SPINNING THE NEWS ON THE FISHING EFFORT SURVEY

 

As soon as the news emerged that that National Marine Fisheries Service had found a problem in its Fishing Effort Survey, it was certain that the traditional opponents of federal fisheries management would seek to spin that news into an attack on the Marine Recreational Information Program, which is used to estimate recreational catch and landings.

They have made such attacks before, inspired by nothing more than a desire to kill more fish—most often red snapper—than MRIP-based regulations would allow.  But when NMFS, in its continuing efforts to ensure the accuracy of MRIP data, discovered a problem that needed fixing, the opponents of the federal fishery management system lost no time in piling on.

The harshest attacks, as one might expect, came from the Center for Sportfishing Policy, a group which represents the fishing and boatbuilding industries, along with some “anglers’ rights” organizations, and has the savvy—and, more importantly, the cash—to hire public relations professionals willing and able to present the Fishing Effort Survey story in a way most likely to alienate the average recreational fisherman from the federal fishery management system.

A typical comment came from Jeff Angers, president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, who proclaimed,

“NOAA has had multiple chances to fix management of recreational fisheries, and it has failed every time.  A ready alternative exists in states that have already taken steps to develop better recreational data than the feds have ever had.  It’s time to stop making the same mistakes, stop wasting taxpayer money, and stop causing chaos in recreational fisheries management and coastal communities.  It’s time for all parties to work together to properly fund state efforts to manage recreational fisheries.”

It’s important to note the subtleties within Angers’ statement.

While he used the newly-discovered problem with the Fishing Effort Survey to open the discussion, his intent goes far beyond merely counting the fish that anglers might catch.  He is using the Fishing Effort Survey issue as justification to attack the entire federal management system, as part of the Center’s ongoing efforts to move responsibility for managing recreational fisheries from NMFS to state managers, where science-based management can be more easily overridden by political efforts.

I’ve written about such efforts before, most recently in the context of the Coastal Conservation Association (a constituent of the Center for Sportfishing Policy) and its so-far successful endeavors to employ the Louisiana legislature to frustrate Louisiana’s professional fisheries managers, in order to prevent them from adopting the regulations needed to rebuild the state’s overfished spotted seatrout stock.

From what people tell me, the same folks are planning to block Louisiana’s efforts to protect and rebuild red drum in a similar, political way.

We also see some telling words come from Michael Leonard, vice president of government affairs for the American Sportfishing Association, the primary fishing industry trade group and another constituent of the Center.

“The recreational fishing community’s confidence in federal fisheries data couldn’t be lower.”

Of course, what Mr. Leonard is far slower to state is that he is one of the people who has been doing his best to undercut anglers’ faith in the federal data collection system.  As early as 2017, he wrote an op ed piece for Sport Fishing Magazine, in which he averred,

“The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act requires all fish stocks to be managed to an annual catch limit (i.e., number of pounds that can be caught in a year).  When that limit is reached, the act requires that the fishery be shut down.  If the limit is exceeded, punitive measures go into effect in future years.

“That works for commercial fisheries…

“Unfortunately, our federal fisheries management system is attempting to manage the nation’s 11 million saltwater anglers the same way, not recognizing the numerous fundamental differences between recreational and commercial fishing.

“One of those major differences is the way in which they estimate catch.

“…To be honest, the [National Academy of Sciences report on MRIP] is generally complimentary on progress made recently…including switching from surveying anglers via randomly cold-calling coastal household landlines to a mail survey.

“In the 21st century, it may be hard to believe that sending surveys through the mail is considered major progress, but that goes to show how low the bar has been set.

“…anglers will still be left with a system that is not capable of providing information as frequently or accurately as commercial fishing harvest data, or the degree necessary to meet current statutory requirements…”

So if angler confidence in MRIP couldn’t be lower, Mr. Leonard can certainly take a bow for helping to drive it down to such a nadir.  And he didn’t do so without reason.

After all, he is employed by a fishing tackle trade group, and at least some believe that, while science-based regulations might increase fish populations, they also decrease industry profits.  Thus, undercutting the public's confidence in federal estimates of recreational catch and landings could be a reasonably profitable activity, so long as stocks don’t drop too far.

Yet, in the end, all of the comments made by the Center for Sportfishing Policy and its fellow travelers ignore the fact that, while the federal system has its flaws—flaws that NMFS is constantly trying to unearth and repair—there is no reason to believe that the state systems are any better, at least on a consistent basis.

Take, for example, the state data used to govern the recreational red snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico.

There are five states that border the Gulf of Mexico, and each has its own, unique state program for estimating the recreational red snapper catch.  The Center for Sportfishing Policy has long condemned NMFS estimates of red snapper landings, claiming that they overstate reality and, as seen in Mr. Angers quote, above, also claim that the states have developed better data-gathering systems.  

But we only have to look back a little over a year to discover that one of the biggest issues down in the Gulf was the “calibration” of state estimates to allow them to be compatible with the MRIP data.  The reason for such calibration was pretty simple—each survey used a different methodology, which led to different results even when they were purportedly measuring the same recreational landings.  But what was interesting about the whole thing was that the data from two states, Florida and Louisiana, tracked the MRIP numbers pretty closely, while the data from Alabama and Mississippi estimated a far lower level of landings than the federal managers did.

That leads to some interesting questions.

If the state data-gathering programs were as good as the Center claims them to be, and MRIP as bad as the Center avers, one might reasonably expect a clear trend, in which the state estimates were all far lower than those developed by MRIP.  But what we find is that two of the states’ estimates are roughly equal to MRIP’s, while two other states’ estimates are far lower.  

That would suggest, given the currentsuspicions that the Fishing Effort Survey overestimates fishing effort by 30 to40 percent, that both Florida’s and Louisiana’s surveys, which emulate MRIP’s results, are probably flawed as well.  And if the currently contemplated long-term study confirms that the Fishing Effort Survey overestimates effort by just 30 to 40 percent, the Alabama and Mississippi data programs, which return estimates less than half the magnitude of those developed by MRIP, still seem to be underestimating actual landings.

So it’s probably a stretch to say that the state data systems are any more accurate than MRIP.  It’s not unlikely that all five programs are equally, if perhaps differently, flawed. 

That doesn’t even consider the data developed by Texas, using a system so archaic that no one has yet figured out how to convert it into data that might be compatible with MRIP.  Yet as old and inaccurate as the Texas system is believed to be, it’s interesting to note that neither the Center for Sportfishing Policy, nor its component organization, the Texas-based Coastal Conservation Association, has ever publicly criticized the Texas system for being inaccurate and slow to develop estimates, and neither organization has ever suggesting that the archaic state system be replaced with something capable or providing more accurate and more timely reports.  

Such failure certainly casts doubt on the sincerity of their criticism of the federal management program, and again reinforces the fact that the effort to move fishery management to the state level is about neither better data nor better science, but merely about more effective political control.

Politics and fishery management are inseparable, and in their effort to gain political advantage, we can expect to see the various trade groups and anglers’ rights organizations try to spin the Fishing Effort Survey’s recently discovered faults into an attack on the entire fishery management system.

But NMFS is already working toward a solution to MRIP’s troubles.

When you find someone working to prevent such a fix, and seeking to abandon MRIP in favor of diverse state systems, you can be pretty sure that such folks have their reasons.

Those reasons probably don’t include rebuilding and maintaining healthy fish stocks, although rebuilding and maintaining profits, at least in the short term, are likely aims.