surveys are the Access Point Angler Intercept Survey, which interviews anglers returning from fishing trips, and counts and measures their catch, and the Fishing Effort Survey (FES), which mails questionnaires to both known anglers and to coastal addresses, asking how often household members have gone fishing in recent months.

 

Compiling the data generated by the surveys, and calculating the estimates of catch and landings, involves an intricate statistical process. To grossly oversimply how that process works, the average number of fish, broken down by species, caught by the interviewed anglers is multiplied by the estimated number of trips taken by every angler on the coast. The result is a relatively accurate estimate of recreational catch and landings.

At least, it was believed to be accurate until a pilot study sponsored by NMFS discovered an apparent flaw in the FES, which seems to be inflating estimates of shore and private boat anglers’ effort by as much as 30 or 40 percent. NMFS announced its discovery of the problem on August 7, 2023, during a call with members of the recreational fishing community.

Ironically, the problem seems to have arisen out of anglers’ desire to help NMFS’ surveyors.

The FES asks anglers a series of questions, the most important of which is how many times they went saltwater fishing during the most recent, two-month “wave.” NMFS also asks how many times the angler fished in the previous year. When researchers, conducting a pilot study on NMFS’ behalf, looked at anglers’ answers to those two questions, they found that about sixteen percent of responding anglers reported that they went on more fishing trips in the preceding two months than they did in the preceding year, an obviously impossible result.

 

Researchers found that some anglers are reluctant to provide a negative response, so such anglers report trips that they didn’t actually take. Such reports don’t, for the most part, represent intentional deception, but rather what is known as “telescoping error,” which, according to the pilot study, happens when “a respondent misplaces an event in time, usually placing the event more recently in time than it actually occurred.”

For reasons that remain unclear, shore fishermen seem more prone to telescoping error than private boat fishermen. Asking anglers how many shore-based trips they took, before inquiring about trips made aboard private vessels, also appears to inflate the reported effort. Surprisingly, errors due to “recall delay,” which occurs when respondents forget to report a trio, are relatively infrequent.

The pilot study suggested that much of the error can be eliminated by first asking anglers how many trips they took during the prior 12-month period, and afterward asking about the number of trips taken during the previous two-month wave. Apparently, the answer given to the former question creates a “boundary” that limits the number of trips reported for the shorter period.

Asking how many private boat trips an angler took before inquiring into the number of shore-based outings will probably further reduce the error. It’s impossible to know whether error can be totally eliminated but, as noted in a review of the pilot study, “Since the ‘truth’ is never completely known in these situations, the author [of the pilot study] makes plausible arguments to show the designs that are likely to lead to reduce management errors and estimates that closer [sic] to the unknown truth.”

In other words, while the possibility of error can never be completely eliminated, it can be substantially reduced. NMFS plans to undertake a larger scale study, expected to last throughout 2024, to determine whether reordering the FES questions will substantially eliminate the telescoping error issue.

In the meantime, NMFS needs to decide how to address the error in the FES.

Recreational catch and landings estimates are tightly interlaced with other aspects of a fishery management process in which such estimates are used in calculations of spawning stock biomass, the estimates of biomass are used to determine commercial and recreational catch limits, and such catch limits are used to set the necessary management measures. Then, at the close of each fishing year, the recreational estimates are used once again to determine whether the management measures successfully prevented overharvest.

Without accurate estimates of recreational catch and landings, it will be very difficult to successfully manage saltwater recreational fisheries, as managers could find themselves either allowing harvest to rise to unsustainable levels, putting the future of the fishery in peril, or making unnecessarily severe reduction in landings, to account for the current management uncertainty.

Despite the need for caution in the face of uncertainty, some members of the recreational fishing community will undoubtedly use the FES overestimates as grounds to call for less restrictive management measures. That was evident on the August 7th call, when one mid-Atlantic magazine editor complained that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board was not told of the FES issue before it voted to extend emergency regulations intended to reduce recreational striped bass landings.

Such complaints only demonstrate individuals’ ignorance of both the effect of the FES errors and the relationship between recreational catch and landings data and the estimates of spawning stock biomass.

