SAME STORY, DIFFERENT FISH: IN LOUISIANA, POLITICAL INFLUENCE AGAIN TRUMPS FISHERIES SCIENCE

 

Since 2016, I’ve been telling the story of Louisiana’s overfished speckled trout, and how the efforts of Louisiana’s professional fishery managers to rebuild that stock have been frustrated.

It was a story that pitted trained scientists, whose sole objective was rebuilding a badly overfished speckled trout stock, against a charter boat association focused solely on short-term returns and a well-financed and well-connected “anglers’ rights” group that claimed to support conservation at the same time that it was mobilizing its members and spinning up its lobbying efforts in an attempt to stymie speckled trout rebuilding.

In the end, an oversight committee organized by Louisiana’s legislature listened to the lobbyists rather than to the scientists, and vetoed the regulations that the managers wanted to put in place.

In that case, the trout didn't suffer a total loss.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, realizing that their original proposal, which would have raised the minimum size from 12 to 13 ½ inches and decreased the bag limit from 25 to 15, had no chance of being enacted, went back to work and decided that a new set of rules, which would establish a 15-fish bag, create a new 13- to 20-inch slot limit (but allow two over-slot fish to be retained each day), and prohibited professional captains and crew of a vessel carrying passengers for hire to keep any trout at all, would reduce landings by about 19% and could rebuild the stock in roughly six years.

Those new rules made it past the oversight committee, but remain controversial.

Patrick Banks, Louisiana’s chief marine fisheries manager, believes that the poor age structure of the stock, which contains very few older, larger fish, makes such additional restrictions necessary.  He noted that

“What we’ve seen over the past couple of decades is our proportion of older fish in the population is going down and down and down.  If you were to look at the human population and all you saw were eight, nine, and 10-year-old people out there, and there were very few 20-something and above people, well, that’s not good for a population to be skewed to any one side of an age distribution.”

At the same time, many Louisiana charter boats, like many charter boats elsewhere on the coast, are still stuck in the increasingly archaic paradigm of filling their clients’ coolers with dead fish, and can’t imagine any other way to conduct their business.  Some worry that the 13-inch size limit will prevent their customers from taking home enough fish to make chartering their boats worthwhile.

The website nola.com recently interviewed one captain, Dudley Vandenborre, who was less concerned about the minimum size than he was about the 20-inch maximum, as his clients often sought larger speckled trout.  Capt. Vandenborre also worried that the rule prohibiting captains from retaining a limit of fish, which clients, rather than the captain, typically ended up taking home, could be a deal-breaker for many former customers.  Like many charter boat operators, in Louisiana and elsewhere, he questioned the science underlying the rules, and is even considering joining with other guides to challenge the new regulations in court.

Despite such controversy, the new regulations will go into effect on November 20.  How long they will remain in effect is another question, which is not easy to answer.  The regulations are currently scheduled to “sunset” on January 1, 2028, although the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries will be required to prepare a speckled trout stock assessment before then, which they must present at the April meeting of the state’s Wildlife and Fisheries Commission, so that the Commission can propose any new regulations required to manage the fishery.

Yet there is no guarantee that the regulations will make it to 2028.  In January, Louisiana will inaugurate a new governor, Jeff Landry, who may well appoint new members to the Wildlife and Fisheries Commission, members who may be predisposed to reversing or amending the speckled trout regulations.

Thus, one of the basic truths of state-level fisheries management again becomes clear:  Even when scientists manage to put a reasonably effective management measure in place, politics will always hang over the process like the Sword of Damocles, and may, at any time, descend to kill such management measure and replace it with something that is far less effective, but far more palatable to the folks who make the donations that grease the wheels of the electoral process.

This time, red drum—the South’s iconic “redfish”—are the victims.

Right now, Louisiana’s red drum are not doing well, largely due to recreational overfishing (there is no legal commercial redfish fishery in Louisiana, and hasn’t been for decades, so commercial fishing, anglers’ traditional scapegoat/bogeyman, cannot be blamed for the stock’s decline).  

Currently, Louisiana may retain five red drum per day, which must fall within an 18- to 27-inch slot limit, although each day, one of the five fish may be above the slot size.  However, such regulations have only allowed about 20% of the red drum to grow larger than 27 inches and so “escape” the recreational fishery; the best available science suggests that a 30% escapement rate is needed to maintain a healthy stock.  The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission has proposed new rules that would reduce the bag limit to three fish, narrow the slot size to 18 to 24 inches, and prohibit the retention of over-slot fish.

Such regulations would have reduced red drum landings by 55% and so would have restored the population to health by sometime around 2034—that is, in only about 10 years.

Such proposed regulations were supported by the majority of the public comments made before the Commission.  They were also supported by the majority of the comments made when the regulations were reviewed by the legislator’s oversight committee, with one guide, Steven Cratty of St. Bernard’s Parish, telling the politicians that

“I’m worried about my future.  The rate of decline of the redfish population…in the short period of five years in the state of Louisiana is truly terrifying.”

Jason Adriance, a state fisheries biologist, bluntly told the committee that

“We’re depleting the stock faster than it can maintain itself.”

Some guides told the committee that the decline in redfish abundance was already hurting their businesses, and leading to cancelled trips, although others disagreed, saying that the redfish stock was perfectly healthy, and that it was still possible for them to book 200 trips per year.

David Cresson, executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association’s Louisiana chapter, also opposed the proposed rules, saying

“The majority of our members believe that the [Notice of Intent] passed in July goes a step too far,”

which was not at all surprising, given that CCA Louisiana dons the mantle of conservation the way the wolves in the Sermon on the Mount would don a flayed sheep’s skin to hide their true and ravenous nature. 

Unfortunately, neither science nor the majority of the testimony carried much weight with the legislators on the oversight committee.  Instead, as CCA Louisiana likely knew going into the meeting, they decided in favor of the politically connected.  By a vote of 8-2, they rejected the state biologist’s advice and the proposal brought forth by the Commission, and instead supported a weaker set of management measures which would only reduce the bag limit to four fish, and keep the current 18- to 27-inch minimum size, while prohibiting the retention of any over-slot fish.

Such measures would supposedly reduce landings by nearly 37%, while dragging out the red drum’s recovery to 2050, 16 years longer than it would take under the Commission’s proposed rules.  The Commission, and the state managers, must now decide whether to concede the issue, or try to craft another measure that strikes some middle ground.

As in the case of speckled trout, CCA Louisiana managed to leverage its political influence, to successfully defeat science-based management measures and, in doing so, put more dead fish in its members’ coolers.

Which is just what any "anglers rights" organization would try to do.

Once again, CCA’s Louisiana chapter demonstrated why it, like the entire national organization, wants fishery management to be performed at the state level.  

Because that's the best place to set science aside, and let politics dictate fisheries policy.