As Dr. Evan Howell, Director of NMFS Office of Science and Technology, noted on the August 7th call, while the FES issue creates an error in the magnitude of recreational landings estimates, causing them to be too high, it does not impact trends in those estimates. Thus, managers can rely on the fact that 2022 recreational striped bass landings were nearly twice as high as those in 2021, even though the magnitude of both 2021 and 2022 landings were really less than originally believed.

There is a similar link between recreational landings estimates and estimates of spawning stock biomass, particularly in fisheries which are dominated by the recreational sector, as the population models used to assess the health of such stocks typically treat higher recreational landings as an indicator of greater abundance.

For example, in June 2018, MRIP estimates were calibrated to reflect adoption of the FES as a replacement for the less accurate Coastal Households Telephone Survey; the calibrated estimates indicated that striped bass landings were 160% higher than originally believed while striped bass catch, which includes both landings and releases, was 140% higher. Due in part those increases, the last benchmark striped bass stock assessment, released in 2019, set the target spawning stock biomass at 114,295 metric tons, roughly 160% of the 72,032 metric ton target set by the previous assessment, completed five years before.

 

If recreational striped bass catch-and-landings estimates are revised downward as a result of the newly discovered FES error, both the estimate of spawning stock biomass and the spawning stock biomass target will almost certainly be lowered as well. As a result, the FES error will probably have little effect on the regulations needed to manage the recreational striped bass fishery.

The same should be true for most recreationally important fish stocks.

What probably will be affected are the commercial quotas for federally-managed fished species, which could be impacted in two different ways.

First, because such quotas effectively permit commercial fishermen to catch a fixed share of a stock’s estimated biomass, if the FES error led managers to overestimate such biomass, the resulting commercial quotas will also be too high, and could lead to overfishing; reducing commercial quotas will be necessary to prevent that result. On the other hand, FES data has been, and is being, used to reallocate catch between the commercial and recreational sectors, based on the belief that recreational catch has, historically, been underestimated. Since it now appears that recreational catch has been overestimated, an argument can be made that such reallocations take too many fish away from the commercial sector, and need to be revisited.

Decisions on such issues probably won’t be made until NMFS has had an opportunity to fully evaluate the impacts of the FES error on fishery management efforts.

In the meantime, recreational industry advocates, who already have a long history of condemning MRIP while supporting state recreational data programs, will undoubtedly try to use the FES error to support their arguments. Such intent was telegraphed by stakeholder comments on the August 7th call. Yet FES-based attacks on MRIP ignore the fact that the recent discovery of the survey’s flaws is evidence of MRIP’s strength, not its weakness.

 

The FES error was only discovered because NMFS is constantly striving to improve the MRIP process, and conducts continuing studies on how that process can be improved. Even though the National Academy of Sciences gave MRIP a very positive review, NMFS didn’t become complacent, but instead continued to review the process and search for possible flaws. Now that one of those reviews has discovered the apparent FES error, NMFS can take the actions necessary to correct it and make MRIP a better tool for estimating recreational catch, effort, and data. Had NMFS never sponsored the study, the error would not have been found, and managers would have continued to rely on inaccurate information.

 

While state data programs are being actively promoted by some recreational fishing organizations, such organizations fail to provide assurances that such programs are subject to the same sort of rigorous study and review that characterizes MRIP. They fail to provide assurances that state programs are free of errors at least as serious as the FES error, which was only discovered because NMFS was looking for it.

But now that the FES error was discovered, the next question is, “What happens next?”

In the short term, NMFS will have to figure out how the error might impact stock assessments and the annual management measures that govern federal fisheries. It must decide what actions might be needed to prevent harm to fish stocks while the issue is being resolved. Such discussions have already begun.

Over the next two years or so, the agency will need to determine the true extent and magnitude of the error; the current belief that effort is overstated by 30 to 40 percent may or may not be right. Once the extent of the error is known, the agency will need to come up with a way to fix it.

In the long term, discovery of the FES error will only strengthen MRIP and make it a better tool. That is how science works. There is no dogma, no absolute truth. Instead, new information, supported by convincing evidence, continually reshapes perceptions of reality.

Now that the FES’ estimates have been proven wrong, NMFS can begin working on getting them right.

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This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/

 

SUMMER FLOUNDER: A FISHERY IN TRANSITION

 

On the morning of August 8, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council held a joint meeting with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board, to consider specifications for the 2024 and 2025 fisheries.

The meeting didn’t run very long, and was remarkably free from controversy.  However, it did reveal that the summer flounder fishery might be undergoing real, and perhaps long-lasting, changes, that will cause landings over the next two years to be substantially reduced.

The problem seems to be focused around an extended period of below-average recruitment of new fish into the population.  The average annual recruitment of Age 0 summer flounder for the period 1982-2022 is 51 million fish.  But for the period 2011-2022, recruitment fell to an average of just 36 million fish per year, with annual production ranging between 27 and 43 million annually. 

Initially, it appeared that a strong year class of about 61 million fish was produced in 2018, and that such year class might help boost summer flounder abundance.  Unfortunately, data compiled since then indicates that the size of the 2018 year class was initially overestimated, and that its true size was around 43 million Year 0 summer flounder, placing it well below the long-term average.

While the 15 million recruit difference between the long-term average and the average over the past 12 years is stark enough on its face, it nonetheless fails to convey the full magnitude of the recent decline in recruitment, since the years 2011-2022 comprise over one-quarter of the long-term recruitment time series, and the low recruitment during those 12 years drags down the long-term average.  If average recruitment for the period 1982-2010 was compared to the average for the past 12 years, the difference would be even more marked.

The stock’s persistent failure to produce even a single average year class is now causing fishery managers to ask whether they might be seeing a fundamental, long-term alteration—what one Mid-Atlantic Council staff member referred to, during the meeting, as possible “regime change”—in summer flounder productivity, although they have not determined why such reduced productivity is occurring. 

Lower recruitment isn’t the only change that scientists are seeing.  It was noted at the meeting that summer flounder seem to be smaller, at any given age, than they had been in the past, and that the proportion of males in the population is increasing.  At the same time, it seems that current regulations are allowing some summer flounder to live to older ages.  In 2018, NMFS’ sampling of commercially caught fish turned up a 22-inch male summer flounder believed to be 20 years old; it is the oldest summer flounder ever collected.  Two other fish sampled in the same year, one a male and one a female, were believed to be 17 years old.  The presence of such large fish led Council staff to note that

“These samples indicate that increased survival of summer flounder over the last two decades has allowed fish of both sexes to grow to the oldest ages estimated to date.”

Still, the changes affecting the stock present the summer flounder with an uncertain future.  A management track stock assessment released in June 2023 commented that

“Declining trends in growth rates and changes in the sex ratio at age may change the productivity of the stock and in turn affect estimates of the biological reference points.  Changes in growth, maturity, and recruitment may be environmentally mediated but mechanisms are unknown.”

Overestimating the size of the 2018 year class also had more immediate impacts.  The 2023 management track assessment found that the summer flounder stock experienced overfishing in 2022, something that caught a lot of people by surprise, because the overfishing limit, which had been set earlier, was never exceeded.  Kiley Dancy, a biologist employed by the Council, explained what happened in a July 13 memo to Dr. Christopher Moore, the Council’s executive director.

“Despite the previously specified [Overfishing Limits] not being exceeded…the new 2023 [management track assessment] now estimates that overfishing was occurring for summer flounder in 2022.  This is primarily driven by the latest model run adding three years (2020-2022) of fishery catch, survey catch, and biological data (including continued decreases in mean weights and maturities at age).  While the average retrospective errors for [spawning stock biomass] and [the fishing mortality rate] are small, adding multiple years of data contributed in this case to overestimating stock size and underestimating [the fishing mortality rate].  The previous [Overfishing Limits] were set using an assessment with terminal year 2019 and creating biomass projections for 2020-2023, which now appear to have been overoptimistic.”

In other words, we all thought that the summer flounder biomass was bigger than it actually was, so fishermen were allowed to take more fish than they would have, had the actual size of the stock been known.  As a result, the 2022 fishing mortality rate was 103% of the fishing mortality threshold, and overfishing occurred.

On August 8, the Council and Management Board set about fixing the problem.

The first step was to set an Overfishing Limit that was in accord with both the actual size of the stock and with the current level of scientific uncertainty.  That job fell to the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, which reduced the OFL from 34.98 million pounds in 2023 to 22.98 million pounds in 2024 and 2025 (the SSC also gave the Council the option of setting varying OFLs of 22.98 million pounds in 2024 and 25.39 million pounds in 2025, but the Council preferred not to do so).  Such change would lower the Acceptable Biological Catch from 33.12 million pounds in 2023 to 19.32 million pounds in 2024 and 2025 (again, the Council also decided against setting a varying ABC of 17.88 million pounds in 2024 and 20.75 million pounds in 2025).

Such reductions will naturally lead to substantial reductions in both the commercial quota and the recreational harvest limit over the next two years.  For both sectors, reductions are expected to be in the 40 percent range.

The Council settled on a commercial quota of 8.79 million pounds, which is a 42 percent reduction from the 2023 quota, but only about a 30 percent reduction from actual 2022 landings. 

The Council also set a recreational harvest limit of 6.35 million pounds, which represents a 40 percent reduction from the 2023 RHL, but just a 28 percent reduction from estimated 2022 landings.

We don’t yet know how the reduction in the recreational harvest limit might affect 2024 regulations.  That decision will wait until the December joint meeting of the Council and Management Board, when managers will have a better estimate of what anglers landed during the 2023 season.  

Of course, given the recent discovery that the Marine Recreational Information Program may be overestimating recreational fishing effort, and so recreational catch and landings, by somewhere between 30 and 40 percent, there is going to be significant uncertainty as to what recreational landings really were this year.  Depending on whether, and how, that uncertainty is addressed when calculating the confidence interval surrounding the estimate of recreational landings, the lower recreational harvest limit might or might not have a big impact on the regulations governing the recreational summer flounder fishery next year.

That’s because recreational management measures are now governed by the so-called “Percent Change Approach” of the Harvest Control Rule adopted last year.

Summer flounder biomass is estimated to be 83 percent of the target level, which is deemed “low” abundance pursuant to that approach.  If the new recreational harvest limit falls within the confidence interval bounding the estimate of recreational summer flounder harvest (more precisely, what such harvest would be if current rules remained unchanged),  the Control Rule would require that new management measures reduce landings by the difference between the harvest estimate and the recreational harvest limit, provided that such reduction not exceed 20 percent.

However, if the new recreational harvest limit falls below the lower bound of such confidence interval, the Control Rule would require that  new management measures reduce landings by the difference between the harvest estimate and the recreational harvest limit, but under no circumstances may such reduction exceed 40 percent.

If the 2023 recreational landings estimate tracks that of 2022, the landings estimate will probably be about 30 percent above the recreational harvest limit for 2024; whether the RHL will fall within or below the confidence interval for such landings estimate is anyone’s guess (we should also remember that the entire Harvest Control Rule/Percent Change Approach is being challenged in a federal lawsuit, and might possibly be invalidated by the court, adding another layer of unknowns to the issue).

Barring any big, unexpected change in the size of 2023 landings, anglers can probably expect to see new management measures, intended to reduce summer flounder landings by somewhere between 20 and 30 percent, in place for 2024.

We’ve seen reductions of that magnitude before.

The only difference is, in the past, such reductions were usually driven by excessive recreational landings, which occurred at a time when the stock was either expanding or, at worst, maintaining a stable level of abundance.  An increasing biomass, or a decrease in recreational landings, led to relaxed management measures after a year or two.

This time, 2022 landings fell well below both the commercial quota and the recreational harvest limit, yet overfishing still occurred due to a smaller than expected summer flounder stock.  No one knows why the stock isn’t expanding.  No one knows why recruitment has been low for over a decade, why summer flounder are growing more slowly, or why the stock has become less productive.

And no one knows when, or even whether, recruitment, or growth, or productivity will increase again.  The current situation could be here to stay.